The College Debt Crisis & the Broken Promise of Adulthood | NFNP 2x28

Bright: I've got a new unofficial sponsor for us. Unofficial.

Duds: Who's that?

Bright: double sponsor. We got Emo's pizza right here. And Urban Chestnut Zwickle. I s I saw these new cans at the grocery store the other day. And I was like, ear Emo's beer.

Duds: Emo's beer. There you go.

Bright: I was like, I I gotta pick one of these up. Now it's it's a collab, right? So it's it's just Zwickle, which is already a beer I like, but I guess they they do the cool emos logo and tell you how you can enjoy this beer with a a good old Saint Louis style emos pizza.

Duds: Got the Italian colors on there.

Bright: That's right, right. And I I even went and picked up a frozen emos pizza while I was at Dearburg. So

Duds: yeah.

Bright: ha I haven't done the combo yet technically. I'm sure I have maybe in the past, but maybe sometime this weekend or whatever it is, you know, it's those crazy days where you don't have time to do anything but throw in a pizza. Tomorrow we got soccer, so I was like maybe maybe tomorrow night for dinner.

Duds: yeah. We've had a busy, busy schedule ever since school started. Starting on Tuesday. So

Bright: yeah.

Duds: we've had soccer started on Sunday and then volleyball practices and school and gymnastics

Bright: It

Duds: and

Bright: it gets hectic. school starts for my kids this next Tuesday. So w with with my wife being a teacher, this week is a little extra crazy because I work, she works, so it's like, who has the kids? My dad had knee replacement surgery recently, so he they're really out of commission for babysitting. So it kinda all fell on Caroline's parents this week to babysit. And so it's drop off, pickup, work. we had soccer practice Monday. Wednesday, soccer game, Friday. I'm going to the city game on Saturday. Caroline's friend is getting married, so they're going to a bridal show on Sunday and then school starts on Tuesdays. yeah, it's it it's that time of year. Yeah,

Duds: Busy time of year.

Bright: no doubt for for everybody. And we we squeezed in a quick vacation, which was nice, a kind of end of summer vacation. I think a lot of people did around the same time. You know, I know like in the the east coast Like August is vacation. Like people don't even work during the month of August. But in the Midwest, that's not really the case. I feel like more people usually vacation like in June as soon

Duds: Right.

Bright: as school is over, as opposed to August, 'cause you do you have sports starting back up and especially if you got high schoolers. High schoolers start sports like first week of August.

Duds: We like to do the we've been doing it for the past couple of years. Kinda there's like a dead week in between summer vacations and school starting. There's no sports going on, so there's like a w a good week

Bright: Mm-hmm. Sure.

Duds: to go and I think that's what a lot of people do. So

Bright: Right, right. Well that that's kinda kinda what we did. It was a short one. We only did four nights, which honestly is enough with the kids in another

Duds: Right.

Bright: country with traveling there and sleep schedules are off and

Duds: So how was it?

Bright: we're out in the sun and everything. It was great. We had a great time.

Duds: All it was cracked up to be.

Bright: All it was cracked up to be. Kids loved it. They had their own room. They loved that. There were water slides. The beach was good. Food was excellent. They go they went to like the the daycare in the afternoon. It's it's complimentary. So they went and did that and Caroline and I got to go do you know, adult time and by that I mean go lay on the beach with some adult beverages. So yes. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And they wanted to do it too.

Duds: Right. Let the kids hang out with some other kids and kind of good to get away from each other, yeah, for a little while.

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanted to do it. It would've like if if they're just those type of types of kids. I when I was that age, I probably would have been a little bit I would have done it maybe, but I would have had a been forced into it.

Duds: Right.

Bright: I wouldn't have been like, I wanna go to the kids club but my kids are like, Please, can we go? Can we go? I'm like, Let's go swimming first

Duds: Yeah, that's how mine are too. They they definitely seem like they're like more outgoing and willing to do that stuff.

Bright: Yeah, for sure. And I think part of it is because we we trained young. It was like they they're not used to being glued to to us, you

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: know. They we dropped them off at their very first daycare at, I don't know, eight

Duds: Go, get out of here.

