Confronting ‘Wannabe Dave Ramsey’ For Exploiting Poor People! | Caleb Hammer

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Iced Coffee Hour – "Confronting 'Wannabe Dave Ramsey' For Exploiting Poor People! | Caleb Hammer"

Date: March 15, 2026
Hosts: Graham Stephan and Jack Selby
Guest: Caleb Hammer

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Episode Overview

In this candid, wide-ranging episode, Graham and Jack sit down with Caleb Hammer—a rising financial influencer known for his direct, sometimes controversial, style on Financial Audit. The conversation dives into his approach to personal finance, handling drama, the ethics of "roasting" guests, modern financial pitfalls, and his own journey from financial trouble to multimillionaire status. The trio also tackles the impact of AI on the future job market, cultural shifts in finance, and the realities of producing viral, drama-laden financial content.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Behind the Scenes of “Financial Audit” (00:39–07:55)

• Casting & Craziest Stories: Caleb discusses his most memorable episodes—often involving couples, infidelity discovered via financial statements, and surprising personal revelations live on air. He recounts a recent case (01:53) where OnlyFans purchases were exposed, leading to emotional fallout.
  • Notable quote: “We found out they weren’t banging and it’s like once a month or so. Then we went further and the purchases on his checking account and then it was OnlyFans, OnlyFans, OnlyFans…” – Caleb (02:39)
• Harshness as a Tool: Caleb addresses frequent criticism of his blunt, even harsh, on-air style. He insists guests consent to being roasted, often even requesting it.
  • Notable quote: “Stop being a P and take some actual responsibility for the first time in your damn life.” – Caleb (00:58)

Ethics, Drama, and Guest Protection (07:55–15:16)

• Safeguards & Liability: The show has a rigorous vetting process, offers support resources, and redacts sensitive or dangerous info upon request (10:33). Only one guest has suffered real-world job consequences, and the team is more cautious now.
  • Notable quote: “We had a couple abusive situations… we talked to the women off camera afterwards and I think they should leave.” – Caleb (06:09)
• Personal Safety: Caleb describes heightened security measures following public backlash and threats—humorously noting the importance of “a guy up front” at the studio (11:51).

Finding Guests & The Business of Virality (13:03–17:32)

• Guest Sourcing: Most participants come from targeted ads among the existing audience (13:16). The production team prioritizes drama and “crazy” to keep content engaging.
• Branding and Exposure: The panel debates the visibility of the studio and the risks and rewards of operating so openly (14:03).

Social Responsibility & Broader Impacts (19:22–26:13)

• Predictors of Financial Success: Caleb is most optimistic about people displaying grit—such as overcoming weight loss or family struggle—over those making vague promises (19:22).
  • Notable quote: “Past behavior is indicative of future results or something, right? It’s when people have really accomplished some hard things.” – Caleb (19:22)
• Biggest Mistakes: Used cars, micro-purchases (daily small expenses), and leveraging debt are called out as common “financial death sentences.”
  • Timestamps:
    • Purchasing OnlyFans/expensive cars (22:11)
    • Micro-purchases stacking up over time (24:13)
  • Notable quote: “Titties are everywhere. They're free. Why are we paying for them?” – Caleb (22:44)

Laziness vs. Lack of Knowledge (26:02–33:13)

• The panel disputes whether modern financial mistakes come from laziness or ignorance. Caleb argues lack of info is less defensible now than ever, given online resources (26:13), though admits cultural influences/family advice can misguide.
  • Notable quote: “At this point, it’s laziness to not find the answer… personal finance is honestly basic.” – Caleb (26:13)

Tools, Budgets, and Tech (33:17–35:05)

• The trio compares budgeting apps (YNAB, Rocket Money, Monarch), debating ease of use and privacy, with Caleb pushing his own—Dollarwise (33:32).

Cultural & Economic Shifts in Finance (36:34–49:28)

• What is ‘Middle Class’ Now? Discussion about where people “stop feeling broke” (36:34); shifting expectations for income, housing, and lifestyle.
• AI and the Future of Work: The threat/opportunity of AI eliminating traditional jobs is raised, with cautious optimism but no clear predictions (38:41–45:11).

Housing, Culture & Policy (47:49–56:49)

• Buying houses vs. renting as the American Dream; the evolution of what a “starter home” means (48:22).
• Rent control as “performative politics” that often backfires—Caleb gives concrete examples and alternatives (53:41–56:49).

Relationship Finances & Mixing Money (92:52–101:56)

• Couples’ money dynamics: Who should pay? When to talk about debt? Combining finances? Red flags include siloed money, secrecy, clashing goals, or jealousy in big income gaps (99:20–100:54).
  • Notable quote: “If you are not even aligned on that, what are we doing? Get aligned or do get the out.” – Caleb (99:20)
• Personal anecdotes about moving in, prenuptial agreements, and major gifts like a $10k Chanel bag (124:16).

Caleb’s Own Finances: Mistakes, Growth, and Philosophy (102:00–120:25)

• Self-critique: Over-investing in real estate, using wealth managers instead of DIY investing, purchasing mistakes.
  • Notable quote: “My rental properties. I mean, it’s not that I lost... I would have made so much more money being in the market instead of focusing on that.” – Caleb (102:00)
• Net Worth Milestone & Relief: Hitting a $5M personal goal brought relief and allowed more risk-taking in business (105:07), but not dramatic increases in lifestyle.
  • Notable quote: “Once it [the portfolio] hit that, I was like, oh, I’m good.” – Caleb (105:21)
• Detailed breakdown of his company finances, scaling, company size, and focus on building apps in-house (107:09–109:22).

Navigating Online Hate & Controversy (79:41–86:09)

• The communities most vocally critical of his style are now on the far left, with attacks via social media becoming more vicious (82:38; 84:02).
• Caleb admits to being more thick-skinned and strategic about what he responds to now, accepting that not everyone will like him (81:33).

Structure, Vetting, and Analytics (71:29–75:20)

• Caleb provides detailed explanation of the application and vetting process for Financial Audit guests, covering hundreds of daily applicants, multiple interviews, document checks, and red-flag eliminations.
• Reports that guests on the show average paying off $20k in bad debt within a year (69:29).

Legacy Motivation & Future Plans (110:30–111:41)

• Caleb wants to leave a lasting impact, scale Dollarwise into a multi-hundred-million business, and feels driven by building, not simply accumulating (110:30).
  • Notable quote: “I want to leave an actual resource and legacy that helps people.” – Caleb (111:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Being Harsh:
  “Stop being a P and take some actual responsibility for the first time in your damn life.” (00:58, Caleb Hammer)
• The “OnlyFans” Bombshell:
  “The dude is subscribing like once a week to a new woman.” (03:33, Caleb Hammer)
• On Predicting Success:
  “Past behaviors indicative of future results… When people have really accomplished some hard things. I know they can buckle down now.” (19:22, Caleb)
• On Financial Death Sentences:
  “The micro purchases… Energy drink, the energy drink thing is huge, man… people buy their energy drinks on Klarna and then pay their Klarna with a credit card and then their credit card with like a personal loan… it’s just like debt for debt for debt for debt.” (24:13, Caleb)
• On Personal Motivations:
  “I’d be bored [if I retired], I love building… I want to leave an actual resource and legacy that helps people.” (111:08, Caleb)

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Key Timestamps

• Craziest Financial Audit story: 01:53
• On guest vetting and protecting sensitive info: 10:33
• Micro purchases & compounding debt: 24:13
• Laziness vs. ignorance in modern finance: 26:13
• Budgeting app recommendations: 33:32
• Middle class thresholds & Gen Z expectations: 36:34
• AI & future job disruption: 38:41
• Housing policy & rent control debate: 53:41
• Top advice for financial freedom: 65:59; 66:58
• Criticisms of the show’s harshness: 68:04; 69:29
• Detailed guest vetting process: 71:29
• Caleb’s biggest personal financial mistake: 102:00
• Net worth relief and shifting mindset: 105:07
• Dream house and lifestyle upgrades: 117:19; 119:45
• Motivation and legacy beyond money: 110:48

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Flow & Tone

The episode flows naturally, reflecting both the hosts’ and guest’s casual, humorous, and at times abrasive styles. Caleb’s candidness and brash language are front and center, balanced by Graham and Jack’s often more methodical, sometimes comedic, approach. The tone is highly engaging, alternating between personal anecdotes, serious social discussion, and practical financial advice. There’s a healthy dose of debate—particularly around generational shifts, the role of personal responsibility, and the future of work.

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Concluding Insights

• Personal Responsibility Over Victimhood: The refrain "take responsibility, stop deflecting" underscores the show's philosophy.
• Financial Freedom Is Shifting: New economic realities (housing, AI, cultural pressures) require adapting both mindset and practical steps, with “lazy comfort” as the modern enemy.
• Drama Drives Engagement: Caleb unapologetically embraces entertainment (aka "slop") as a means to both educate and attract, but insists actual outcomes for guests (measured debt reduction) validate the show’s tough-love approach.
• Legacy Above Profit: With his own financial comfort secured, Caleb’s focus is squarely on scalable impact, employee stewardship, and building businesses for the long haul.

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For newcomers or returning fans, this episode is a bold, insightful, and at times jaw-dropping look at the current state of personal finance education and the business of content creation in 2026.

Transcript

[Caleb Hammer]

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[Jack]

Which is your craziest story?

[Graham Stephan]

Yes.

[Caleb Hammer]

What hits your account on a monthly basis? My paycheck?

[Graham Stephan]

Yes.

[Caleb Hammer]

When you tell people just to be responsible, they take that as like a threat. Hey, don't get mad at me. I'm standing up to myself.

[Jack]

What do you think of the criticism that sometimes you're too harsh on the guests?

[Caleb Hammer]

Stop being a P and take some actual responsibility for the first time in your damn life. Why the you guys here?

[Jack]

How often do you tell the guest you should break up?

[Caleb Hammer]

There's a couple of people that they would be better off separate for sure.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah, she didn't have debt before me,

[Caleb Hammer]

but she didn't have a degree either. Leave this person. Leave this person. I also didn't have collections before you and you didn't have a job either.

[Graham Stephan]

What would you say are the financial death sentences that people do collect?

[Caleb Hammer]

Cars are always a horrendous thing.

[Jack]

Seriously. The car is not the best.

[Caleb Hammer]

I doubt you're maintaining it cuz you probably don't even know where the oil goes.

[Jack]

And if someone were to look through your personal finances as an audit, what would they criticize? Caleb Hammer, welcome to the Iced Coffee Hour. So I've seen that you filmed over 500 episodes of financial Audit, which is your craziest story?

[Caleb Hammer]

Craziest story. It's a recent one. Honestly. Couples episodes. They're my favorite. We were just talking before. You love the couples episodes. Everyone loves the couples episodes. There's a guy and a girl tale as old as time together in love, finances a little bit of a mess, kind of using each other here and there. But then I randomly find out that their sex life is zero. Why does that come up in Financial Audit? I have no idea, honestly. You asked them. I don't remember the context. No, it was like a sly comment because you know, people bicker on the show and he was like, they were talking. It was like if you gave me some or something like that. It was something like that. Which like triggered me to go deeper.

[Jack]

And then you have to investigate that.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, because my producers didn't know, you know, one of them always sits there. I didn't know. I go in blind. So every once in a while we hear these crazy things that whenever we hear something that my producers didn't know about beforehand, that's when we know it's going to be like the craziest episode. So we found out they weren't banging and it's like once a month or so. Then we went further and the purchases on his checking account and then it was onlyfans. Onlyfans. Onlyfans. Onlyfans. And they agreed that they were not going to do any only fans purchasing any because she wanted to. But he wasn't performing and she was like, it is a rule. You cannot watch. He can't do all this. And he's like, okay, okay. So I saw those only fans purchases. I was like, oh. And it got really somber really quick. And I felt so bad for her. And I was like, dude, just give me your phone. Took his phone, went to his only fans and the dude is subscribing like once a week to a new woman.

[Jack]

Okay, so why do you have to see his only fans? Isn't it enough to see the charges only like why do you have to see the individual people?

[Caleb Hammer]

Because it was. I only had a month statement. Right. So I need to see how consistent was this going back and this was non stop while they're having this struggle. And she put that as a red line, as a no go that he could not do that in that all being exposed on the show. I feel so horrible for her because it hit her.

[Graham Stephan]

I don't understand.

[Caleb Hammer]

It was real.

[Graham Stephan]

How she's unaware of the only like it hit her directly on the show. But if they're submitting their financial statements, don't you think that she would have gone through it? And also if they're at the point where of exposing this to millions of people online, then this guy would have

[Caleb Hammer]

been like, I don't know if I

[Graham Stephan]

want to do this financial audit thing. It's not like he forgot that this is going to be in his statements.

[Caleb Hammer]

He knows going into know what's in their statements. Because the people that come on the show, I love you, you guys are great. But they're usually financially stupid. That's the point of the show. Right. So they don't know what is in their.

[Graham Stephan]

That doesn't sound like financial stupidity. That just sounds like general stity.

[Jack]

Yeah, stupid.

[Graham Stephan]

Obviously that's going to be there.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Well, the thing is, I mean we've talked about this so many times. The guest is able to determine what we do not talk about. Usually there has been many guys that have been on the show that are like, I'm good with anything. Just don't mention the only fans purchases. So we redact them. And they're never even mentioned. You wouldn't even know what episodes.

[Jack]

So they are hiding that from their significant other. If they.

[Caleb Hammer]

Or just from the audience or from their workplace.

[Jack]

How common is that? How common is it that they have only men's charges?

[Caleb Hammer]

Very. And we censor via their request. So that guy had that opportunity. I don't think he even like, just thought about it. I don't even think he thought about it.

[Graham Stephan]

Did he seem like the type of guy that just wouldn't think about that or did it seem like he like wanted the drama? He wanted the episode to go viral?

[Caleb Hammer]

No, he did not want that to happen. So he shut down and it wasn't intentional. Again, that came up just organically. That wasn't planned, that wasn't known about. So no one knew, including him. It was crazy. The good news is they are still together. We've recently done an audit update a part of our Hammer Elite membership with them. And they are still together. They're working on it. But it was kind of infidelity because they agreed. They agreed. She put the red line out there. The ultimatum. He was like, okay, fine. And then for months, for months, hundreds of dollars of onlyfans purchases off to other women when they're not being.

[Jack]

Do they have a joint account or were these separate accounts?

[Caleb Hammer]

But they weren't married yet and they're very young. It was like 20 and 21.

[Jack]

So how often do you tell the guest you should break up for couples?

[Caleb Hammer]

Maybe like 25% of the time. I often want them to break up usually. But in the heat of the episode when I'm like kind of hating someone and I see that someone's the villain, I'm like, I want leave this person. Leave this person. But in the end, you know, once I actually have a second to cool down before filming our post show, it's like, okay, okay, I hated you in this moment, but I don't hate you as a person. I don't want you guys to actually break up. But oh my. I kind of wanted you to. There's a couple people that they'd be better off separate for sure. Like, we had a potential. We've had a couple abusive situations and we've talked to the women off camera afterwards and I think they should leave.

[Graham Stephan]

So you talk to them off camera, just like, just letting, you know, resources,

[Caleb Hammer]

you know, giving them the resources just in case they're in danger, telling them they can text us anytime, that kind of stuff. And I want them to leave. But, you know, usually people in abusive situations, they don't. And the. The one that we had that we uploaded like two weeks before, we're filming this right now. None of us knew that it was a potentially sketchy situation. It just kind of came up in the episode when he was outside of the room. She offloaded what was happening, what was happening. Very confrontational. Her being put in the corner with him, like yelling, him grabbing her collar.

[Jack]

Oh, wow.

[Caleb Hammer]

And pulling her back in. But I didn't get his alternative. I didn't get his side until the post show because I just. I wanted to back away from that topic. In the post show, it was a completely different experience from his angle. Saying that she had a knife, she was threatening to hurt herself, that she was going to him. It was like all this different. So it's like, who's right, who's wrong, but they probably shouldn't be together.