Bright: Eight weeks, twelve weeks, whatever it was, twenty weeks, something. Whenever Caroline had to go back to work, yeah, I we took dropped, and so they were used to every day they they left us. So I think now they're just kinda like, Yeah, we'll go. So that was nice. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Now it's coming back and

Duds: Yeah, it's always nice. A little one on one time with the wife.

Bright: Exactly. You need it. You need it. It it is important too and before she goes back to work and but now it's back to reality. detoxed a little bit. So I think this is really my my first alcoholic beverage since the vacation. So how many days? Like three days or

Duds: man, that's like what how many days is that?

Bright: something. Yes, yes, yes.

Duds: Break a new record or something.

Bright: That that's right. Well not you know, then we're rolling into the weekend, so like I said, with soccer games and all kinds of things and b Labor day will be here before you know it. Although it's late this year. So September yeah, September

Duds: Is it? It's like

Bright: seventh. It's like the latest that it could be. I guess that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So our anniversary.

Duds: I guess that's right, yeah. Yeah, our anniversary is the fifth, so

Bright: Right. Yeah yeah. I remember.

Duds: Coming up. Sixteen. Sixteen years. Yeah. Thanks.

Bright: Come sixteen years. Congratulations, dude. Yeah, sixteen years. What do you do for sixteen years though? Like ten,

Duds: Yeah, we talked about it.

Bright: fifteen, twenty, sure. Sixteen, yeah.

Duds: think we're gonna do like a a little like one night or two nights. we were looking at going to like Innsbruck for two days or something, you know. We've never been so we wanted to try that out.

Bright: Yeah, that's n I like that. We've never been until they try that out. With the kids? No. Just you guys. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean that'll be nice. Mm. been out

Duds: No, it's just us. Yeah. You ever been out there? Have you been out there before?

Bright: there before? I mean we used to have a house there when I

Duds: I mean.

Bright: was younger. Yeah. You never went up with us? I mean you were always away at college and stuff like that.

Duds: I don't think so. Yeah.

Bright: But but yeah, I mean af once I got old enough, you know, we Nilla

Duds: The right city house.

Bright: and all the friends, yeah, we were up there usually like two to three times this summer we would go up there. and then we were on the good one. We were on Aspen.

Duds: What lake were you guys on? Do you remember? The big one?

Bright: So that's the l there's two big ones. There's the one on Old Innsbruck and the one on New Innsbruck, which is funny now because now Old Innsbruck is kinda new Innsbruck, so they've they've built it all up and everything.

Duds: Never redone it.

Bright: But Yeah, we had an A frame on Aspen Lake, which was a great lake. That's where they do the fireworks

Duds: They're really cool looking.

Bright: and stuff like that. Yes. We loved it. You know, going if you go right then, the pools will still be open, which

Duds: Right.

Bright: will be nice. Labor Day weekend.

Duds: It'll probably be right at the end of it. Yeah.

Bright: Yeah, it'll be at the end of it. It might be a might be paying a premium for Labor Day weekend. The pools will probably be busy. but but definitely worth it. It's a good getaway. You can go play some golf. They have pickleball. they have the clubhouse. at the pool, if it's still this way, the last time we went was when Frankie was born, we did an an Airbnb and went up there 'cause I had paternity leave for the first time ever. And so we took a week and we went up there and it was what's the big barbie? Sugar Fire. Sugar Fire does their their food at the the concession stand at the the main pool. They usu they do outdoor movies. There you know, there's all kinds of fun things to do, but also just kinda chill, relax. If if you get a good Airbnb with a fire pit

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: or some of even have hot tubs, y you know, you can go down to the lake. Some of provide kayaks and and things like that. So it's a nice relaxing getaway.

Duds: Right.

Bright: It's it's different than the Ozarks, right? There's no there's no speed boats, there's no water skiing, so it's

Duds: Yeah, there's no motorized boats, right?

Bright: Correct. Well, I mean trolling motor is

Duds: Yeah. R right.

Bright: is the the most you get, yes. So we had when we had the house we had the pontoon boat with with a pretty weak trolling motor. Like it went slow. So without

Duds: You're just putting around. Yeah.

Bright: just puts putting around. So the very first time we ever went up there, the motor was broken and it was too late to get it fixed before me and all the friends were going up there. So we tied up the paddleboard boat to it and and we had

Duds: Manual power.

Bright: Nilla and I, yes, powering this boat full of people, coolers full of beer, all kinds of crazy stuff. And we could only get out to like as soon as we got out to the the lake where it opens up, we were like, That's it, that's as far as we're going. We now we can jump around, we can explore, but at some point we had a trampoline, we had direct TV, so we really made it nice, but then I think it was right around the the time the housing market crashed and

Duds: Sold it off or what?

Bright: Yep, sold it off. Yeah, sold it off. So

Duds: We actually looked at we were dabbling and wanting to maybe get into investment properties a few years ago and I priced them

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: up and I was like, just can't justify it. Like they're they're too expensive and the interest rates are too high.

Bright: In Innsbruck is too it's too well known at this point. You need to find you need to find like an up and coming lake. Innsbruck

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: is established, it's got all the amenities. What I what's what I love about it, it's at most an hour away. Right. So it's easy,

Duds: Right. That's the nice thing. So close.

Bright: it's convenient, so close. So you can go up there on a Friday and come home on a Sunday and it's no big deal. Yeah, it's

Duds: Right. And I think there's enough people that like you could probably keep it booked most of the time too if you're renting it out.

Bright: Now there are rules around that though, so you have to like it's you can't just do a Joe Schmo Airbnb. You have to have Innsbruck manage your Airbnb for you. So you you don't gotta do all that.

Duds: I missed all that. I think you were frozen.

Bright: I was frozen, I thought maybe you were frozen, but anyhow, one of us was frozen. Innsbruck manages the Airbnb, so you don't get to manage it. So you

Duds: really?

Bright: have to follow all of their rules and their guidelines. So they keep the

Duds: So you buy it and they manage it.

Bright: manage. I if if you wanna Airbnb it out, yeah.

Duds: Gotcha. Okay.

Bright: Yeah. And I don't know they might have certain rules where it's you have to might have to be on a wait list, they only accept a certain amount 'cause they don't want every property

Duds: Every place.

Bright: being Airbnb'd. And when we were having the place now Airbnb wasn't a thing, but there were rentals, but it was not allowed. You were

Duds: Huh, interesting.

Bright: not allowed to r yeah, they had condos and things like that, but you had to know the the

Duds: They kinda wanna keep it still as like a people living there and using it as a as a lake house. The nice thing is it's it's close enough to St. Louis where

Bright: Correct, yeah. Yeah.

Duds: you could use it as a lake house on the weekends. Yeah.

Bright: Huh, that's what we did. That's what we did. Yeah. It w it was great. And it was good good family time when we were younger. And then as I got older, it was great to to have all the friends out there and have a place to go and drink and you knew you were safe. You w you didn't have to drive anywhere. We had, I don't even know, twelve, fourteen beds or something like that, you know? Yeah,

Duds: dang. See it a big place.

Bright: it was it it wasn't that big of a place. But we had the loft

Duds: You say a lot of beds, isn't it?

Bright: and and just had a bunch of beds. You know, the the main loft we had a king size bed and three twins so that slept five. And then we had a picture. Yeah, we had a bedroom

Duds: I think I remember seeing pictures of when you guys went out there.

Bright: in the in the back, and that had two queen beds and a twin. So that slept five. Then we had the master bedroom that slept two. Then we had two pull-out sofas. So it was yeah. It was good. And that that's pretty much

Duds: Big flop house we're sleeping in. Just hanging out all day and

Bright: that's pretty much what it was. I mean the kitchen was small. It was only one bathroom But we had a nice deck and then I built a fire pit area, so I did that. so yeah, it was good. It was good.