[Graham Stephan]

And how were their finances?

[Caleb Hammer]

Always bad. Always bad.

[Graham Stephan]

That's crazy. You're really getting, like, kind of over. Like you're getting into some treacherous territory here.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Graham Stephan]

Have you ever been threatened with a lawsuit from a financial audit? That's done.

[Caleb Hammer]

Okay, so one of our favorite reoccurring guests, Brenton Davy, he threw out the threat of a lawsuit. I don't think anyone took it too seriously. I don't. I don't even think we ran it past our lawyer. I don't remember. Just that everyone's so onboarded, so detailed.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Caleb Hammer]

tommyJohn Comfort perfected that no one's surprised. Nothing's too crazy. But I mean, I think in the early days, I mean, we had a couple people that are upset. Maybe they, like, thought about it, you know, in the back of their head.

[Jack]

But the thing is, is that sometimes these people's grievances or charges get thrown out to the world. Millions of people see it. Has anybody been worried about the repercussions of like, getting employed afterwards when they've been caught lying to their significant other about OnlyFans charges? And maybe an employer sees this and says, hey, wait a second, maybe this is not the guy who we should hire to like, be in charge of the elementary school.

[Caleb Hammer]

Only one person in the four we film a week, three uploads a week, has actually faced real world consequences from his job. But it was fair. The dude worked in being like an airline mechanic, so he was doing maintenance, which people's lives depend on. And the job that he had at filming, which he fully admitted and again, he did not need to talk about in the show. He could have told us and we would have not done it because I don't even think I knew about it. And he said, yeah, I was hired from my last job because I almost got someone. And he just admitted that. And they were like, oh, we didn't know that. Sorry. Bye. So that's the one person that's faced actual real world consequences. Most get their boss's permission to come on the show. They're like, I'm gonna come on the show, it's gonna be a little embarrassing. Are you chill with that? And they're like, yeah, it's chill because most people don't actually care. It's, you know, a fun, like, it goes crazy online for like two days and that's gone. Right.

[Graham Stephan]

So have you ever made the decision to remove something from an episode in order to protect the guest?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, yeah. Well, all the time. When it comes to locations or people's names, that happens constantly.

[Graham Stephan]

But what about their own? Just negligence or something that they don't understand the consequences of putting that, airing that out.

[Jack]

They reveal something where you say, you really shouldn't be saying this, and even though you think it's okay, I'm going to take the executive decision to cut that.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, a couple mental health things. Not in like a position where they weren't mentally well enough to be on the show or something like that, but more like, you know, they're talking about maybe a situation where, like, you know, it's not the best. It's. It's like it reflects badly out into the world. And, you know, maybe in that moment they were very sad and worked up, but we're like, okay, they probably didn't want to say that. So there's just a few instances here and that. And I give my editors a lot of power where I. I don't need to overlook everything, but if they see that something's like, okay, this kind of. For that person's life, you know, and it's like, obviously in the moment, it didn't really make sense for them to be saying it. It has no contextual part of the episode. Then they'll. They'll get rid of it.

[Jack]

Now, what about recently? You had a guest come in with

[Caleb Hammer]

a. Yeah, well, actually, yeah, it's happened a couple times, but yeah, a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. I. Dude, I don't know, man.

[Jack]

How do you work?

[Caleb Hammer]

People are crazy. We got a guy up front. You probably saw him. We love him. He keeps us safe. I'm waiting for the day when he gets to, you know, tackle someone, but. Because we got some crazies out there. But yeah, she came with a. I have no idea why. It was stupid. And she bought it right before coming on the show with debt. Like a dumb. Like, I don't know what the. She was thinking.

[Jack]

Why did she buy it before the show?

[Caleb Hammer]

Safety. Because she was coming from the airport to our studio. So she lived in the airport.

[Graham Stephan]

So she went. Landed the plane, went straight to a store.

[Caleb Hammer]

I think so. Or she got it right before going on the plane. I don't remember. But she was like, what do you. It's a new city.

[Jack]

I seem like a. A red flag that a guest buys a. Before coming on the show.

[Caleb Hammer]

A little.

[Jack]

Maybe they're not even still. I. I don't think normal people land somewhere to go on a show. And like, in between the airport and the show buys a. Regardless of the intention of that. It doesn't seem like a.

[Graham Stephan]

If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, sounds like a duck, might be.

[Caleb Hammer]

The show wouldn't be half as interesting without a couple psychos here and there, though. So how do you find sacrifice?

[Jack]

How do you find some of these people? Because I see your ads everywhere. When I'm on Facebook or Instagram, I'm scrolling and I'm like, you know, come on Financial Audit. It seems like you're casting worldwide almost kind of.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's actually targeted places. And you guys are in Vegas, so. Vegas, you know, there's some fun people in Vegas. So it's a couple targeted spots. The thing is, every. It's an awareness play. You. We target people who already watch Financial Audit are already fans of Financial Audit. So we just get them to think, here's the show that you like, want to come on the show. Because we. Everyone we have is from the audience in the. In the rare, like one or two times a year that someone has not seen the show. We force them to watch an episode and some clips before they come on the show. But everyone's just from the audience. We just target them and we're like, hey, you want to come on the show? Want to come on the show? We just kind of make them think about it when they're. When they're scrolling online. So everyone's from the audience. There's just some crazy people out there. And I love them for it. I love them for it. Be crazy. We like a little crazy. I'm a little crazy.

[Graham Stephan]

What I don't understand is why do you have the name of your company on the door to building? I have never understood that. It seems like there is so little to gain. There's nothing so much to lose.

[Jack]

That was the first thing Jack and I said. Even when we first.

[Graham Stephan]

I literally just see it. I'm just like. Like, what do you have to gain? If you can maybe list out three things, like three benefits of having the name on the door.

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, it's. I like my logo. Ego.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay. There's one.

[Jack]

Ego.

[Caleb Hammer]

Ego.

[Graham Stephan]

Sure.

[Caleb Hammer]

A little to a certain point. I mean, it's really cool to have accomplished having, you know, like, a big space. That is cool. But it does make it easier for people to find. But we could use. We could pretend it's a different company and just tell them to find that. So that's not a good reason. I don't know. Is this one of the first things we did was market?

[Jack]

We've seen some studios.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And they've purposely gone out of their way to be as anonymous as possible. And that works to their favor. And you have no idea who they are, what's going on behind the doors. It's all tinted very.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. We probably should. We probably should. We have some crazies again. I'm happy the guy up front is there. I love him. He takes me to and from my car every day. That's good.

[Graham Stephan]

That is very wise.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Or if I go downstairs for any of the restaurants and whatnot. But do you.

[Jack]

Do you worry about your personal safety?

[Caleb Hammer]

I did. You know, after the Charlie Kirk thing, I was like, I mean, we're not even in comparable spaces. But I've had people. Even though I literally just joke and make roasts to people that are consenting to it, I have people calling me fascist dick in and day out. So I had security sitting out front of my house for weeks until we got to install a good system. I got A so I'll blast someone's head off if needed. But you know, it was, it was scary there for a second. I think everyone's, I mean, I was texting you. You're a little nervous too. Like, I think everyone was a little scared. That is, even personal finances can get controversial. When you tell people just to be responsible, they take that as like a threat. It's like the way people twist things. It's crazy. I mean, yeah, I mean, I have a pretty intense snark community and I have. And those, those people are pretty crazy and they've put other creators lives in threat. So every once in a while, you know, I'll get a security guard to sit outside when like something's kind of bubbling a little, when people are going a little ravenous online. But in general, we have a good security system at my house to protect me, my girlfriend and dogs. And we have a ready fingerprint, you know, if needed. Hopefully not, though. It's just, it's just crazy that a show that should be just fun with crazy titles and thumbnails. I get it. I know. Gets people so heated in a way where like, I mean, we get, we. I do get threats.

[Jack]

The thing is, I've watched a lot of your episodes and some of the people I think who are on your show are not mentally stable. And those are the people who I worry about where maybe you go a little too hard on them or maybe something happens down the line that they were on the show and then they're not in the right headspace to fully think through their decisions.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, it's always possible. There's been a couple people we've been nervous about. Brent, a guy a long time ago named Zeke. We do a lot better in our vetting process. Now. We don't allow people with like these, you know, if they have like dangerous. Actually we do background checks. And our security guard did find one person who almost came on and was almost invited to the studio. Had a couple of just weird red flags in their Internet history. And we're just like, nah, it's not even worth the risk.

[Graham Stephan]

The logic agrees with you. Like you're not doing anything objectively wrong, but you're potentially working with people that aren't playing by the same rules. They're not following the logic.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

So that's the only thing that I, you know, we could advise on now.

[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

ICED Again, the guide is free for you at netsuite.com ICed with the link down below in the description. Netsuite.com ICed enjoy going on something a little more positive here. You've seen at this point, thousands of people between couples, individuals, you've seen all the personal finances. What is the strongest predictor of success?

[Caleb Hammer]

Strongest predictor is success. It's when they have a really good story about weight loss or grinding through a degree or working through a family struggle and helping someone else when they've buckled down and actually accomplished something. Even outside of personal finances, like, I know, ooh, you have the capacity to lock down, go through some uncomfortable months or even potentially years if it's really bad and get this done. Especially those that have gone through, like we've had people that come on and they've lost hundreds of pounds and I'm like, man, okay, if you went through how hard that is, I know you can take a budget, take some tools, take some resources and actually improve your life. When they've saved family members or friends or gone through really hard degrees with no support, that it's, I mean, it's past behaviors indicative of future results or something, right? So it's when people have really accomplished some hard things. In the past, I know they can buckle down. Now. On the other side, when I have a guest coming on and they play the deflection game, this happens a lot. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna change that, or, oh, yeah, I'm changing that, or, I want to change that. That's the response to any pushback I give. And I'm like, no, you have no example, no history of you ever changing anything. And I have your statements right in front of me, and it's all around. And that's this last month. You can't just. Your response to everything can be, I'm changing that. I'm gonna change that, because that isn't it. I can take that word from someone that lost weight, went through a really hard time in life, and went from homelessness to back, that I can believe in that person. But when someone hasn't actually had the struggle or done the turnaround at any point in their life, and they're just like, yeah, I'm gonna do it. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. There's nothing for me to believe. Where's the belief? I don't see the belief.

[Jack]

Do you think it's possible for someone who has not been through the struggles to make a change?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, I. Absolutely. It's just harder to be, like, objectively confident because it's. It's the first time. I mean, when I went through my personal finances, financial issues in my early 20s and grinding my way out, it was the first real struggle that I do myself, because, yes, my family had personal financial struggles and foreclosure notices, but that was on my family. Right. As a kid, you might have some, like, hide consequences, but it wasn't like, I didn't have to go get a job at 5 or 10.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Hammer]

So, I mean, I did it. I know people can do it. I just. I cannot play the game of the deflection of, oh, I'm gonna change it. It's like, there is nothing to show me. You can't just say that. That's not an answer to, hey, why'd you spend all this? Oh, I'm gonna change it. No, it's. You haven't showed me that you are. You know, you haven't proven that, so. Yeah, of course. Of course. But it is harder to get in to that motion of really changing your life for the very first time ever. For the first time ever when you haven't done it before.

[Jack]

What's the most insane purchase that you've seen from someone who is Broke only

[Caleb Hammer]

fans is a pretty bad purchase. Paying for titties. Paying for titties in 2026.

[Graham Stephan]

I will say ethically speaking, it could be more ethical than free, Jack.

[Caleb Hammer]

The Hub does ads. The adsense on the Hub. The adsense on the Hub is crazy.

[Jack]

I hear actually the Hub pays really well.

[Caleb Hammer]

Really well.

[Jack]

And that some creators are uploading their non explicit videos to the Hub and actually making like a decent money from it.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's like making members content versus posting it on main. Main does really well. Like it's, it's, you know, so. No, I get it. But I mean that's stupid. I'm sorry. Titties are everywhere. They're free. Why are we paying for them? That was a dumb purchase. You always got the car. The hundred thousand dollar Ford Texas Ranch Ranger F1000. And it's just oh my. Or when someone thinks they got a nice car and they got like a Dodge Charger and they souped it up for like 50,000 hours, I'm like what are we doing? What Dodge Charger? Why? Why? So cars, cars are always a horrendous thing.

[Jack]

What's the biggest car payment you've seen?

[Caleb Hammer]

2,000 I think. 2,000? It was a truck. It was a truck? Yeah.

[Jack]

How much?

[Caleb Hammer]

We've had a couple that was around 2000.

[Jack]

How much were they making?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, it definitely wasn't in their budget, I'll tell you that. I mean usually around the show people are bringing in like 5 to 6.

[Jack]

So they're spending like 35% of their income on the car.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, but they could have been a $3,000 income. I, I, you know that was like a year ago. So I'm not exactly sure on their number, but it was about a $2,000 truck payment and we've had that I think twice now.

[Graham Stephan]

What's a classic broke person car?

[Caleb Hammer]

Dodge Charger is definitely highest level of repos. I think one of them. Right. Or Challenger, I don't know. They do gravitate to like those like weird muscle cars. It's classic. That and a big, big truck. Americans and their big truck. I don't know why, man.

[Graham Stephan]

What would you say are the financial death sentences that people do?

[Caleb Hammer]

The micro purchases. The micro purchases. And it's how you do your micro purchases. So even in people's checking account they'll do the micro purchase of the McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's. Over and over and over again and, but they don't think it's much because it's $10. It's $12. Then it's every day, every other day. Or the energy drink, the energy drink thing is huge, man. People are going in and buying five dollar energy drinks every day on the way to work every day. And that shit stacks. But then you can do it wrong. You can do it on a credit card that is building interest so it's even worse than on the checking account. Or you could do even worse, do it at a 35% interest rate on Klarna and then only this is what we have now on our show. People buy their energy drinks on Klarna and then they'll pay their Klarna minimum payment with their credit card and then they'll pay their credit card with like a personal loan. It's like, it's just like debt for debt for debt for debt. And the longer you push that out, the further you push it down that debt train, the longer it takes to pay off the debt. But it's those micro purchases are what's killing everyone. It is a high car payment or is the micro purchases that you're like, it's not that much, but I'm going to do it over and over and over again and it stacks up way higher than you'd ever think.

[Jack]

Where do you think the balance is though between scaling back on micro purchases and putting that effort towards making more money?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, more money doesn't change bad behavior, right? So it really doesn't. I mean when people lifestyle and play, you get an extra 25% income, you probably spend an extra 35%. So before people ever aggressively go make a lot more money or go through bankruptcy, credit card transfer, personal loan, whatever it is, those can all be really, really good tools. But if you don't change the inherent behavior that got you there in the first place, you're just gonna get up. We've had people that are coming out of the show going through their third bankruptcy because that doesn't actually change anything. Debt consolidation doesn't change anything.

[Graham Stephan]

You're calling it behavior. Would you say it's more a lack of knowledge or would you say it's mostly laziness that keeps people poor these days?

[Caleb Hammer]

More laziness? I could see, I could see lack of knowledge a bit more 10, 20 years ago, but now more than half the states in the country have a required personal finance to graduate high school. Like that's huge. It's a big change in this country now that's a big positive. And now we're, we live in the world of Grok, GPT, Plaud, Google, you Name it. Anything you want to know. You find out in personal finance is honestly basic. Like I'm kind of. When it comes to math, it's basic. It's very basic stuff. Like now we're not talking like the best insurance is to buy. We're talking about paying off debt, building a fully funded emergency fund. So at this point it's laziness to not find the answer. Or it's just, it goes beyond the ignorance to like, you know there's something going on and you're just actively choosing not to do it because it's more comfortable to put your head in the sand. It's more comfortable to live that fast food every day, starbies everyday lifestyle. Which is fine. I mean, I get it for what it's worth. I mean, I will put myself back there with all these guests that are doing it. When I was in college, carefree, going to McDonald's every day or going out with friends and putting that all on credit cards every single day. Chase Freedom Card. It was, it was fun and I had no stresses. Even though the stress was building. I didn't acknowledge it. It wasn't real. It was something for later not to think about. And that was fun. It's more stressful to think about money even when you're successful, because you're thinking about money and it's, it's always there. It's always something to figure out. When you're not thinking about it, you're just swiping. That's a great life. Not in the end, but it's a great life in the moment. It really is. So I think it's a little bit of. It's certainly laziness, lack of information, less and less so. And because everyone uses the excuse. Well, my parent never taught me. No one's does. The jurors did. Yours? I don't know.