Duds: Do you remember when we went to somebody's cabin in like the middle of the night? Was that like Moir's? Was it Eshman's? Yeah, what was where was that? Where was that?

Bright: Ashman. Ashman. Yeah. huh. that was down forty four. I'd have to look up I b if I looked at a map, I could probably it was super late

Duds: We went late, right? We got there late at night.

Bright: and we you weren't none of us were old enough to buy alcohol, but NFNP story here, you had a fake ID. So we went to the gas station, we bought the driving down to Roller.

Duds: You remember driving down to Rolla to look for my fake ID that one time?

Bright: yeah, I do we had to do it in advance, or was that for a different trip? No. My mom had found it. It wasn't out there. Right.

Duds: Did ever tell you what happened about that? My mom had found it. She knew that she knew it wasn't down there. She's like, Why are you going back to Rolla? I like, I can't remember what I told her. And she must have figured like, figured it out because years later, you know, she's like, Yeah, I had it. She she still has it. She showed it to me.

Bright: Well didn't you get one or did you have a second one or did you have somebody Yeah, right, right. yeah, yeah. Sure, right, right. That's a lot of money. Well it's nice to go

Duds: I got a second one after that. It's like, well thanks, Mom, you know, that cost me like a hundred bucks. We drove all the way down there looking for it, couldn't find it.

Bright: down there looking for it. I never I never knew anybody that had a fake ID or ran a I mean, I I knew you that had one, or ran a a distribution thing. So that's somebody that we've met in the morning. Right. Right.

Duds: It was somebody that we met in the dorms, knew somebody. I think he was running it out of Columbia and got him like a whole bunch for people down there. And then and

Bright: Well that's

Duds: I think I my mom found it like within a couple weeks of me getting it. And then I told

Bright: Right.

Duds: the guy, and I was like, Hey, can I get another one of those? And he gave it he gave me the second one for like half price.

Bright: At a at a discount. Well he probably already had all the stuff saved. If he hadn't deleted the pictures and the info, he just had to reprint it. So

Duds: Uh-huh. Yeah, I I don't think I had to give him anything else. And it was funny because I think the first the first one was from California. And then the second one he got me was from Texas or something like that. But my address was the same. Like it was my parents' home address that was on there, but it said Fort Fort Worth. That's why I did it. It's like I don't want to accidentally

Bright: Right, right. Well less stuff that's l less stuff that you have to memorize if you're at the sure. Right, right, right. Smart.

Duds: use some other address. I don't know.

Bright: Well, you may have accidentally given me the perfect segue not only into our main topic, but I had a side story and it's all about college. It okay. Fake IDs in college. That's that's relatively normal,

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: right? People are running f I don't you could I guess you can get in trouble for that, right? It's illegal. But how much trouble are you really getting into? I don't know.

Duds: You know, I heard that the guy I heard the guy that was giving the ones that we had got busted because he started doing passports for people. That's a big deal. Yeah. Like what are you getting into if you

Bright: No, see that's a bigger deal. Fake passports? Yeah, that's a big deal.

Duds: need a fake passport?

Bright: Right, right. A fake ID so that you can go to the bar or whatever. Like, okay, I g I get it.

Duds: Pretty minor, yeah.

Bright: Yeah, it's probably. I hope so. It shouldn't be a anything major. As long as it's like college kids or whatever. But did you hear about these college kids in Penn State? I did. Did you know that this is what I was gonna bring up? Okay.

Duds: I did hear about that. yeah, no, I didn't, but I I sent that to I sent that to Jenny. I was like, look at this.

Bright: Right. So making fake IDs. So went from fake IDs to these guys running a full on cocaine ring out

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: of Penn State, making tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Like the

Duds: And and making the pledges like bag it up for and

Bright: pledges. They made the pledges like cut and bag all the cocaine. that I mean that's insane.

Duds: That's a wild college experience right there.

Bright: I I mean now I was not in a fraternity, but you were. I don't know if you had anything like that going on. Ugh.

Duds: We didn't do anything like that. I mean, that's a little wild.

Bright: Well, the main guy so he was twenty four years old, so still in college, I guess. I don't know. Augustino

Duds: Well it's very lucrative when you're selling

Bright: He probably he probably

Duds: cocaine.

Bright: probably failed a couple classes. Actually, I think he w I think I heard that he was on the dean's list though. Maybe he was going for his master's or something. Augustino Abitiello,

Duds: Mm.

Bright: twenty-four years old. And did you hear what his nickname was?

Duds: No, what is it?

Bright: Pablo Pledgobar. Like it's just too good.

Duds: Like Van Wilder.

Bright: Pablo Pludscobar. And it is kind of like Van Wilder, right? So he is among around 13, 14 people charged. I think maybe his dad or one of the other dads also got charged because he

Duds: Wow.

Bright: was trying to hide money and stuff like that for the the kids as they were getting busted. And I guess they busted into this guy's room and he had a gun, cocaine, weed, all kinds of stuff. And he thought when the SWAT team came in, like a SWAT team, busted down. the fraternity house. He thought it was a prank. Like

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: they they thought it was like a rival frat pulling a prank on But they were they were getting they're I mean, they're going to prison, man. Yeah, like this Yeah.

Duds: I would imagine. Yeah. Distribution of cocaine, that's like that's pretty serious.

Bright: Pretty serious. Now I it was like a

Duds: And Penn State, man, that's a like a expensive highfalutin school too. I mean that's

Bright: Sure. A absolutely. And the the prison. Yeah, Philadelphia funneling into that state penitentiary? No thank you. I do not want any part of

Duds: No thank you. No. That's gonna be a rude awakening.

Bright: that. Right. So I guess I don't know. I don't

Duds: You think they'll get off for, you know, being like first offense.

Bright: They'll probably get a lighter sentence, but to not spend any time in jail, I d I don't know. That that seems like profile now, you know, it's all over

Duds: Yeah, it's pretty high profile now, you know, it's all over the news and

Bright: It all over the news. And the reason they got busted is one of the guys accepted a payment through Venmo.

Duds: smart.

Bright: with his with his real name. Well the the whole the whole thing was used through Cash App and Snapchat. That's how they did all of their business. Yeah. Yeah. So

Duds: That's how they did it. But then but then they used Venmo and then that got huh?

Bright: That's that's what got him. I guess it was like a undercover s situation and I guess the get the cops were like, We don't have cash app, can we use Venmo? And the guy's like, Sure, here's my Venmo and then they're like, Boom, gotcha, done. Right?

Duds: That's pretty dumb.

Bright: Then they're pretty dumb. But I mean, come on, these guys they're they're young college kids, they're probably pretty dumb. Now, to get this whole operation up and running though, I don't know. How how does that even start?

Duds: Yeah, I wonder where they were getting their like product from.

Bright: Th well th well that I don't know. They it says here that they got it from New York and Philadelphia, but like from where? I don't know. So those are the cities, but who are they getting it from? It said that one of the one of the cash app prices was thirty thousand dollars.

Duds: my gosh.

Bright: So they were making I don't know,

Duds: Making quite a bit of money.

Bright: making quite a bit of money. So I'm sure it seemed lucrative and

Duds: I mean, that's like a that's a rich man's drug. That's not not for usually poor

Bright: Yes yes it is. That is true.

Duds: college students.

Bright: No. Four thousand dollars for a hundred grams, if that sounds right. I don't know. I don't

Duds: So what's that come out to? that's forty forty bucks, right? Forty bucks a gram.

Bright: I don't even know if that's a h forty bucks, right? Forty bucks a gram. Forty bucks a gram. Right. I don't know how much how much is a gram.

Duds: Tim schip.

Bright: Like is one gram one bump? Like I couldn't even tell ya. I don't even know.

Duds: No, I don't think so. I think like that's probably, you know, like a good night or two, I would imagine.

Bright: Right, right. Delta Epsilon and Sigma Chai. Sigma Chai. Sigma Chai, okay.

Duds: Sigma Kai, yeah. Delta what was the other one? Delta

Bright: Delta Epsilon.