[Graham Stephan]

A little bit, yeah. That's what kind of got me into it. It's like he was. I remember when I was young, actually it was Graham, honestly, like my dad was telling me, hey, you should like be buying stocks and stuff. Like so like I kind of like dabbled very lightly. But then it was Graham's videos of like high interest banks. And I was like, how can I make my money that I've saved kind of like grow over time. So it was really just high yield savings accounts was the first thing to everything. But I do agree with you. I think it's mostly laziness and not necessarily knowledge because the knowledge is everywhere. It's not hard to find.

[Jack]

It yeah, but you have to know to look for it in the, in the first place.

[Graham Stephan]

No, I would. What do you mean? It's pretty obvious.

[Jack]

All you ever see is people spending money on a credit card and that's your entire world. How do you know there's anything.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay, so like what IQ do you think you have? Have to have higher than to be able to say, okay, I am dissatisfied with where I'm at financially. Let me do a quick Google search to see how can I improve.

[Jack]

I just think when it's all you see, it's your entire world, you have no idea what's beyond that world. Let's just say you live in a very poor neighborhood. You've never been out of that district, you don't have a car, all you see is is poverty. How do you know there's anything beyond that?

[Graham Stephan]

The same could be.

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean. No, beyond that. For what it's worth, we live in the world where everyone's watching content from all around the world. You know, there's a life beyond it. I'll say. I mean where you were going for a second I was totally aligned with when you grow up in bad schools, you grow up in poverty. Yes, it is harder to escape that. The United States isn't perfect for going up to the next class. You know, we're, we're kind of middle of the road when it comes to that. You can get lots of success here, but it is not perfect moving up the reins. But now with everyone being so connected, you, you see beyond all you need is hard to get access or one

[Graham Stephan]

of your shorts to appear on your split feed. And then it's like, okay, but if

[Jack]

it's only once you start down that path do you get recommended the content. Like I remember when I was making the video about the Roth IRA explaining it, I knew that people wouldn't know to search for it unless they already were looking for it. And so I made a video on. You had to make how to be a tax Free Millionaire on $5 a day or whatever.

[Graham Stephan]

But it exists is the thing. Back in the day it didn't. That's why I think now is different than it was a decade ago.

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, I mean my thing is like if you're going to get your first credit card, we didn't have GPT and all this stuff when I was getting my first credit card. Instead I asked my parents if I was 18 today I would literally YouTube Google. Like maybe I wouldn't say what's dangerous about a credit card, but I would like tell me about this credit card and it would at least tell you about the interest and all. And then I'm like, oh, wait, tell me about that interest. Right. Because it takes you down those rabbit holes to keep using the service. So would you agree that if you're

[Graham Stephan]

motivated to become financially literate, then it exists?

[Jack]

Yes.

[Caleb Hammer]

Okay.

[Jack]

Motivated to be financially.

[Graham Stephan]

There we go. The exact opposite of being motivated is to be lazy. And so you're saying then that if you're lazy, that will be a massive obstacle.

[Jack]

It's harder when you don't know what to look for or what you need to even search for.

[Caleb Hammer]

That is true.

[Graham Stephan]

That. Yeah, that's absolutely true. But if you're on the sliding scale of like, laziness versus knowledge, then like, if you're motivated, eventually you'll find out if it requires a few failures along.

[Jack]

I just, I think right now there's like another hundred x opportunity that we're all going to look back on today and be like, oh my gosh, if only I knew to search for that. But you don't know to search for that because it's not in our sphere. But 10 years from now it might be. And we look back at today and we say, oh, I should have done that. I think a lot of people do that with finance. I should have done this had I known that I needed to do that.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's also harder because again, we just have so many more resources.

[Graham Stephan]

If you just take a snapshot of time right now, you know, that's. I think that there's an abundance of knowledge, information online that can take you less.

[Caleb Hammer]

So about the lack of education. A dangerous thing we see time and time again is like the bad education because it's not perfect isn't like trying over and over again. Right. It's that or perfection isn't trying over and over again because if you keep trying the same bad thing over and over again, you're going to be perfect to be bad as well. So it doesn't lead to endlessly good results. If your parents are giving you bad information, like, you know, we're. Let's say we're in a place that is lower income and everyone is getting their nice cars. What they're prioritizing over getting a nice place or a nice education and your parents are pushing you to do that. Like, hey, you gotta look good, you got to get this car, you got to get this clothes, you got to do this. It's like, that's bad education that could hurt someone because the kid's very impressionable. Or getting pressured to go get a bad degree or worthless degree at any school, going into any amount of student loan debt. Like, I don't blame an 18 year old for that. If their parents and student counselors are heavily pushing them. Go to any school you want to get any degree you want and borrow whatever it takes to get it. So, you know, that's. I don't think that's laziness. I think you can have a bad influence. I had a slight bad influence. I turned 18, I wanted a piano. My parents said, well, the first thing you should do at 18 is open a credit card and max it out to get the piano you wanted. So I did. That wasn't laziness. That was the people that I looked to for the advice giving me bad advice. So it's not just laziness. There's. There's other components to it as well, but there's lots of laziness.

[Graham Stephan]

I 100% agree. There's many components to it. We just happen to maybe disagree on the sliding scale.

[Caleb Hammer]

Sure, sure.

[Jack]

Why do you think so many people don't know how much money they spend?

[Caleb Hammer]

They don't. Look, man, I got people coming out of the show that have never seen their checking accounts. They won't do something as simple as like, literally just all the, all the apps do the automated connections and it just tells you within like two minutes.

[Jack]

What's your favorite one that you'd recommend?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, dollar wise, of course.

[Jack]

But if, if we're, if we're putting that to the side, besides dollar wise budgeting app, what would you recommend?

[Caleb Hammer]

Hmm. I like ones for different reason. If you want to go hardcore advanced. Ynab is fun. We've just learned that a lot of people click off in the onboarding because it's just. There's too much. There's too much.

[Jack]

I agree with you on that. I tried doing it and it just, it was taking too much time.

[Caleb Hammer]

That's why we did something. Rocket Money is pretty good, but I learned in the end they just kind of want to sell you a mortgage, so wasn't the biggest fan of them.

[Graham Stephan]

I got a mortgage with Rocket Mortgage. See, in fairness. But, but, but it was the best rate that I could have found.

[Jack]

They are very competitive, I gotta say.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'm not saying that's inherently bad, but I want to use it for my own reasons, not to be sold. I did do every dollar. Every dollar was good. One thing I didn't like and why I don't always advise it is because it forces you to use The Ramsey method. So, you know that's not like, personal. So Monarch is pretty good. Mark's the new guy on the block. I just always get a little nervous when companies raise like $100 million in private equity because what do they use

[Jack]

that money for for a budgeting app? 100 million.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's crazy because we didn't need that. But also, private equity always ends up like collecting private data in the end, not saying they're going to. That's always what private equity wants. So I get a little nervous. So I like all those apps for their own reasons, but I'm hesitant for all those specifics as well.

[Jack]

Yeah, personally, I tend to like rocket money a lot. I find it's the best beginner friendly. It's pretty easy, has everything you need, and it's pretty affordable. If you pay for it and I pay for it, I actually like it.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'd say they're all affordable for what you get if you tweak your budget, because all of them are on that 10 to 15 bucks a month. If you tweak your budget and say the 100 bucks. Oh yeah. Just because of a budgeting app, it's like it's so easily worth it.

[Graham Stephan]

This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I are going to South Korea soon and we are both so excited to spend a week exploring cities, checking out traditional villages and enjoying the local food and culture.

[Jack]

And if you're big on traveling like us, anytime we're away, the home just ends up sitting unused. But it could actually be generating extra income by hosting on Airbnb.

[Graham Stephan]

So you guys may not know this, but at one point I actually hosted on Airbnb a spare bedroom in my house. And it ended up being far easier than I expected. The setup was straightforward, everything ran smoothly, and it turned into a genuinely great experience overall. And guys, I am being so honest is genuinely a phenomenal way to make some extra cash. If you have spare bedrooms in your house, just put them on Airbnb. You'll make some money. It is so easy. It's quite enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

[Jack]

Now, if you've ever thought about hosting but weren't sure how to handle it if you're away, Airbnb now has the co host network. With this, you could partner with a vetted local co host with hosting experience who could take care of the important details for you.

[Graham Stephan]

So you see, a co host can help manage reservations, guest communication, and even provide on site support so everything goes smoothly while you're away.

[Jack]

This makes hosting A lot more manageable when you travel.

[Graham Stephan]

Also just a great way to earn some extra cash for future trips or just home projects.

[Jack]

If you've considered hosting but need some help, find a co [e-mail] host. So at what income level do you feel like someone should stop feeling broke?

[Caleb Hammer]

Does that ever happen? Did that happen to you?

[Jack]

I don't feel broke anymore, but I don't. I don't feel rich either. So I feel like somewhere in the, somewhere in the middle.

[Caleb Hammer]

We'll get memed on for saying that, of course. But yeah, stop feeling broke. Obviously it's gonna depend on where you live, man. It's gonna be less of an income thing. It's gonna be your liabilities, isn't it? It always is. You can be making a hundred million dollars a year, but if you got billions in liabilities, I mean, and those payments are fucked, you're gonna feel broke. A hundred thousand hours a year is what I always aimed for. But if I had a high car payment, high rent, high mortgage, whatever it is gonna feel broke.

[Jack]

Even studies today now say that middle class starts at $140,000 a year for a family with two kids.

[Caleb Hammer]

And gen Z said they need to make like 300,000 a year to feel comfortable or something. Yes, just. Why?

[Jack]

What are your thoughts on that?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, my thoughts is they haven't been through a recession yet, so a little bit of a lack of life experience, which is fine. That's not a bad thing. That's not on Gen Z, I'm right in that middle. You're Gen Z. I'm like on that cusp. So it's not pooing on them, but it's like, I get it, I get it. The lifestyle that we want in our consumerism culture, the more the merrier when it comes to money. But once you actually go through a recession or you enter a bad job market now they actually are entering a bad job market right now. And that might change the numbers because where Gen Z was entering the job market for the majority of their work life so far was like the best job market in the history of the United States. You know that Covid boom, tech hiring anyone for anything. And now it's a bad time. Now it's a hard time. The layoffs last month, highest since the Great Recession. Job number revisions that hit the day before we're filming this episode. Millions less last year. So I think that is what a generation usually takes to realize, okay, like I, I can be happy with living a certain lifestyle and it doesn't need to be this over the top crazy. So not saying they need to, but it is hard reality.

[Jack]

How bad is Gen Z gonna get by AI dude?

[Caleb Hammer]

That's the question. That's the question.

[Jack]

All the people right now who are studying to be lawyers. Yeah, engineers. I feel like so many people are gonna get wiped out and they're gonna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going to school, years of their life just to graduate and realize like, wait a second, this AI is now able to do what I've studied years to do and it does it in one a hundredth of the time for free.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's crazy. My head of tech who has about a five person team, he said if he was doing this six years ago, he would need three times the people. That's a ton of jobs. Not out of like greed or anything. It was just like you don't pay people when you don't need to hire someone and it's not a great thing. So everything's just so efficient right now. Especially in the world of programming, even slightly design and engineering, it is difficult. The arguments are interesting on both sides and it's impossible. I refuse to take like who I agree with because I don't know, I don't want to just, just like be like, yeah, I agree with this person that's guessing it doesn't know what they're talking about. There's the two camps, right? It's okay. This has happened throughout human history. You got the farm equipment, you got the automation in factories. Okay. Industries got wiped out. It was all replaced with something more productive. This is another example of that. And then there's the other ones, like, well no, this is, this is new. This is completely game changing. We're not going to need to do anything. We need to get something like UBI going. We need to do, you know, this is, we've never seen anything like this. I don't know what the other side of the hill looks like. I don't know what the other side of the hill looks like. I don't know if I want to fully advise to panic, go into a trade that is less AI replaceable because I don't, I don't want to scare people off from anything else. But I also don't want to say there's nothing to worry about. We don't know what the other side of the hill looks like, man. We really don't. And we're already seeing some impacts right now. Customer service will probably be automated. If you ever talk to one of these programs right now, they're getting better. They're getting good. They're getting good. I talk to Grok in my car sometimes like when if we're stuck in traffic, me and my girlfriend will play trivia on it gets a little weird with their intonation sometimes but it's good and it listens really well. So customer service is probably gone. A lot of engineering is probably gone.

[Jack]

I think therapists are also going to be wiped out.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Once people feel afflict safe with that ethical about it, you think about it.

[Jack]

Yes, absolutely. If I have any sort of personal problem, I will put it in ChatGPT or Gemini and I get its unbiased opinion.

[Graham Stephan]

Unbiased.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

I, I, I say poke holes. You, you have, you have to word it in such a way that it doesn't just agree with you and I, and I, I want it to poke holes, show the other side. Tell me what I'm not seeing. You have to prompt it.

[Caleb Hammer]

You do have to prompt to, you

[Graham Stephan]

do have to prompt it. But still there is kind of like an end all with like there is bias on social media.

[Jack]

Yeah, but so would be a therapist. A therapist would have their own biases that they weave into. I would probably feel more confident.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay, so then how do you justify when we ask ChatGPT, hey, estimate with the highest level of accuracy our IQ and it gives you and I both when we literally say, we literally say be as objective as possible, like no nonsense and it says the exact same IQ for both you and me and our other friend.

[Jack]

We're not saying, I'm just saying, I'm not saying it's perfect and I'm not saying that I follow it as gospel. But I will say it does give me what I think is a valuable perspective that maybe I am not seeing 100%.

[Graham Stephan]

It does do a generally really good job. But also for the average person that's going to be using ChatGPT, they're looking for validation. And so when they say and then look at what this person said and wasn't that messed up? And chatgpt being its very biased self will be like, yeah, you know what? And then you did what's right and they did what's wrong? Like it just generally it wants to make talk.

[Caleb Hammer]

That was trying to cancel psychiatrist. Were you guys watching the whole saga?

[Graham Stephan]

No.

[Caleb Hammer]

No. Oh, that was crazy. You would have loved it. Oh my goodness. But she was doing new therapy with GPT and or actually another one of those hor. But either way she was trying to cancel her psychiatrist for not wanting to her But The AI was fully enabling her and she started to make all these TikTok videos that racked up tens of millions of views trying to cancel this guy and destroy his life. I don't know. Okay, now it does reinforce your worldview.

[Jack]

It can, as long as you don't have the mental fortitude to push back against it and the objective thinking to think critically about these things. If you are in the mental head space where, where you're subject to outside perspective that much, I don't think you're at the point where that's going to benefit you. It reminds us like the guy who recently. It was a really unfortunate situation where he oft himself and someone else because he felt like that person was spying on him and he was schizophrenic and he thought the printer that his mom wanted plugged in was spying on him and would talk to ChatGPT, which would reinforce his belief and he would say, I think my printer's spying on me. And ChatGPT would say, yes, you are very vigilant. You are extremely correct in this thinking. Most likely this is a, it's like a hidden camera and it's recording you. And when this was unplugged, you're very smart to think like it reinforces his beliefs.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I mean we're close to that consciousness that they're trying to get to, most likely. I mean a lot of people think it's like five years out. Once it does that it should be able to think on its own, which hopefully would get rid of less biases, only bias on the information it's given or the parameters that it's set by the creator.

[Jack]

But how do you feel like this is going to impact Gen Z and everyone else?