Duds: I never heard of that one. But I know S Sigma Chi, I know. S Sigma

Bright: What what frat were you in? I

Duds: Phi Epsilon.

Bright: know. Sigma Fi Epsilon. Sigma Phi

Duds: Sick out. Yeah.

Bright: Epsilon. T too confusing. This is all Greek to me. I don't understand any of it.

Duds: Rancha.

Bright: Terrible joke, terrible, right? Okay. Well you're

Duds: Could tell you a dad.

Bright: a dad. Right. I the reason I think that they were probably doing all of this is the freaking price of college.

Duds: Yeah, they were just trying to get by.

Bright: Yeah, right. That's they'll probably get off on that alone. The the jurors will probably sympathize with them when they're like, Well, you know, I've a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of college debt

Duds: Hey, they're businessmen.

Bright: and right, I can't get a job, I I can't keep up with this economy and this this is all I c I could do to pay back my student loans.

Duds: So I mean, is it really that bad if they were selling it to people and they weren't like committing any crimes? I mean, what's the big deal? They were just going out and having fun.

Bright: Well they were selling it to people and it was a crime though.

Duds: No no no. I know that is the crime. But were the other people like were they committing crimes after they were on it? You know, like was that where it ended? Was that where the crimes really ended? Was there anything else did

Bright: Probably.

Duds: anybody else get hurt in this situation? Like

Bright: Not not to my knowledge.

Duds: So I think why they're getting arrested is 'cause they're not paying taxes on that income. That's probably what the big offense

Bright: Right, sure. Yes.

Duds: is here.

Bright: The government can't garnish their wages to pay

Duds: Exactly.

Bright: back those student loans on cocaine funds, right?

Duds: So they don't want you bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars that you're not paying taxes on. That's

Bright: That's true. That is true. Yes. crazy. All right. Well that brings me to to our main topic. We're twenty minutes in. and that is the college debt crisis and the broken promise of adulthood. I know. It sounds almost a continuation

Duds: Like this is almost a continuation from last week.

Bright: of the time. It kind of is. That and that's kind of what I like somebody was talking about it the other day on the news, maybe or something, and I was like, you know, we've gone f three weeks in a row now. How can anybody afford a house anymore? The scam economy and the daily admin tax

Duds: Mm.

Bright: of life. And and now college debt and the college debt crisis. So I feel like they do all kind of connect for sure. And that was part of my reasoning. But overall the thesis for the episode, right? College was sold as the ticket to the middle class. For a lot of people it still pays off, but the cost, debt, repayment chaos, and delayed adulthood have made the promise feel broken. And I've got I've

Duds: Hmm. It's a good it's a good start.

Bright: got stats.

Duds: Let me ask you before we start, are all your

Bright: It is. It's a good start, right? Yes.

Duds: student loans paid off? Did you have student loans?

Bright: I did have student loans and I I definitely wanted to talk about our experiences. My wife did not have student loans, so I'm a th I'm thinking her parents maybe set up a five twenty nine or something like that. And so that was nice for her, especially

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: on a on a education degree. You're not making a lot of money,

Duds: Right. Right.

Bright: so to not have a bunch and and I do wonder that because all of these kids that are going to school to be teachers, which we need But i imagine coming out with fifty, seventy, ninety thousand dollars of of student loan debt and

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: then you go get your first job at thirty five thousand dollars a year.

Duds: I know my my my boss's wife is a teacher and he told me down in Farmington that I think starting teacher salaries were like you said, like thirty five thousand and they have

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: a schedule that's like published on what their raises are every year. And hit his wife

Bright: Yeah, huh, yeah.

Duds: has actually gone out and she has her masters, she's working on her doctorate and she's done like continuing education. So she gets like a a

Bright: Mm.

Duds: two percent raise every year. If she didn't do

Bright: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: that, their raises are like Point seven five percent per year.

Bright: Yeah, and and you're kind of reliant on on people voting for teacher pay raises

Duds: Right.