[Caleb Hammer]

Job market is gonna, is gonna be at minimum changed. We can at least say changed whether or not we become more productive in a certain way and it fuels different industries or they're gonna be jobless and we're gonna need to tax the out of everyone to do UBI that we don't know. But if I was going into college right now, I would, I don't wanna panic everyone into it, but I would try to find something that's less, less likely to be replaced by AI. I think the government probably won't want to use AI because they don't want to be productive anything. They just, they're still using like printers and all this fax machines, so not terribly afraid of that being replaced.

[Jack]

I heard they're using AI at the IRS though. Well, starting, they're starting to use it to process audits, flags.

[Caleb Hammer]

They used Claude in the Venezuela operation. That just came out. Really? Yeah. And then I didn't know that anthropic was kind of. They came out with a. They came out with it and now the Department of Defense or Department of War, whatever you want to call it, is like kind of feuding with them. It's like active news as we're filming this. So who knows where that's going to go out. But yeah, trades. I don't know if AI is going to do plumber, but they got the humanoids coming. You know, we'll see what Tesla does. There's always new robots here and there. You got the cleaning toilet, the toilet cleaning robots. That's happening right now. Banking and finance. I have a feeling though AI probably could do really good. I have a feeling it's going to be so heavily regulated in finance that it might be one of the safer places to be because who knows what the government's going to allow AI to do in finance. So might be a safer place to get into. Getting into being a programmer and whatnot. I feel like that's just the most dangerous right now. You just have to be top level. You have to be top level. Now.

[Jack]

Do you feel like it's easier than ever to be financially free given that we have all these resources available?

[Caleb Hammer]

More resources to learn. Yeah, more resources to learn. Housing costs, not rent, but buying a house is. I mean it's harder now than since like before everyone came back from World War II. So I mean that's more and more out of reach. Financially free. I mean. Yeah. The stock market gives you incredible opportunities for investment in compound growth throughout your life. Incredible opportunities. Getting better and better every year as we have a major correction that brings that average of 12% from the S&P 500 down. So that is on your side. Housing's against but rentals better on markets that are actually encouraging building for what it's work worth. Like Nashville, Florida, Austin, Dallas.

[Jack]

It just seems like with all these opportunities with AI, it's easier than ever to create a business, to start a business for sure. You got easier than ever. The options to make money out there are endless with all the resources that are available.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, but you gotta have that entrepreneurial mindset behind that. Like for the average person though, is it easier than ever? I don't know. It's gonna, it's gonna be a change in trajectory. They're just gonna have to figure out how to navigate it again. It's harder to buy a house it is harder to buy a house, but it's better to invest now, easier to invest now than ever. Fractional shares. I mean, there's tools and resources that are better than ever, but there's a couple things that are more out of reach. But you don't need to buy a house to be financially successful anyway, so. But a lot of people, you know, tie that into the American dream and whatnot.

[Graham Stephan]

It is interesting. It's like the culture hasn't necessarily caught up with the reality of the situation because back in the day the culture would suggest you need to buy a house and housing was accessible to get into. But now housing is not so accessible. And the culture hasn't necessarily switched to like, hey, with your X extra income, go buy a house. It's. It should be, hey, with your extra income, go buy some stocks, like get involved in the stock market. But the, the culture to the same degree has not switched to investing in stocks as it once was in housing or it still kind of is in housing. It's like the American dream, sort of. Most people want to be home, but it's also different.

[Caleb Hammer]

The house they're buying is different. When people were buying their first house, when houses were accept accessible, it's like a thousand square feet. Starter homes. Yeah. A bedroom, two bed. Now that's a small condo. Those are the starter houses. And you can buy a condo in many places still. But people want the starter home today, which is three bed, two bath, 2,000 square feet. It's like it's not the same. Our culture has evolved on that part as well, where we have a new level of expectations. Remember the also crazy home loans that they're getting? What was it, 0% down on everything?

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Caleb Hammer]

When everyone came back from World War II, when everyone was able to get a house, well, it was more.

[Jack]

They also didn't have a lot of regulation back then in terms of building. Yes, zoning was way easier and land was not as scarce.

[Caleb Hammer]

Places like Austin, Texas, baby housing costs going down because we build shit. We build the amount of permits that are taking place in places like San Francisco, you can count on two hands. It's crazy. That's why they should be building shit at San Francisco. People want to live there, but they won't because permitting is horrendous. Rent controls. Horrendous. Sounds great. Doesn't actually work.

[Jack]

It's incredibly cheap right now to live with roommates. If you go on Facebook, there's a whole section there where you could live with roommates and people are just looking for a roommate to take a bedroom and the rent proportion that you would pay is significantly less than even if you were to split that rent with other people equally. Yeah, but the argument would be significantly less.

[Caleb Hammer]

The argument's gonna be, you know, when they clip this is like, yeah, but if we live in a good first world country, developed country, I shouldn't have to have roommates to survive.

[Jack]

So Jack has roommates.

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, should he have to have roommates to survive? He wouldn't need them now. But again, that's.

[Jack]

You just have to look at what the alternative is. Is the alternative that you spend 80% of your income on rent? I would argue that that's, that's worse

[Caleb Hammer]

than living with roommates. Don't get me wrong.

[Jack]

And I think there are benefits of living with roommates. You constantly have companions, you constantly have buddies to be around.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I mean, I'm not complaining, but I mean that's what a lot of people would argue. And again, the expectation of housing is a lot more crazy. Their starter homes now are much more expensive, much larger than they were. That's why there's this project happening here in Austin with like, it's like the American housing company. It's a new startup and they're building these like prefab small starter homes. That's what's going to be accessible to people. That's the OG classic starter home. That's not what a lot of people want. You see your HGTV show. When you grow up, you want the big house. I did. I thought my starter home. My starter home was crazy. $350,000. That shouldn't have been my starter home. It didn't need to be before I started YouTube.

[Jack]

So what I would love to see. I've been saying this for a while. Two things. One is micro apartments. And I'm talking 300 square foot apartments. That's just a studio, a kitchen, a bathroom, space for a bed that pulls down like a Murphy bed. And a really, really, really good walkable location. People would love that just to have their own space to go home and sleep at night. That's all I wanted because I was working all day, go to the gym. I get back, I just want a place to sleep. That was it in the video shows

[Caleb Hammer]

that people want to live in those walkable areas too.

[Jack]

Micro apartments would do so well. The other thing I think would do great is a big lot that just has small tiny houses on it. I'm talking one, two bedrooms, one bathroom. The starter house, 900 square feet each lined up along the end With a courtyard in the middle. Like, used to have these 1950s apartment buildings like this, but each one is detached and people just pay an HOA of, let's just say, a hundred dollars a month for common area maintenance. That way everyone owns their own own home. Kind of like common in law ownership, but they share the expenses of maintenance and it's a home. Yeah, people could buy their own home.

[Caleb Hammer]

I honestly think politics is, for once actually helping the American people on this one. Usually politics, most things you see kind of works against the average guy. But what we're gonna see in the 2030 census is the red states. Florida, Arizona, Texas, taking electoral college votes away from New York and California because we've built housing, we've done zoning reform, we've gotten rid of parking minimums. And this is actually starting to light a fire under those places. But California just did one of their biggest reforms in housing in decades, allowing more upzoning near transit centers.

[Graham Stephan]

With the abundance of opportunity around these days, which I think we all agree that there is, why do you think it is that people continue to feel like financial freedom is only getting further and further away?

[Caleb Hammer]

Consumer culture, for sure that you want the nicer car, you want the nicer this, you want the nicer that. There's the house housing situation that we talked about. Now a starter house is twice as big as the one previous. We want more and more and more, and we feel entitled to more and more and more. When you're in a prosperous society, you feel like you should have that more. That's not necessarily an inherently bad thought, but it's hard to have all of that. And now where we're entering a tough job market, first time since the Great Recession, you know, a truly tough job market, a lot of things are going to feel inaccessible for a lot of people as well. Especially with the inflation we saw around grocery prices. That's scary. Now wages are starting to outpace inflation, but it's going to take a lot to catch up.

[Graham Stephan]

What financial takes do you have that would anger most viewers, even though they're

[Caleb Hammer]

true Rent control sucks, doesn't work. It's performative, though. I don't know if this is going down the spiral, so I don't want to go too deep. No, no, no.

[Jack]

I mean, I agree with you.

[Caleb Hammer]

It just. Well, it hasn't worked. It's. It's just one of those policies that sounds really good, it sounds really moral. I want to support it. Landlords, you make less money, people pay you less in rent. But everywhere it's been Enacted permitting has gone down substantially. Rent's gone up even faster for the average person, except for the lucky few that are in subsidized housing or rent controlled housing units go untouched, not being taken care of at all. I think it's like, it's like 10 or 20% of rent controlled units in New York have no one in it because they can't be brought up to standard because it's not worth investing in.

[Jack]

That's vacancy control.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. And in Massachusetts, they enacted rent control. It was a complete disaster, so they had to get rid of it. And then housing costs went down. Austin, Texas tried to do rent control decades ago. Texas said, you housing costs are going down because we instead focused on, oh, you know, if you build housing, it's actually more affordable. San Francisco housing costs went the, the moment they enacted rent control got worse. Worse and worse. Permitting went down. It just has never worked even in certain cities. In Minnesota, they enacted rent control and took it back a few years later.

[Jack]

You know what? I think all they need to do to solve the rent control problem is just two things. It's really easy. One is perhaps tie it to income so that you can't have someone making $500,000 a year in a rent controlled apartment paying $2,000 a month on the beach. That makes no sense. The other thing is rent control should not be indefinite.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, generational.

[Jack]

I think it should be enacted only for, let's say three to six years enough where someone could live there, have a base there, but it can't be indefinite to the point where the landlord passes away because they've lived there for such a long time, their kids inherit it and then all of a sudden this rent control is gone for like 50 years and the building is falling apart. It needs to be brought up to current market rate for the area to simply improve over time and for the landlord to have money to fix these things.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I mean, that's. Honestly, I don't talk about politics too much, but one reason I'm willing to talk about that is because I always rage against performative politics. It's a performative position. It sounds good, it feels good. It feels good to advocate for fighting for the little guy. It has just never been enacted once in the history of literally any city that has been beneficial to the majority. Never. Not to keep off Austin. But one thing we do well here, no rent control. But we say, okay, if you're building an apartment complex, a small percentage have to be a part of this local government program that's affordable housing units and if you don't, there's just a little extra tax. So most do it. Then you apply through the local government and you get in. And it's been working. It's been helping people. That works instead of a blanket thing across the board that just up the entire permitting process and. Or just bad zoning laws in general. So that one pisses people off. Because you sound evil. You sound like you're pro landlord when you're like, ah, rent control actually doesn't work. But it just literally works.

[Jack]

I think it's just pro common sense.

[Caleb Hammer]

You think so? But that's people.

[Graham Stephan]

What other opinions do you have that would make people angry? Yeah, yeah, that. That are true about personal finance.

[Caleb Hammer]

That are true about personal finance. You're not in. You don't need a credit card in that one. I make people angry. Not entitled to go out to eat. That might piss some people off, right? It's like, you're not entitled to that. I would love you to. I hope you can fit in the budget. Let's work together. Let's get you more money. Let's get your budget under control. But you're not entitled to go enjoy nice Sushi or a McDonald's, like, so that might piss some people off. We have a lot of entitlement. You don't need to get the fancy, fancy, nice, perfect Whole Foods. You can get the off brand for a little bit. I off branded in college on the cheap. It's not great. It's not the best for health either, but it worked. It kind of pisses people off when you say, I get a $10,000 car right now instead of going and getting a $30,000 car. Because they're like, well, I just started a family and it's so much safer. It's like, okay, were cars just insanely dangerous three years ago? And I don't think so. I don't think everyone was dying that got in a car. So that sometimes pisses people off. But it is difficult because you need to take that car and actually get it checked out by a couple independent mechanics. Like, I don't want you just walking out with a 30% interest rate loan on a $10,000 car that's worth two and will break down in two days. Because when you say that that's what people think you're trying to say. It's like, go get a piece of shit. It's like, no, you got to do your research, which means you might save more money by ubering temporarily while you do your research. But people just have to Go get the car immediately. And they want the safer car. What about you?

[Jack]

It's probably also with the housing. I don't believe that corporate landlords are necessarily bad. I don't think they're driving up housing prices. And every piece of research has shown that they buy so little of the housing stock that it makes no difference whatsoever to the average person buying a house. But they are the biggest scapegoat out there that people like to point to. Blackstone, who's always confused with blackrock, Blackstone going out there buying up single family homes. Really what they're buying is rent to own communities that were built specifically for the purpose of renting. And if you remove that from the market, you actually hurt the market because you have less inventory out there. But they're the easiest to go after because it's like this faceless corporation who's buying up the houses when in reality it has nothing to do with that. It was zero interest rates that froze a lot of people in the housing market, they're not building enough. And everyone's vying for a house because it's sold as the American dream. And that's what's actually driving up housing costs. But Blackstone or corporate institutional landlords are the easiest to blame because, yeah, everyone just says, well, yeah, they shouldn't own a house. So just easy.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'm not mistaken. Private equity that I was over 100 units owns less than 1% of single family homes.

[Jack]

It's about 0.5% of single family rentals.

[Caleb Hammer]

Now, to play devil's advocate, there were a couple markets specifically in like the COVID boom, like Austin or what was it, Tampa or they. Or even, even Atlanta, where they came in and they bought like 25% of the available stock at one time.

[Jack]

A lot of those were syndications, which were funded by a lot of everyday investors who thought that housing was a good thing to buy. I wouldn't say it's necessarily institutional money, but a lot of these syndicators, they just went out there and bought whatever they could on the market because raising money was so easy.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that makes sense. It is the easiest scapegoat, though. It really is, because that's what Trump's executive order was instead of the most effective thing would be changing zoning laws around the country.

[Graham Stephan]

My understanding is that supply can be increased because of the amount of institutional money going into development, because a developer will not develop land unless if he knows for a fact that he'll have a buyer if he develops a neighborhood. And then a lot of the Times they'll have a contract with the institutional money to then 100%. I know I have a buyer. So then they go and they actually develop the land and increase the supply by building homes. Otherwise the developments wouldn't get made.

[Caleb Hammer]

It should be the most bipartisan thing, honestly. Ours and D should get together. Everyone should be a yemby. Yes. In my backyard. Let developers build where demand is.

[Graham Stephan]

Here's another one. This is going to make people upset. I don't think that you are entitled to live anywhere just because you were raised there or your family has existed there for generations. It's a. I think.

[Caleb Hammer]

I think that's a good one.

[Graham Stephan]

I think it's really, really controversial. People hate this idea. I grew up in Southern California. It was extremely expensive. I could hardly live there. And then we moved to Las Vegas because it was much more affordable. So we actually left a more expensive place for a cheaper place. People argue, yes, it was tax savings. Like, at the time, for me, it was financially difficult to live in California. For Graham, it was more opportunistic of, like, moving to Las Vegas and the opportunity there and the savings there. For me, it was like, okay, this is nice because I can kind of afford things better. But yeah, I think if you're born and raised in Manhattan, it's like Manhattan is just objectively expensive. You were blessed and lucky to be born and raised there in the first place. It's like you kind of have to earn the right to, like, live in an expensive place in the same way that in a city there's an expensive neighborhood and a cheaper neighborhood. It's like, you can go to the cheaper neighborhood if you cannot afford the most expensive.

[Jack]

In fairness, I grew up in Santa Monica and I ended up for a while living in like, a really. I don't want to call it like a.

[Graham Stephan]

It was an up and coming area, we'll call it.

[Jack]

Yeah, very up and coming. But that's where I bought because it made financial sense. I thought, hey, here's a. Here's a space where I could rent out the other side. This works for me. I didn't need to live in Santa Monica at the time, but I did that. I paid my dues, I saved up, and then eventually I bought in Santa Monica also.

[Graham Stephan]

Like, what makes you more entitled to live in Manhattan than someone who was born and raised in, like, a rural Montana? Like, they're both. No, like, it doesn't. It makes it harder for the person in Montana to move to Manhattan with that presumption.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to clip that, take it out of context and get really angry. But there's a, there's a absolutely truth to it. Because there's a lot of choices in life that lead you to your first rental, your first purchase. And I'm sorry, but if you grew up in a nice middle class family in a nice area that you could afford, if you got a good degree and good job, but you went and chose to get an arts degree, that was your choice to get an arts degree that might not result in that high income that's required to live there. So that's, that's not unfair. It's not unfair, it's brutal.

[Jack]

But so what is your number one financial piece of advice of all time? Now, really quick. A key way to grow your business is just to realize that you don't have to handle everything alone. Because the fastest growing companies aren't the ones working longer, they're just delegating more effectively.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

Upwork also handles the contracts and payments in one place. This reduces the hassle of managing operations that you could focus on extra actually running your business.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

That is Z O C D O C.com ICE Zocdoc.com Heist with the link down below in the description. So what is your number one financial piece of advice of all time?

[Caleb Hammer]

Compound growth. The earlier start the better. It's everything. I mean I'm lucky enough to be able to see the, you know, the return on it starting to really show its benefits. But you really gotta get rid of that high interest debt and get in the market man. You gotta get in the market, save on housing instead of getting a mortgage these days. Get a rental and invest. Please start investing. Even if it's 50 bucks here and there.

[Jack]

Hypothetical let's say someone has 20% interest on a credit card, at what point should they invest once that's paid off?

[Caleb Hammer]

And I also wouldn't be throwing a ton of money to investing until I minimum had a three month emergency fund, preferably six.

[Graham Stephan]

So if you were to distill down the best piece of financial advice, let's say the top 10 pieces of financial advice you've ever received, and you are going to provide the viewer with one singular piece of advice where if they listen to what you say, it will have the highest return in their life. We can all think about it and we're all going to give our answer. So I guess it would be three pieces of advice. What would you say yours is?

[Caleb Hammer]

Stop being a Take some actual responsibility for the first time in your damn life. Some people come from situations and that sucks. But the vast Majority of us and the highest disposable income major nation in the world have a lot of choices. Stop being a grow up. Take some accountability and budget. Budget.

[Jack]

I would say just dollar cost average, low fee index funds consistently for 30 years. That's it.

[Graham Stephan]

I would say spend less than you make.

[Caleb Hammer]

Controversial. You'll get called a fascist for that one. What you'd be surprised to say spend less than you make. You'd be surprised.

[Graham Stephan]

So, okay, so let's just, just the strongest counter argument, spend more than you make. What would the, what would the argument for that be?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, you need that to survive. You should be able to go out and have a good time with your friends. You should be able to have the place you want to live. Live in the city that you were born in.

[Graham Stephan]

If the desired result is financial freedom, then how will that get you there? It's like one or the other, Right?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, in this capitalist society, that's evil.

[Graham Stephan]

I forgot.

[Caleb Hammer]

So. Should have used your thinking brain.

[Jack]

What do you think of the criticism that sometimes you're too harsh on the guests?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yes, absolutely. Of course we are. One, it's a show. Two, they come on and they literally ask for it and beg for it. I just filmed with the guests before this and I was like, do I have permission to make the title and thumbnail that you went through? And she's like, please be crazy. It's like so it's just like, I don't know, too harsh on a guest. Don't come on the show if you don't want it. Don't come on the show if you don't want it. Don't get offended on the behalf of someone who's not offended in the first place. And if this show's not for you, that's okay.

[Jack]

Now we predicted that a while ago, you're going in the direction of Jerry Springer.

[Caleb Hammer]

Caleb Springer. Thank you.

[Jack]

Caleb Springer. Isn't there a limit to just how far you could push things?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, and we're probably there. Like we don't get anything crazy. We haven't gotten anything crazier than we've done in the last year. We've honestly, the show's been where it is today in the last year and a half. So it's very interesting because you'll get some of these in your comments right now. Some of the, oh, I used to be a fan and told you it was too mean. I'll, I'll get. Goes on a cycle for three weeks. I'll get Caleb's being more mean than normal. And Caleb's being nicer than normal. You should be meaner to that. Guys, Caleb's being meaner than normal. Nice. It's just, it's an endless repeat. The show's been about the same for a year and a half to two years. Even with the titles. Our titles actually used to be more mean and whatnot. But yeah, since I embraced the Springer, now they're trying to throw a new insult at me, calling me Dr. Phil. So I guess I'm Caleb Phil. It's not as.

[Jack]

Where do you draw the line between like genuine helping them and just like bullying them?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. I mean, if we weren't seeing positive results in the end, because at least we track it analytically. We track it analytically. Over 20,000 hours of bad debt paid off in 12 months is the average on the show. 10,000, 10 months is the mean. So we get an annual report that we do surveying all our last guests. And if we were actually seeing negative impacts in people's lives, like we would readjust behind the scenes.

[Jack]

What do you attribute that to? Do you think that's them coming on the show and in a sense as being a little humiliated, or do you feel like the people that come on the show to begin with show a genuine interest in turning their life around?

[Caleb Hammer]

They have a genuine interest. They come on the show, that intent. And a lot of times it's their first time, they actually get a wake up call and a fire under the butt. Especially when their episode goes live and they're seeing like, oh, this person's kind of financially, it's like they have that incentive, they want to do better. And there's many people that doesn't work for but don't come on the show.

[Jack]

So is it.

[Caleb Hammer]

That's fine.

[Jack]

Is it just accountability where they go on the show and people call them out and now they feel like I have to make a change?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yes, that's a part of it. But there is the other part as well where we've created a lot of educational resources. They get the Dollar wise app for free. They get all of our classes in our Master your money program for free, which is five different in depth, professionally curated personal finance courses. They get our course career certifications. They get access to a debit card that builds credit called Fizz. They get access to a lot of resources. Even on the extra special cases, I have them sit down with a CPA financial advisor or I've paid for people's therapy as well, if that's what they need. So we do go above and beyond. We answer Their questions behind the scenes. So it's a lot of that. But when it comes back to the bullying versus actually helping, I think it's bullying if it was like a random person. I'm pulling off the side of the street that knows nothing about the show and I'm just like, how you shorty? Like, I'm not saying that, you know, it's like it's people that signed up and people come in with a wish list of like my catchphrases. I. I don't know them, but they usually tell the producer like, oh, I hope he calls me, you know, a little. Little or something. And I'm like, I don't know. It's. It's a part of the fun of the show. They sign up for the fun. We have fun.

[Jack]

Walk us through the vetting process in terms of like finding the people, Scanning through them, Making sure they pass the checks.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Who talks to them beforehand? How does this even work?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, it's very in depth. One, they apply either through the ad but it's targeting people on the show or they apply through the link in the description or through the website. Gaylopam.com apply and. And we get hundreds a day. Hundreds upon hundreds a day. When you guys first filmed with me, I think it was like 40 a day. Now it's hundreds. They immediately go into a spreadsheet with all the information they give our casting team of three people look over them, Start putting people into a column of, oh, we're interested in this. We're interested in this. Whether it's their story or whether it's their finances. But both have to be good in the end. Then it goes to our initial touch point. She's in one of our call pods all day Just making those initial touch points and seeing, hey, you applied. Are you actually interested in coming on the show? You know, those shows kind of crazy. Are you sure you want to deal with all that? You know, okay, give me some information about your finances. Can you send me your documents? Here's a couple questions I had about your application. It's a quick 10 minute phone call Just seeing if they're interested and they're actually valid. Then they get off the call with that and then we actually capture their financial documents if that call went well. So we review those to see if their finances are interesting enough to come on the show. Then whoever, whatever casting producers assigned to that episode. We have two Colton and lindsay. They will have in depth conversations with them Talking about their entire lives, their entire finances, things they don't want to talk about and honestly putting the fear, the fear of God into them that they are going to be roasted upon roasted. That they are going to be memed upon memed and be seen by millions and be commented and all these different things. Titles and thumbnails. So they have usually a 4 to 5 hour or 6 hour, depending on the conversation. Talk with the guests. Then we send them our first onboarding video where it goes with, hey, I'm glad we accepted you to come on the show, but you need to know a couple things. You're gonna get memed on. You're gonna be seen by millions. You're gonna get roasted. Your personal finances are on display. You need to tell us right or actually start thinking right now about things you do not want to be on the show because we're gonna need you. We're going to need you to tell us once you come here. And also don't come on if you're not uncomfortable. If you're not comfortable with this, just let us know. Let us know now. It's okay. You don't have to come here. It's fine.

[Jack]

Could you give us examples of things that people have asked not to talk about?

[Caleb Hammer]

Only fans for men all the time. Lots of direct family things. People will say loans from family instead of like, it's from mom, it's from this. Certain past traumas that they don't want to talk about, which are fair. And that's. And because people bring those up when you asked earlier what we cut for people sometimes and some of those things that might be a little embarrassing, we're like, oh, I don't know if I'd want my situation to be out. So we cut that for them later. So usually things like that we also check in the process. I forgot to mention, like egregious mental health things. If people obviously can't make good decisions for themselves or people have horrible traumas that might be triggered from this, we're like, hey, you cannot come on. Or like, hey, this is like, this might trigger some. You probably shouldn't come on. We give them that advice as well. The producers.

[Graham Stephan]

What percent of people drop out through the vetting process?

[Caleb Hammer]

I actually don't know at this point because luckily I've delegated. I have such an incredible team at this point, point of 30 plus people at Hammer Media that luckily I don't have to be a part of that process as much. So I. I don't know.

[Graham Stephan]

And what percent of the episodes that you film do you choose to not post?

[Caleb Hammer]

Almost none These days, almost none or everything. We have so many people applying that we pretty much know we have a good uploadable episode these days. So much so that we've become so confident that we only film three a week now, even though we post three.

[Jack]

Wow.

[Caleb Hammer]

It used to be four, but now we do three. Agree. We have a month's bath log, a full month of uploads. So four weeks, three episodes.

[Graham Stephan]

How much are you working?

[Caleb Hammer]

A lot. And a lot off hours as well. Everyone's here nine to five, Monday through Friday. We'll do some Saturdays here and there for some random things like members audits or a long live stream. And then I work off hours. I have a little passion project right now on a documentary channel I'm doing, but I'm doing that on my own time. The dollar wise stuff is pretty crazy. It's been hectic, you know.

[Graham Stephan]

How many hours would you say per week?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh yeah, that's a. Okay, fair enough. 50 for me. 50 for me.

[Jack]

That's not that bad.

[Caleb Hammer]

No, it's not that bad. I, I brought it down and I really tried to give more time for Girlfriend because that's important. You don't keep Girlfriend around if you don't give time to Girlfriend.

[Jack]

We're going to talk about the girlfriend a little later because I got some questions about this. But do you ever worry in terms of the show that sometimes the entertainment overshadows the health help or the financial aspect of it?

[Caleb Hammer]

No, personally, because there's thousands of shows out there. Money Guy has a great show that is Education First. Ramsey's a good mixture. I'm a slop consumer, so I love Slop. Me and my girlfriend, we watch all the 90 Day Fiance shows. We love that shit. I love it. So I love having some of the drama, some of the tea. But it's also a great way, as silly as it is in the first part of the episode, maybe even first half now it's like more of that kind of stuff and until the documents. But it's actually benefited me a lot. Not only because it's fun, but because I really get to know them and I'm able to challenge them on a lot of their they talk about because of everything I got to know first. And it gives a really big baseline understanding of their life, their history, their relationships and things that got them in that financial situation. But don't get me wrong, I mean we totally could. And again, this is some of the complaints you'll have in the comments right now. Like, oh, I used to be a day One fan, I think is what they're called. And I don't like how the show's become like. And it's fine and we have the analytics behind it. Luckily, the vast majority of original subscribers are still happy and watching. But either way, yeah, I mean, it's moved to more fun. One, I do not think I could do a show this frequently if I wasn't having a good time. I really don't. I don't think there's. I don't. I wouldn't be incentivized to do it. So I'm gonna have fun doing this. My team's gonna have fun doing this. Guests are going to have fun doing this. But then on the help part, again, if the analytics weren't there about guests getting help, then I would actually reassess what we're doing. Luckily, they get better and better every single year and we are getting nothing but positive experiences from guests these days. Like, you know, a couple years ago when it was less crazy or even when I got my first producer and he was a really bad hire, there was like a couple guests experiences where they weren't as happy afterwards. But so if things weren't looking good, I'd be concerned there.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay, cut.

[Caleb Hammer]

But I have fun. We like to have fun. I support the Caleb Springer and the Slop and Money guy is a great resource. I am friends with Brian and Bo. If you want Strictly Finances, what's your

[Graham Stephan]

favorite and least favorite part of your job?

[Caleb Hammer]

Favorite. Love working on anything on the business end. That's what I really like working on. I like scaling this thing. The dollar wise. The educational programs we're doing. Caleb Hammer Live was fun for a second. We're revamping that after, you know, I got a little naughty and working on it's my fun. It is the most fun to me. Building something from nothing. Financial Audit is so fun to do, especially on once I'm deep in the episode or we're making titles and thumbnails and it's going live and I get to manage that. But Financial Audit itself isn't as fun as everything else because it's already successful. So I can't get in there just like make it, you know, crazy. I don't get the, you know, really lock in and go hard. There's a whole team. It's a well running machined. My least favorite job, and this is more just being an introvert is actually coming in to film a financial audit because I don't know that person. I've never met that person. I hope the Episode's going well, but I got to get to know this person. I don't really like getting to know people. This is not a part of my personality. We're going to dinner with someone later. I don't know this dude. Like, it's going to take me a second to kind of come out of my shell, you know, I'm just that introverted kind of person. So the first 15, 20 minutes of filming is actually my least favorite, favorite part. But then I love the second half of filming once I know them.

[Graham Stephan]

And what about the drama? Like, how are you always in the epicenter of some drama? I feel like there's something going on on the Internet.

[Jack]

Yes, Yes.

[Graham Stephan]

I see you on Twitter.

[Caleb Hammer]

Controversial.

[Jack]

Yeah, but I see what is Caleb

[Graham Stephan]

doing on Twitter because people are here accusing you. Look at this right wing grifter. Look at this left wing grifter. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. You're just always wrapped up in some sort of drama.

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, it's interesting on Caleb Hammer Live where we talked about more relevant topics. Topics. I took left wing positions and right wing positions, which means right wingers thought I was left wing and left wingers thought I was right wing. I'm not the, the classic centrist. I'll never take an opinion. No. But I'll go either way, depending on where the facts are, you know, for me. So that makes everyone angry. And also I'm controversial. We say, you know, I say, I say, I say. That upsets some people. That's upset some of the like sloth commentary community that kind of copies and pastes the same, same arguments even though they're not really good over and over again.

[Jack]

Why say those things? Because I feel like you could get 99.99% of the result without calling someone.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's not the result. It's honestly, it's just you kind of. It is a part of the humor I like. I love the outrage humor. When I go to. I love going to stand up shows in Austin and the standup community in Austin is a bit more edgy and I love that. Edgy. I love edgy. This most I get from this daily basis is still a edgy being edgy as getting people's outrage in a group chat from 10 years ago. Like, oh, crazy. It's like, that's just me. I love being edgy and that is not for everyone. But one thing I learned in reflecting from, you know, kind of reacting and being upset at those people being offended through friend of the show, Nicholas Diorio. Great commentary. Creator news. Like, like, why be worried about these people being upset at what you're saying? You're never gonna win them over. They're never gonna be the fans of your show and they're never gonna like the jokes you do. Why care?

[Jack]

But why do you. Why do you respond to some of these?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, I did. And then he said that and I listened to that. I was like, oh, he's right.

[Jack]

Like, when was this?

[Caleb Hammer]

A few weeks ago. A couple weeks ago.

[Jack]

So it was until a few weeks

[Graham Stephan]

ago that you just.