Bright: and and that's kind of how how that stuff happens. With my wife, she has her masters. She got that right after college. She got her four four year degree and then straight into her masters, which has its benefits and its downfalls. The downfall is a lot of schools don't want to hire new teachers with masters degrees 'cause they cost more and they don't have the experience.

Duds: Right. Mm-hmm.

Bright: So it's a little bit of a flaw. So it took her a long time to get a head teaching job. So she had to go in and be a a TA and and things like that before she could get a lead teaching job. And then she had to go get that at a a school district that wasn't as lucrative before she could now get into a better school district. And so now she's pretty much good and now she has her masters plus fifteen.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: So that's another bump on the pay scale. And she gets essentially a bigger raise every year because of that. And then the next thing would be to go to masters plus thirty, I think, which is not quite a document doctorate, you'd then you'd have to write your thesis to get a doctorate,

Duds: All right.

Bright: and then you get an even then you get an even bigger pay bump and that's pretty much where where you get maxed out. But the the nice thing is is you you know essentially what you're gonna be making and what those raises are. You can track it. and and we did all the math when we had kids and the whole the whole reason that she stayed in school or t as teaching and the kids went to daycare was because of that time. So it would be essentially what

Duds: experience you can get. Yeah.

Bright: Yes, so seven years and you're you're going up the pay scale each one of those years. You take a big break, now you gotta start over

Duds: Right.

Bright: and then you you gotta work longer before so she'll be able to retire at sixty one at the latest. Which is great. If I retire at sixty-five, she's four years younger. We'll retire at the same time and then travel the world or whatever. and she might even be able to buy a couple of years. So there's you know, there's a lot of weird things with teachers, but that's something that certainly I wonder. So she was lucky not to have any any student loans. I did have student loans, but I think they were all government-backed student loans.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: And the interest rate on my student loans was one point nine percent.

Duds: That's pretty low.

Bright: It it's crazy low. It doesn't even exist anymore. I remember my brothers who were just a couple of years younger than me had five and six percent on their student loans. So I

Duds: Mine were Yeah, good.

Bright: I was gonna say I was able to pay mine off early and and I wasn't making a lot of money at the time, but I paid off before early at one point

Duds: Why would you wanna pay him off early at one point nine percent? You should have just kept kicking that can down the road.

Bright: I now I would, but y you had to pay it off in ten years or something like that. That was the the schedule or whatever. So

Duds: yeah, okay. That's what the term was, yeah.

Bright: right. So I I paid pretty much I paid the minimum payments every month and then maybe I got a little influx of cash from like taxes and paid it paid it off or whatever, but

Duds: So I had I had three different loans. I had the FAFSA loans, which I think was like fifty five hundred dollars a year or something like that, which I don't think has really even changed that much. I think that's about what it is still today. I think you can get five fifty

Bright: Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah. I had that. Right, yep. I had that. Mm-hmm. Which I don't think is really going to change that much. Right. Right. Okay.

Duds: five hundred or six thousand dollars a year. and then I had Sally May for some of And then I had mohila was the other ones. And

Bright: Mm. Yeah. Mm. I remember the Mohila, yep. And I c I think I had Fannie Mae too, and at some point I consolidated them all. Yeah.

Duds: Right. So I I was I was gonna look into doing that, but then, you know, graduated right at the time of the great what is it, the the financial crisis and the yeah, and the interest rates all went down. So that I didn't

Bright: Right. We both did the the the housing crisis and all of that. Yeah. Two thousand seven, give or give or take, yeah.

Duds: have to end up doing that. But the Mohila loans, I remember I I didn't look at at all when I was in school. My parents kinda went

Bright: Mm.

Duds: and filled all the paperwork out 'cause they co signed for them or whatever. And they're just like, Yeah, you're gonna have these loans when you get out of school and all that.

Bright: Right, right.

Duds: And I remember looking at the Mojila statement, the first one I got, because I think you had to start paying on them like six months after you graduated. And

Bright: I think so, right. Yep.

Duds: they were earning ten percent interest while I was in school. And it was ten

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: grand a year from them. So by the time I graduated, I so I took out forty grand with Mojila over the four years. By the time I graduated

Bright: Yeah. Right.