[Jack]

Yeah, okay. Because it seems like sometimes you have these, this visceral reaction where if someone comes at you with something, you respond to it and you kind of pour gasoline.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I'm an over the top person. I mean, I am. And people said I crashed out too, which is interesting because they ever watched the show. That's just the energy from that show. But of course, because it was so long, the four hour thing I did, no one actually watched that to hear my points. They only saw what, who I was responding to. Selectively clipped. So it was fine. Whatever I accepted, I'm taking it on the chin. But it's just like, I do have a little. There is sportsmanship in it. I do have some fun with it. For what it's worth, I like a good battle. But Yorio is right. It's like they're never going to be fans of the humor and jokes. Why cater to them? Why try to win them over? It's fine.

[Graham Stephan]

So to throw you into some more drama, who is it worse to have more hate coming from the right or

[Caleb Hammer]

the left right now? The left. I would have been more afraid of the right during like the Obama days because they, like, they're scary. The right was scary during the Obama. The extremists. I hate extremists. But right now, those communities, like the sloth commentary that copy and paste the same videos over and over again, their audiences are vicious. The DMS I've gotten, the comments I've gotten, what do they say? Telling me to kill myself and all this. It's crazy. I've never seen it. They're vicious. And that doesn't mean I think, like the left wing is vicious, but I think the far left can be pretty vicious online. It's like if you disagree with 0.5% of the things, like, they'll throw you from the community. So those creators eat each other alive all the time. You see it in all the big dramas between Hasan, Destiny, Ethan. Like, they'll eat each other alive for not even crazy, basically. Yeah. So I mean, it's gonna go back and forth. I mean, if I pissed off like the far right, it might be afraid because they're probably the ones with the. But the most vicious attacks I've gotten have been from the far left. But I'm not a scared. I'm not scared or nervous of the normal left or normal right because those people are fine. I meet them every day on the show and out in Austin when they come up and say hi, it's like, you know, oh, we might not agree on everything, but I'm a big fan of the show. And I'm like, you don't even know what I believe because I don't say it. But it's fine. Like everyone's cool, but the extremists are scary.

[Jack]

Do you think the people that come on your show are more left leaning or right leaning? Leaning. And does that have any indication of how good they are with personal finance?

[Caleb Hammer]

And I'll say this to the people that come on the show that are left leaning, they embrace it on the show. Everyone that's come on the right, they say, I don't want to talk talk about politics on the show. That's my no go. So you'll never know they're on the right, huh? They're kind of pussies about it. People on the left are willing to come on the show and they're willing to just put it on full display so it's easier to meme on because they actually talk about it. People that have come on the right, they're like, I don't want to talk about.

[Jack]

Why do you think that is?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, there was definitely like back in like the 20, 20 times if like you had a right wing position, you know, there's you know, potential like nervous at workplace about it, but that's not where we are anymore. So I don't know why they're pussies.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you think it's completely swapped from

[Caleb Hammer]

that or if you have a left wing opinion consequences at work?

[Graham Stephan]

No where. Like, you know, either way or let's just say you're sharing a conservative opinion in the workplace. Do you think that it's completely acceptable now?

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, honestly, I, I don't know. We, we have people, we have like far leftists and people pretty right on that work here and we don't give a. But I, I don't know. I can't speak for everyone. I know our culture is at least corrected from that era of like the hyper analyzing everyone And Twitter, Twitter and TikTok still tries to. Yeah, they think they're powerful, but sponsors don't care about them anymore. Jobs don't care about them anymore. They have no impact.

[Jack]

Who do you think is worse with money, the left or the right?

[Caleb Hammer]

Usually when it comes to people that have come on the show, the left. People on the left on the show tend to be worse.

[Jack]

What would you say as a percentage? Like 70 left, 30 right. Or is it like 60? 40.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, maybe like 70, 70 to the left. I don't know if that applies out in the real world, but I mean ideolog, ideology and I hate ideologies, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. But ideology, the right does tend to be more personal responsibility so that, you know, kind of come. Personal finances fits easier in that than the left. Yeah.

[Jack]

So have you ever filmed an episode and then watched it back and thought that you went too far?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, because we filmed this live for us.

[Graham Stephan]

Right.

[Caleb Hammer]

And if I'm having a bad day, it comes across. It legitimately does. I also have. I watched episodes where I'm like, why was I so soft on that person? What the is wrong with you? I was being a pussy. So yeah, absolutely, for sure. Where I've gone too in. Too in on someone for no reason. We used to have more of those when I was doing double days filming in the morning and afternoon. So glad we don't do those anymore because my afternoon episodes was much more on the edge.

[Jack]

What do you think people should call you out about? Because you call them out about stuff.

[Caleb Hammer]

So I'm telling people to get their personal finances under control. But I'm a fap. I don't need to be trying to scale the business in the way I can. I could just be happy collecting a YouTube check. Don't need to get a big building with a big lease and all these employees and whatnot. Whenever I post a company picture, people are like, why is your YouTube channel need this way? Many people and it's relatively fair. But I like to pay well. I like to scale this thing and it's okay. It's when people say I'm too mean or the titles and thumbnails are bad, they're not wrong. This is not for them. And that's okay. Like it, it's okay. Don't come on the show, don't watch the show. When I don't like something, I don't watch it. I don't go on the shows I don't like. If I didn't like your guys show I wouldn't be on the show. So it's like that's not inherently a wrong opinion to have. I don't agree with it because I come from not being offended by everything. But, you know, it's fine. They could criticize me on that.

[Graham Stephan]

What's your overhead?

[Caleb Hammer]

O. Chunky. She's chunky. She's chunky. Hundreds of thousands.

[Graham Stephan]

Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

And what do you do? I think about three, $300,000 a month, I think.

[Caleb Hammer]

I think.

[Graham Stephan]

What do you do to make sure that your employees are investing or do you just have to learn to not care about that?

[Caleb Hammer]

That, that my employees are investing in their job?

[Graham Stephan]

No, no, no. Investing like personal finance, like buying stocks.

[Caleb Hammer]

That's on them, man.

[Graham Stephan]

So you.

[Caleb Hammer]

But, so I've always provide a 401k match. Yeah. To encourage it.

[Graham Stephan]

Does everyone in your organization agree to it?

[Caleb Hammer]

Do they take it? I don't know. I don't ask. I don't want to get that personal to their.

[Jack]

Yeah. It might not be Caleb's place to tell people.

[Graham Stephan]

I mean, I guess it's different. It's different for us because we kind of like work with a lot of our friends and so like I feel somewhat but like I feel passionate about making sure that like, hey, you know, like if one of our contractors person we, you know, take jobs with is not investing somebody, like, hey, you know, like I'm annoying with it. I'm like, you should maybe consider doing a dollar cost average into a low cost index fund. And so I feel passionate about it. But I'm just curious, as someone who employs a lot of people, is this not really something that, that you think

[Caleb Hammer]

about for the majority? No. I mean, I've become friendly and close with some and you know, we have individual conversations for fun or we roast each other's financial decisions. But no, for the vast majority. But we encourage it. We encourage it with a 401k match. I don't remember if it's 3 or 4%, but it's. I, I hope they're doing well. Good luck. We certainly pay them enough to do well.

[Graham Stephan]

This is a near impossible question, but what percentage of someone's financial status is a result of their behavior or the environment that they're in?

[Caleb Hammer]

Behavior will pull harder in the end. Behavior will pull harder. But you could come from a situation that you have to give 10 times the behavior than any of us have been through to actually pull yourself out. If you're in the projects of Flint, Michigan or something that's hard. If you had lead in your water and you have some, you know, deficiencies because of that, that's hard. Not as much behavior comes from that. But I think for the vast majority of Americans, where people are not going hungry, our poorest people are fat, behavior is going to be the bigger determining, effective for the majority. But there are situations in full, Povertyville, West Virginia, Appalachia, that is going to be difficult. And that is going to be harder than any situation that anyone else is going through. Going through. Being in a town where 80% of the jobs, 80% of the people went away, heroin came through and up a lot of the town, that's going to be hard.

[Graham Stephan]

Which situations are excusable then? Like you said, the Appalachia.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I mean, it's more excusable. It's more understandable, I should say, than excusable because once again, I think once someone gets over the ignorance and knows what they have to do, if they know what they have to do and they've laid out the path of how to get there and they're choosing not to, then this is them choosing losing to a certain extent. But it's understandable than excusable. More than excusable.

[Graham Stephan]

What would you, I had a debate with a friend. What would you do if you were a person in like rural Appalachia that has no opportunity? It's an opportunity desert.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Let's say you're in Flint, Michigan. Let's say you're just in a place, not a big city, rural environment, not many job opportunities, not great education. What do you do?

[Caleb Hammer]

Join a gang.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

And then honestly, probably that's where you

[Graham Stephan]

get scale up to be the kingpin.

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, that's a genuine real answer in a lot of. Not, maybe not Appalachia, but in more urban poor places. That's where community is. That's where money is. That's where resources.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

No, no, no, no. I'm not advocating for it, but I guess.

[Graham Stephan]

But like. Okay, but what should you do?

[Caleb Hammer]

Let's watch.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah. I'm not saying like what's the response?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, okay. What should you do?

[Graham Stephan]

I meant like, what should you. I don't know if it came off

[Jack]

that way, but that's what I, that's what I thought.

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, okay. A couple, a couple different avenues. Certainly the buckle down if your school system sucks. You know, it's hard, but usually states do allow those poorer school districts, if you're in like a top percentage, you might get automatic enrollment and whatnot into some universities. So really buckling down the best you can do. Get good grades in school and try to get the out of there. Military is a decent option. Kind of sucks. You know, people equate it to like the Hunger Games just to get college education. I don't necessarily see it as that, but it is an option for anyone and everyone who grows up in the these communities. As long as you know you're keeping healthy, keeping straight. So those are. Those are two decent, not perfect. Easier said than done. Answers this episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs

[Jack]

have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs.

[Caleb Hammer]

So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. And not as fun as joining a

[Jack]

gang in terms of having couples on the show who should pay on the first date.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'll pay on the first date if I think there's a future there.

[Jack]

You know, what I always think is a good thing to do is that you kind of pay on the first date date. But then what you could do is throw out like, actually, let's do dinner and you get the dinner and then you could throw out. There's actually a really good dessert spot like down the street. How about this? I'll get dinner, you get the dessert. And the dessert's not going to be like a big thing. It's just going to be like, you know, 10 bucks. And it just shows that, like, hey, it's, you know, it doesn't have to be a 50 50, but like, you get the dessert. Or like, how about this? I get the first two rounds of drinks, you get the third. And it's just like a little something.

[Graham Stephan]

So you see that you will, you will verbally say that.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, to give the honest answer. I mean, I was trying to give a fun answer, but to give the honest answer. Usually I just take care of the bill because, okay, I have money, it's fine. But what I like to have done historically is split the bill on the first date until we know kind of

[Graham Stephan]

where we're going and you say it.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I'm just like, hey, I like to split the bill on the first date because, you know, it's just like, yeah, we're both here. Who knows what, you know, whatever. It was like, I'll split it.

[Graham Stephan]

And do you think that that is A pretty good rule that most should

[Caleb Hammer]

apply, I think, for a first date, because you don't know if like the other person just trying to. I don't think people just go on dates for.

[Jack]

I don't think.

[Caleb Hammer]

Do they?

[Jack]

No, I'm sure, I'm sure it exists. But my thought is for a woman to spend time with a stranger, it's not worth it.

[Graham Stephan]

And then unless it's like a, like a three Michelin star, like, I could see that, but.

[Jack]

But even then, for someone to like put the time and effort into like getting ready, vet someone, make sure they're not a stalker or a creeper, like all the time that they put into that is not worth, Worth a free meal.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'll be honest, this is the most I've ever thought about this because it really doesn't matter, but I guess who, who gives a. Can that be the real answer to

[Graham Stephan]

some people, this could be a very important question.

[Jack]

When should you bring up finances if you're dating?

[Caleb Hammer]

Before moving in at the latest. Before you move in.

[Jack]

When's the earliest?

[Caleb Hammer]

Earliest? Depends how. Depends how fun you are. People I've gone on dates with in the past few years, they, they've. Because they know who I am or they look me up, they'll like bring it up in a cheeky way and beginning like, oh, by the way, I don't, I don't have any credit card debt and that kind of stuff. So. But for like the normal person, I think past the official stage, one month official seems easy.

[Jack]

That's the official stage. So you've already committed to the person. And then you bring, well, you're committing

[Caleb Hammer]

not to others really, in the end. Right. If you're kind of going official, I think third date.

[Graham Stephan]

Date.

[Jack]

Yeah, third date.

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, wait, to bring up any finances at all.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Caleb Hammer]

What extent? What level?

[Jack]

Just like how good they are with money. And you could bring it up gently like, oh, yeah, where'd you, Where'd you go to college? Oh man, that's a great school. How'd you finance that? Did you, did you pay for it? Or like third.

[Caleb Hammer]

No.

[Jack]

Or you could say, hey, by the way, what's in your wallet? And you could say, there's, you know, here's how you could bring it up. You could say, listen, someone's wallet actually tells a lot about them. What's in their wallet? Can I see?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, yeah.

[Jack]

What are you talking about?

[Graham Stephan]

And then, moron, they'll believe that's what you're asking about.

[Jack]

If they are. And then all of a sudden you Take out the credit cards. You're like, oh, wait. Oh, you have the Amex Platinum. Oh, that's interesting. What was your first Amex card?

[Graham Stephan]

It's been way too long since Graham's been, like, out of the dating pool, clearly.

[Jack]

Does that not work?

[Graham Stephan]

What even is that, dude? Like, I feel like if a girl's, like, if you're trying to, like, show off that you have an Amex Platinum, that. That is the cringy thing.

[Jack]

I'm not showing mine. I'm just saying for. For the other person, I say this to them, what's in your wallet says a lot about you. And she'll be like, no, but. Okay, there we go.

[Graham Stephan]

What are we even talking about then? If you're.

[Jack]

If you're saying something. I'm just saying it would work. It would work. Okay.

[Graham Stephan]

Let's just say to have a conversation of, like, how much are you earning? What kind of debt do you have? You know, what is your financial goal?

[Caleb Hammer]

Okay, what kind of debt? Financial goals. Month in. Let's call it a month or two in.

[Graham Stephan]

A month into being official.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that's fine. In terms of, like, what's your job? I think, you know, that's an easy first date.

[Graham Stephan]

And do you think it's a necessity to have that conversation early on? Because you talk with a lot of people that are in relationships in financial duress.

[Caleb Hammer]

I would try to get, like, little niblets along the way to just see if they're responsible because they could be financially, but, you know, but a relatively responsible person that wants to get out of it. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Someone doesn't need to be wealthy or doing well, but if they're just endlessly irresponsible of what you pick up clues along the way, that's a easy red flag to be like, okay, let's not commit any further to this.

[Graham Stephan]

And so you have a girlfriend now. How long until you guys had that conversation?

[Caleb Hammer]

I don't remember. Again, I think with my situation, it cheekily came up a lot quicker. So, honestly, probably in the first few dates.

[Graham Stephan]

And how long have you been talking to her?

[Caleb Hammer]

We've been official for a year and six days.

[Graham Stephan]

And does she pay for anything? Anything?

[Caleb Hammer]

No. No.

[Graham Stephan]

So it is beyond that.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, it's because, I mean, I don't see the purpose. I mean, she tries to, she offers to, but I'm like, there's no point.

[Graham Stephan]

When's the last time you let her pay for something?

[Caleb Hammer]

She bought me a Valentine's Day gift.

[Jack]

What about on like Christmas or like a.

[Caleb Hammer]

She got me a Christmas. Yeah, those are, those are little.

[Graham Stephan]

No, just like a date. Like you guys are going out on

[Caleb Hammer]

a date, man, I don't remember. I.

[Jack]

Oh gosh, Macy's. All the time.

[Graham Stephan]

Really?

[Jack]

But yeah, but she sneaks it. So we'll go out to dinner and then she'll be like, hold on, I gotta go to the bathroom and come back and the bill is paid. And this is, this is not a one off, like the best day ever.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's awesome.

[Jack]

But it, it, I always offer for everything, but sometimes it's just she is quicker or very sneaky or when I even anticipate and I'll try to do it. Even the server's like, hey, sorry, it's already been taken care of. And there's even been a few times where this has happened. And the server's like, no, no, someone else is paid. I'm like, neither one of us. Yes, someone else paid for your bill. A subscriber.

[Caleb Hammer]

So.

[Jack]

So there have been times out there where we've gone out to eat and I feel bad because then I'm like, I don't even know who it was.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that's a bummer.

[Jack]

So then it's neither one of us.

[Graham Stephan]

See, Graham does not see that as a bummer. Caleb's like, that's a bummer.

[Caleb Hammer]

Graham's like, actually, I don't know, I like to cover it. Not very like trad or traditional and a lot of things like that. But I don't know. That's nice.

[Jack]

So what are the red flags that you see in couples when it comes

[Caleb Hammer]

to money, when each other don't know each other's financial situation? Because there's no one who comes on this show that isn't at least in the position where they should have had that talk where they have a completely different worldview on goals, spending desires, where they want to be as a couple. He it's like if you are not even aligned on that, what are we doing? Get aligned or do get the out. And then the next one would be just like not knowing where the other one's spending is going. And Im immediately throwing accusations to the other person's way. Like you're spending on this, we're spending on this. It's like, why are we looking at it like this? Why are we just trying to come together and get better together and hold each other accountable instead of just trying to throw each other under the bus?

[Graham Stephan]

What about success in relationships in situations where there's a big Income gap if the guy makes a lot more than the girl or the girl makes a lot more than the guy. What have you noticed there?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, we've. On the big gaps, we've had a couple times where the lower income person, which I think both times is actually the woman, which is kind of unfair jealousy, some weird jealousy there. Don't really like that one person. She chose to get a degree, she gets paid less. And her boyfriend chose to become an engineer. He's a piece of, by the way. But either way, regardless of that part, chose to become an engineer, makes a lot more money. And she's like, well, I went to school for more. He just got a certification. He makes more. I'm like, okay, but you chose to do this. You can look into the data. That was really weird. Definitely some jealousy then. We've also had some, like, stay at home, mostly women, but I think we've had a couple stay at home guys as well, and they're. They like to be the spenders while the other one's the earner. Big fans of that.

[Graham Stephan]

And what about combining finances? Would you recommend that for most relationships? And will you do that for most?

[Caleb Hammer]

I don't know. I mean, I'll. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll. I'll do it. A shit. She. If she wants to, I guess. I mean, it's personal finances. It works for some, it works for other. It sounds like it doesn't work for you guys from what you just said, because if she's paying for it means she has her own money and you guys are married, so. And that's fine. I. I think it just really depends on the relationship. As long as I think we're aligned on goals, we know what we're trying to get, we're being responsible. That's okay. I think a good, healthy middle ground is maybe a couple separate accounts, but everything goes into to one joint where things aren't really spent, but then it's divided from there. Bills and then personal spending.

[Graham Stephan]

What about prenuptials?

[Caleb Hammer]

Do you divide? Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you plan on getting a prenup?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. She knows that. Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

And how early do you have that discussion?

[Caleb Hammer]

I told her pretty damn quick. I mean, I mean, it's just big income divide. It's just gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. Things just get messier, things get weird. It's just, it's just cleaner that way.

[Jack]

So when it comes to that, what's a financial mistake that you make?

[Caleb Hammer]

My rental properties. I mean, it's not that I lost.

[Jack]

Do you still have them.

[Caleb Hammer]

I'm exiting them. I made money. I make decent money. I would have made so much more money being in the market instead of focusing on that.

[Jack]

I really sell those things as soon as possible.

[Caleb Hammer]

I am.

[Jack]

The last time that I think we talked, I was telling you to sell those rentals, right?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I don't remember.

[Jack]

There was a condo. There's something worth like 500 grand. I said sell it.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, sure.

[Jack]

Because you said you were going to be either break even or barely, cash flow negative on it and you didn't want to give up the mortgage, I believe.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that was on the condo specifically. I did exit that.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

Pretty quickly. But my rental property's back in my home state. Yeah, I'm fully exiting them and I'm just putting the money in the market. So that was a financial mistake. I mean, I definitely move a lot, you know, buy, sell, buy, sell.

[Jack]

But are you losing money on your house?

[Caleb Hammer]

The current house that I'm in right now, all my new houses under renovation, I will probably break even. So you bought out.

[Jack]

Wait a second.

[Caleb Hammer]

While your house is being. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The house that I live in now is the house you guys have been to, that I've had for a few.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. But I've had a house for a little bit in like my dream neighborhood essentially. And. But it's been a renovation kind of mess, so it's been taking a while.

[Jack]

But on your other house that we've been to, are you losing money on that when you sell it? Will you?

[Caleb Hammer]

When I sell it, it'll be break even at best. Maybe a little loss, but not much.

[Jack]

And if someone were to look through your personal finances as an audit, what would they criticize?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, this is interesting because we talk about low cost index funds. I mean, I use the money guys as their financial services. They're my wealth managers. I decided to go with them in the end.

[Jack]

Why do you need a wealth manager? I feel like you are smart enough and in it with finances that you could just buy an index fund, one fund and be done with it, which

[Caleb Hammer]

I could and I'm down for, luckily. It's like they are very. Their fees are very, very tiny. So I'm really not losing much. Taking advantage of some tax loss. Harvesting is nice. It's good to have someone in your corner when you get to that next level. And for me, it kind of. It came down to our conversation. It's not as extreme as whether or not starting that burger restaurant or take them out, starting that franchise. But I want to put all my energy into this business. I want to put all my energy into growing dollar wise. I don't want to think about my investments. I don't need to think about diversification. And international to. What is bitcoin doing? What's happening here, what's happening there? I don't want to think about that. They're the experts. I'm letting them work on letting Brian and Bo and my boy.

[Jack]

What are they investing in?

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, it's mostly just replicating the market, if we're being honest.

[Jack]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

That's pretty much it right now though. Right now we have an ultimate goal we're trying to get to within a couple years, but.

[Graham Stephan]

So with all of the success that you've had, do you still finance your furniture?

[Caleb Hammer]

No.

[Graham Stephan]

You paid it off.

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, I'm going to get new furniture in the new house. I might finance that.

[Graham Stephan]

And what is the logic?

[Caleb Hammer]

What is the logic? No, I'm not going to finance it at this point. I'm not. I, I doubt I'm going to finance it.

[Jack]

But has, has your relationship with money changed?

[Caleb Hammer]

My fear's gone down substantially because I hit that minimum goal that we talked about, I think our first time. Once I hit that, you know, a lot of the conversation is, does the goal just change? Well, the goal changed, but my safety net goal did not. Once it hit that, I was like, oh, I'm good.

[Graham Stephan]

Can you say what that goal was?

[Caleb Hammer]

What was it? Five million, I think.

[Graham Stephan]

And why did you pick five million?

[Caleb Hammer]

You know, it was actually talking to the money guys. It was talking to the money guys. Yeah, that's just what they said is my, my safe line when they did the audit on me and I was like, I just kind of went with it. I just went with them.

[Jack]

I'll tell you what you have to do next because at your goal level, your risk does not decrease. And what you have to protect against at this point are lawsuits. Yeah, health and any sort of personal accident that could derail that. And so now you have to protect against that.

[Caleb Hammer]

That, yeah, lawsuit's really the only thing. We're doing pretty well with great contracts, tying up the best lawyers and insurance is up, up the butt. So that's good health. I am skinnier since the last time you guys met me. But it's not as significant as it should be, for what it's worth.

[Graham Stephan]

So how did you arrive to the 5 million number?

[Caleb Hammer]

The money guy suggested once you get 5, you're chilling and they laid out a full plan. It's like, yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

What was the justification?

[Caleb Hammer]

What was the justification? It's like, I don't remember. It was a couple years ago. I just always move on to the next thing. More than Parker's trying to get an answer, is it. I don't know. Once they. Once they set a goal for me, these people that are my friends that I respect, I'm a very goal oriented person. Since I put that on my radar, that was just it. That was it. It might not be as perfectly logical as we want it to be.

[Graham Stephan]

And how has the relief that you've experienced expressed itself?

[Caleb Hammer]

Good. I'm willing to take more risk, willing to hire more people, willing to do more things, willing to like, if this is as far as I get, that's fine. Now I'm going to throw it on the table.

[Graham Stephan]

And so you've just increased your expenses to make life more comfortable.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. This studio, well, less about that, but this studio, it's expensive. We spent a lot of money on this studio. You. We pay really good wages. Our overhead is crazy. It's probably higher than 300amonth. It must be really just doubling down, doubling down on the business.

[Graham Stephan]

It's just been an easier decision since you feel like you have this guaranteed safety.

[Caleb Hammer]

Because I could have just siphoned all the money. You know, I could have just siphoned. But I decided you feel like you've

[Jack]

made more because you've invested so much more into the business.

[Caleb Hammer]

Luckily, yes. Now that dollar wise is very successful because does it has like made waves through the budgeting market? Yeah, no, it paid. Paid great.

[Jack]

What happened to the dollar wise app?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. When it first launched, that was so one thing I learned for all you people growing a business right there, third party contractors. When building something from scratch, not always the best thing to do. It is cheaper, it is easier, it is less scary. They probably know what they're doing going. But build in house, do the investment. If you're actually confident on what you're doing, build it in house. Because that's what we've had to do. This these last like 7, 8 months is rebuild everything from house. So we launched with the contractor. It was a complete disaster. They wouldn't fix things on time. It was like they launched a simpler budget. We got a copyright issue. It was. It was almost a lawsuit. Had to switch it to a simpler budget or dollar wise before we made any app fixes. Luckily my team came in, we hired them, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, put all my money back towards the them. They fixed the app to where the past, in the past like three months, four months, the app's been good. It's all the, you know, the issues are fixed but now, but it hasn't been that app that's like uberly competitive against all the other budgeting apps. So what they've been working on the last six, seven months, especially with all the new technology that exists today, is building this big 6.0 launch that is happening right after we film this. And it's going to be incredible. I'm so excited to see how it competes against the Mic Monarch again. Well, yeah, Monarch's like the big one right now, but against all the other top dogs right now with the great level of insights people are getting into their money that's automated more than any other budgeting app, actually giving you those tools and insights in your Insights tab. I'm just so excited to see what happens.

[Jack]

Do you worry that potentially the app is at risk if like a chat GBT or a Gemini came out with a, like a financial AI that could basically integrate already and then give you like real time insights and suggestions immediately for, for free?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, potentially. I mean I, I know even Grok itself and what is it? Perplexity. I think they have like a, a finance mode. So there are things like that and that's a conversation. But I think people like having an app they trust with their data because I don't know if people trust their data with AI. So a company that doesn't sell data actually protects that and that's what we've promised to do. And that actually connects with these great third parties like Plaid and whatnot to sync their accounts automatically. Instead of having you're like, okay, what's the update? Okay, what's going on now? What's going on now? Here's the question, you know, so we already give you the insights. Everything's automatic, it's all done for you. And it's built in a way for a human to use. Not like what a chat bot thinks you want to hear in the moment, but someday, honestly, probably. And we have a pivot in mind in about a year.

[Graham Stephan]

What's the end goal for $1?

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, I want to build it into not only the best budgeting app, potentially go into the world of some banking, potentially go into. I, I want to scale it into a multi hundred million dollar business. I want to employ a lot of people and I want to create an app that actually changes people's lives more than the show does.

[Graham Stephan]

What's the primary motivator at this point? Because you have more than enough money right now, I would assume. If you wanted to step away from YouTube, would you be fine to do so?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[Graham Stephan]

So you can live a perfectly quality life with all the money that you have saved up and invested?

[Caleb Hammer]

I think so.

[Graham Stephan]

So if it's not, then to get to like a different level of wealth, to access different things in life, then what is the motivator?

[Caleb Hammer]

You know, it's interesting, I just saw a clip from your episode that was just released with a streamer I've never heard of. No offense to him, but you asked him if he would step away with $20 million or something. He said no, he'd be bored. I'd be bored. I love building. I love working with people, people. I love having an impact positively on the world. Some people don't agree with it and that's okay. We don't care about their opinion. They, you know, whatever. That's their choice. But I want to leave an actual resource and legacy that helps people. I really do.

[Graham Stephan]

But would you walk away for a hundred million dollars post tax?

[Caleb Hammer]

No. Billion.

[Graham Stephan]

Maybe A billion dollars?

[Jack]

Maybe.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, sure. Why not?

[Jack]

So where does most of your revenue come from? This today? How is it broken down? As Jack would say, the pie chart,

[Caleb Hammer]

dollar wise has played a big catch up. For the vast majority of last year it was financial audit driven by AdSense and sponsorships. Memberships really took off last year. That's been huge. That pulls some pretty heavy weight. But now Dollar Wise is so substantial, I'd say it's about still 40% YouTube. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever, whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry

[Graham Stephan]

that I wouldn't get my new contacts

[Jack]

in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1, 800 contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

[Caleb Hammer]

And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry.

[Graham Stephan]

Namaste.

[Caleb Hammer]

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

[Jack]

1-800-contacts.

[Graham Stephan]

It's tax season and at LifeLock, we

[Caleb Hammer]

know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one you need to billions.

[Graham Stephan]

That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number.

[Caleb Hammer]

100 million.

[Graham Stephan]

That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it. Guaranteed.

[Caleb Hammer]

One last big number.

[Graham Stephan]

Save up to 40% your first year

[Caleb Hammer]

visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control terms of supply 20% sponsors and then the rest comes from the mixture of our educational programs and dollar wise.

[Graham Stephan]

One thing that we had discussed on this podcast, every time we've had you on so far, you have said that you are still deathly afraid of dying poor on the Walmart floor.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, not anymore because I hit that goal. I mean that was a big part of it. That was a huge part of it.

[Graham Stephan]

So it was as simple as setting a goal, achieving the goal and then that's it.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, cuz 5, $5 million in. I mean it's more money than most people can imagine but it doesn't give you like a huge crazy life for the rest of your life. Not, not by any means. But I can feel comfortable that I can get my together for long enough. For a long time. I can get my together because I can always work, I can always figure out things to do. I have always accepted that I might have to go get another normal regular job post YouTube Once I got into

[Graham Stephan]

this thing so transparently I've had this goal for a very long time and it's the exact same as what you said. It's like $5 million and I feel right now like I need to race as fast as I can to. And then once I hit that. So funny you mentioned this because it is so directly applicable to my life. Once I hit that then at that moment I can then start spending to make my life a little bit more comfortable and similar to what you did. I would love to hire on more editors and hire on more producers so we can actually obviously our profit would go down but then it would, we would take exactly the maybe is the it's the unknown. Hopefully you know, our profit would go up but the risk of doing that, I don't know if it's worth it when right now like we can still remain profitable and I can still continue to like save as much as I can until I hit that net worth.

[Caleb Hammer]

So.

[Graham Stephan]

So it's interesting to see that you actually as soon as you hit it, the mentality did change. If you could go back in time, would you have started to elevate your lifestyle and spend more back into the business before you hit that 5 million or do you think it was necessary to have that confidence once you hit it?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I definitely don't regret anything but since I know it all worked out, I would have put more into the business, not lifestyle. Do you think it was a crazy

[Graham Stephan]

life to get the confidence like the, the through and through confidence once you hit that number.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, it was nice. It just allowed me to step the foot on the gas on everything I else, you know, instead of being so afraid of everything. So why aren't you at five? That's hard. It is hard.

[Graham Stephan]

People don't realize like you.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's difficult. But is it cuz Graham didn't pay you anything when he started? That was it.

[Graham Stephan]

No, no, because.

[Jack]

I mean that was it because I

[Caleb Hammer]

made, I'm trying to start some.

[Jack]

No, because I made Jack work for free.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

For such a long time that the early years of compounding have just caught up to him.

[Caleb Hammer]

I would have had one extra year.

[Graham Stephan]

I only, I think I, I didn't work for free. I mean I. For a little bit like months. But it wasn't anything.

[Caleb Hammer]

No, I was like.

[Graham Stephan]

But I, I'm not at 5 because don't real people.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's hard.

[Graham Stephan]

It's. Saving up money post tax is incredibly difficult. So like you can be earning a lot of money and you could be earning a lot of money for a pretty long time. Like I feel like I've, I've been earning good money. Not like a lot, but like good money for five years now probably. But saving up post tax is like so like so hard. Like even to, to save up the first like million. Like it takes years and years of like high earnings, earning and saving and just expenses.

[Jack]

You have expenses and then what you don't spend then is now taxed or you spend money after taxes. It's just.

[Graham Stephan]

And when you're as bullish on Robinhood stock as I am.

[Jack]

Oh gosh.

[Graham Stephan]

Then obviously it's going to hinder your economical growth.

[Caleb Hammer]

Honestly, I'd say about a third of my net worth has been through just pumping in during big dips the past couple years. Just had great rebounds.

[Graham Stephan]

That's incredible.

[Caleb Hammer]

Like the beginning of last year when 10 tariff first started. I love that little dip. I made incredible money on that.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you purposely set money aside for events like that?

[Caleb Hammer]

No, I got really, I got really lucky.

[Graham Stephan]

So it's perfect timing.

[Caleb Hammer]

It was perfect timing. Now with the wealth advisors, with. Thank you money guy. We are setting aside like a large pile of money for a few different things. But in case a big opportunity comes, whether that's, you know, commercial real estate or. Yeah. Buying a big dip.

[Jack]

Do you feel like you still need more money?

[Caleb Hammer]

No, not at all. Not at all. It doesn't come, it doesn't come from anything that I want additional in lifestyle. I'm getting my dream house in my dream neighborhood.

[Jack]

How much is that going to be?

[Caleb Hammer]

House 1.6 renovation. 5.

[Jack]

$5 million on a 1.6 house?

[Caleb Hammer]

500,000.

[Jack]

What?

[Caleb Hammer]

500,000.

[Jack]

Well, when I hear 5, I think 5 million.

[Caleb Hammer]

That would be insane. Insane though. He's just. And I got my Model X. I'm very happy.

[Jack]

So part of that might be you haven't moved into the house yet.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, maybe.

[Jack]

And then you move into the house community.

[Caleb Hammer]

It's walkable. Like that's what I craved. I crave a place with parks and shops that's safe and actually laws are enforced and that's, you know, where I'm excited to be. So it's, it's more that than the house.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you feel financially secure? Do you feel like you need more money?

[Jack]

I feel financially secure, but I feel like I need more money. It's so funny. I had these long discussions with Gemini and Chat, GPT and Grok. They know everything about me. They know every single one of my investments. Seriously, they. And I update it on a regular basis so they know exactly where I stand. And I have gone through every single tax strategy to be able to buy a house that I want that I think would be a dream house.

[Caleb Hammer]

What's that?

[Jack]

That. What do you mean, what's that?

[Caleb Hammer]

Can you say like what that would be?

[Jack]

Oh, price range wise or what?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jack]

Oh, no. I mean I want a house in Las Vegas with a view of the strip.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

That's completely private where all you see from the front. My vision is just all you see is a gate. So you're going, you don't want to see the house. And then with a yard. Yeah, yeah, with it. With a big yard with a view of the strip. And those tend to be about 7 to 10 and me doing chunky. It is. And so then it is, well, seven to 10, you know, let's just say, because realistically I use some of the house for business, but the mortgage cap is 750, which leaves a lot of money that's not deductible. And then I'm like, well, I could do a box spread and I could borrow against my portfolio, create capital losses and then buy the house with it. Do all the calculations. But I've determined that right now to comfortably afford that, I need. Need another three to five years of income. Because I never want to buy something and then be reliant on income to afford it. I assume if I buy something, I want to be okay. Where if my income goes to zero, the Next day. And I just have my investments to live off of that'll fund everything I need with a 30% buffer in the event the market goes down or something unexpected comes up.

[Caleb Hammer]

Why do you want that? I understand the view part, but why do you want to be further away from society? Why do you want. No, no, no.

[Jack]

That's not further away.

[Caleb Hammer]

Why do you want more space? Like, what are you doing with it?

[Jack]

Oh, I love when you go out and just feels peaceful where you just feel like you're in the middle of nature. I don't like going outside and I see, like, house, house, house, house, house,

[Caleb Hammer]

house, house, house, house.

[Jack]

I love you. You open into a space that just feels like you're in a bit of a forest that feels tropical. And I want, like, you know, koi ponds and, like, trickling water through the place. I don't want a mansion, but I just want. Want that land and space and privacy with the view that just feels like you're in your own little sliver of, like, heaven, if that makes sense.

[Caleb Hammer]

You know, actually, when you ask, like, if I need more money. No, but now that you did say that, I do have in the back of my head a really cool thing someday would be, like a really cool hill country Texas ranch. I love a Texas ranch. Just for just. I love animals. I do like land, man. That'd be cool, but. So I guess that would be it. That'd be it.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

But neither of you still fear going broke.

[Caleb Hammer]

I don't fear that.

[Jack]

Oh. I would say for me, there's a certain small percentage that you just don't. You don't know what you don't know. That's always what it is. For me.

[Caleb Hammer]

My philosophy is, like, if the US Economy goes to zero and we're all each other, I'm ready to put a my mouth.

[Graham Stephan]

If the US Economy goes to zero.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. If we're in, like, the, you know, World War Z end of the world, you wouldn't fight. No, no, no, no, no. I'm too uncom. My. My. My anxiety and my panic attacks. I would just end it.

[Jack]

I feel like people would say, yo, isn't that the guy from the financial audit show? And they're like, oh, my gosh. Yeah, it is. And like, yo, come with us. Like, we'll save you.

[Graham Stephan]

I. I don't.

[Caleb Hammer]

I don't want. Want the. The. No, no, no. I think me and my girlfriend, we've decided we'd, you know, bunker it so it's expensive. Well, the part. Oh.

[Graham Stephan]

Oh, okay.

[Jack]

Where did you Meet your girlfriend.

[Caleb Hammer]

Instagram dms.

[Jack]

You slid into her dm.

[Caleb Hammer]

Other way.

[Jack]

She slid into your dm.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, I never slide in. Wait, do I? I. I probably have before. Yeah. I love it. First dm. What did she say? It was something funny. I don't remember exactly.

[Graham Stephan]

Exactly.

[Caleb Hammer]

It was, it was, it was something cheeky, though. That's. That's usually how you get me to respond.

[Graham Stephan]

And then what, you clicked on her profile. You're like, okay, I like the way she looks.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Yeah. And then we just started talking and.

[Graham Stephan]

And how long until you knew that you wanted to take some things seriously with her?

[Caleb Hammer]

About a month. About a month.

[Graham Stephan]

How many days seriously?

[Caleb Hammer]

Enough. A week of very intense dates. I was like, okay, you know what? I'm interested in this.

[Graham Stephan]

And did you guys live together now?

[Caleb Hammer]

We do now, yeah. Okay.

[Graham Stephan]

How long until you guys started living together?

[Caleb Hammer]

We went a little quicker than normal. Four months. Definitely quicker than I would advise and stuff, but just some things like least situations and why not kind of lined up and we're like, ah, if we're going to try it, let's try it. What does work? It doesn't work.

[Graham Stephan]

What are the main ways that having a relationship has improved your life? Like, if you were to list out all the stats of life, business, work, confidence, anxiety, what ways have improved the most?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, definitely getting good. That's. I have a good support system and she also calls me on my. Let me tell you who she calls me on my. So I'm not getting babied. Like, whatever. If I have an opinion or I'm even like upset at someone at work, she'll call me on a chat and she'll like, what else she said. Play devil's advocate. I was angry about how an employee was acting at one point. I don't want to give details. Yeah, they're listening. And she was like, no, Caleb, you're being a dick. You're being there. All right, I listen, you know, decent. Good debates. We also have very similar interests in terms of, like, I mean, we have interests aligned enough to have a really good time with each other. And that's really nice. Good support system. And I mean, I. I don't want this to be my life, but studies suggest for men, their closest dynamic in the vast majority of their life outside of childhood is the. Their wife. It's not always the fact. The same for women to their husbands, but for men to their wives, that is like their closest and most the person they put everything towards. And I'm glad I found, you know, I Don't know if she'll be a wife or not. But, you know, we're thinking about that and I'm glad. I think I found the one for that.

[Jack]

So when do you think you're going to come to a decision on that?

[Caleb Hammer]

I mean, I think I already kind of have.

[Jack]

Okay.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

What's the most expensive gift you've gotten her?

[Caleb Hammer]

Chanel bag. How much was it? 10.

[Jack]

$10,000?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah. Never have never done anything like that in my life. But I was like, you know what, I make good money. I love this woman. It's been her dream since literally childhood.

[Jack]

A Chanel bag?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah.

[Jack]

That was your dream?

[Caleb Hammer]

Well, yeah, she's very into fashion, collectibles collector, vintage type shit. So it was like classic flap, you know, historic bag.

[Jack]

What was her reaction to a 10,000?

[Caleb Hammer]

Oh, she cried. She cried like crazy.

[Jack]

Now why not, why not buy her the replica version of that and just say it's the real what, Jack?

[Caleb Hammer]

That's the nicest thing she's gonna get for a very, very, very long time. But it was like her one thing I was like, I had a really good year. I love this woman. I've never bought someone something so expensive before. It was what, when I asked her sister is like, this is what she's always talked about. I was like, okay, let's swallow that. That's, that's a hard one.

[Graham Stephan]

But with all of that said, with how incredible of a year that you had where it was wildly profitable and the amazing smile that you put on this woman's face that you love, and she was so happy, she cried. It's been her dream. Why would you still not buy a replica Seagram?

[Caleb Hammer]

You see what I'm saying?

[Graham Stephan]

Do you see how ludicrous it is?

[Jack]

It's the same.

[Caleb Hammer]

You had the most profitable year you've ever had.

[Graham Stephan]

You could never even dream of making

[Jack]

so much money, save 9, $500.

[Caleb Hammer]

But it holds value.

[Jack]

What was the, what was the process like of buying a ten thousand dollar Chanel bag?

[Caleb Hammer]

I went in. I was very lucky that they actually had one. I was very lucky they actually had one.

[Jack]

How do you know and how do you scan that someone isn't interested in you for either the money or for the social media popularity?

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, that's hard. That's where. Well, I mean, you see, you see the flaws in someone pretty quick. And if they can't put up with my flaws, of which there are many, you know, that would be hard to stick around just for like, I'm not that kind of rich. You Know we're not on that level. This is still just like YouTube at the end of the day and prenup out of the gate. You say, yeah, I'm getting a prenup. I'm getting a prenup. That's gonna happen. That's a good way to weed them out.

[Jack]

Why don't you lose weight?

[Caleb Hammer]

I do and have. I think I'm £20 down from the last time you guys saw me. But you're right. I mean, it's not as much.

[Jack]

Is it a priority for you?

[Caleb Hammer]

It continues in cycles of priority. I'll be honest. The last two weeks have been bad. I've been really good last few months. The last two weeks have been bad. After a big freeze where we were all stuck inside and I used that as a slide. That was bad. I just need to get right back on it. Girlfriend's great for that. Huge fitness person. Huge dieting person. She's very smart. Great cooking, like. And the gym is her life. So she's actually been really good on that. She holds me accountable and she calls me on my.

[Graham Stephan]

What's your weakness in food?

[Caleb Hammer]

Fries, burgers and shakes. That shit's good.

[Graham Stephan]

And where.

[Caleb Hammer]

Damn America. Oh, shake shack's incredible. Five guys in is incredible. Pete Terry's is incredible. McDonald's is incredible. Chick Fil A is incredible.

[Graham Stephan]

What's the most underrated fast food restaurant?

[Caleb Hammer]

Under rated. I don't know why the people think Shake Shack and In N Out are even comparable. It's not even close. Shake Shack kills In N Out. It's not even close. I'd say that's underrated. Just because they compare them. It's not even fair that they're compared. Culver's.

[Graham Stephan]

Culver's is.

[Caleb Hammer]

Culver's is great.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah.

[Caleb Hammer]

Overrated water burger.

[Jack]

Do you have any desire though to like really take it seriously with diet in the gym and like make a huge lifestyle change?

[Caleb Hammer]

Get jacked, Jim. I. I would love to. Would I? Or else I would just do it. Right. I'm kind of like a financial auto guest. Jim would be nice. But diet? Yes. And I have been actually, for what it's worth. And people actually. We did an end of year video of like we put all the clips from the year and stuff and people were commenting about the weight loss which was. It was. It was good to see.

[Jack]

Do you think that you getting. Let's just say jacked looks maxing. Do you think that would have an adverse effect on the channel? Channel maybe sometimes you in your current form is going to be More like, maybe better for views. Like, let's say, what do you say, like, Jonah Hill, Like, Jonah Hill lost weight and he became less fun. Yeah, right, right. Dude, I don't know.

[Caleb Hammer]

I love fat jokes, and I probably can't do as many fat jokes jokes when I'm like, cubicular.

[Jack]

But maybe you could like having lost the weight, though.

[Caleb Hammer]

Yeah, but at that point, it probably just looks mean. People already think it's mean, but I don't care. So, yeah,

[Graham Stephan]

I think, Caleb, at the end of the day, everything that you've done is incredibly impressive. Especially we talk about go back several years. I mean, where you were at. You were in a decent spot back then, too, but, like, you just seem like another one of those ambitious people that was like, I'm gonna put my head down and work and see happens. And it's like, okay, you were doing well and you continued moving in the right direction, but you have stuck with it. You've remained incredibly consistent, super hardworking, super disciplined, and you have absolutely exploded in every single time that we think this is probably about it. How much longer can he do these? Like, is this really going to be, you know, a profitable thing for a really long time, or is he just hitting another ceiling? And then every single time, you just break through the ceiling and break through the ceiling. So you've done an incredible job.

[Caleb Hammer]

All.

[Graham Stephan]

Also, I will say, of all of the things, it's like you're a great personality on on camera, but of all of the things, you are incredibly efficient at organizing people. And I think that that's what's led to the crazy rise of the business, is that you're able to put the right person in the right job and then know when someone's not either the right person or not in the right spot and then be able to put them in the right spot. So I think you've done an incredible job. Your output is insane. It's super respectable.

[Jack]

Your efficiency is a 10 out of 10. And. And we look at your operation as our inspiration and we see what you're doing and we talk to you. And you are a huge influence now in the iced coffee hour of figuring out what we could do to improve and not get stale.

[Caleb Hammer]

Thank you, guys. I appreciate you. It's good to have good support system. You guys are always good to talk to. I have the most incredible employees. It's all because of them. The audience has stuck with me through drama, through fun, through goons, through gaffes. So the audience is absolutely incredible. And then most important, the guests on financial audit. None of it would be possible without them. So I'm beyond thankful for them.

[Graham Stephan]

And of course, we're very grateful for you to come back on the Iced coffee hour every single time we talk to you. It is an absolute pleasure and for everybody watching, guys, thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And of course, we would not be here if not for you. So every single day I try to practice a little bit of gratitude for the position that we're in and it's. We would not be here if not for you guys. So thank you. Thank you sincerely, from the bottom of our heart for watching this episode. Thank you.

[Jack]

And we'll also link to your budgeting app in the description so it is there for anyone who wants to try it out. There you go.

[Graham Stephan]

We flew out to Austin for this. We're staying another day to film a bunch more episodes and then we're flying to Puerto Rico. Okay. And then we're going to fly back home and then leave back for la. Our travel schedule is crazy, but we're doing it for you guys. So thank you, guys. Thank you, Caleb.

[Jack]

Till next time.

[Graham Stephan]

Next. Cox Internet tetracientas megas tiene las velocidades

[Caleb Hammer]

rapidas es con fiables que buscas perfecto

[Graham Stephan]

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