Duds: after the fifth year, it was already at like

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: fifty-five thousand dollars. So it had earned like fifteen

Bright: Yeah. Yeah's a

Duds: thousand dollars in interest. Just in the time that I was in school.

Bright: That's crazy. Yeah, I didn't have anything like that, but I do remember I made I'm pretty sure I'll have to maybe ask my parents, I made monthly interest only payments while I was in school, I think. I

Duds: did ya? That's pretty smart.

Bright: kinda rem I kinda remember doing that. Interest only payments while I was in school to to keep that off of the loan. Or maybe it was

Duds: When I saw those interest rates when I got out, I was I my mind was blown. I like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: they were gonna be like five percent. You know, I didn't think it were gonna be that high. So

Bright: Sure. And and that's really where they get you and we'll get into some of those stats, but a lot of people are paying only the the minimum payment, which barely covers any

Duds: Right. yeah.

Bright: principal. They just end up paying mostly interest and then they're like, Well, wait a minute, five years later and and my my principal's only

Duds: I owe more.

Bright: gone down a thousand, two thousand bucks or whatever. It it's

Duds: Well, especially if they consolidate into like a thirty year payback, it's like buying a house, you know. So for the first

Bright: Well, sure. Right, right. Yeah.

Duds: fifteen years you're paying mostly interest.

Bright: Wh which it's crazy and I don't know, can you consolidate it into a thirty year why w

Duds: You used to be able to.

Bright: maybe maybe if you were a doctor or something like that. I like if you had huge income and you needed to get to that stage, right?

Duds: We had I had about a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars when I got out in loans. And I thought about consolidating it, but

Bright: Yeah. I d I don't even remember.

Duds: right like I said, right when the financial crisis happened,

Bright: Right.

Duds: all the interest rates tanked. So I think they went down to like two and a half to three percent or something like that. So I just said, I'll

Bright: Yeah. Right. I think they went down to like two and something like that. Right.

Duds: just keep and make the minim or make not make the minimums, but make the normal payments that were on And they were scheduled

Bright: Right, right.

Duds: to all pay back in ten to fifteen years, I think. So

Bright: Right. Yeah. I know mine was ten years and

Duds: I think I did it in about six years. Five.

Bright: Yeah. I think I think I was probably close to that too, maybe maybe seven,

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: eight at the most, I think. I know it did I know it didn't take me the full ten years. And I don't know. I mean

Duds: We had a bunch of cash and I had a I had like a big chunk of loans still. And I we were like, Well, what are we doing with this cash? And it's like, Well, we could just pay off the loans and so like

Bright: Right.

Duds: I think it was like a it was like a forty five thousand dollar payment. We were like, just pay it all off at one time. So it's kinda hard to do, but it

Bright: Right. Yep. Yes. Well that's the thing. You wanna g

Duds: it was kinda nice getting rid of it too.

Bright: Yes, it's a big bill that you don't have every month now with

Duds: Right.

Bright: which frees up more cash flow, but just to get that out and from under your under your belt and not have to worry about it. But let I mean let's get into some of the numbers.

Duds: All in, we were paying like twelve hundred dollars a month.

Bright: I mean that's crazy. I think I think I was paying like three fifty or something. I was gonna say maybe I think I had like maybe thirty thousand or or forty thousand and I I was on scholarship. I had an athletic scholarship and an academic scholarship, but There were still I went to a private college, so there was still a balance, and there's room, board, all of that stuff, which again I've got I've got some stats here. So there's there's some things to think about here, and it's

Duds: I have run in.

Bright: only it's only gotten worse. So listen

Duds: I can imagine.

Bright: to this. The outstanding student loan debt stood, this is as of Q two twenty twenty six, at one point six five trillion dollars.

Duds: I wonder how how much that is per loan holder.

Bright: Well, let's see if I got that number. We'll we'll see. student loan delinquency is up to ten point six percent, of which balances are more than ninety days past due. So that that's up from ten point three earlier in the year, from Q one to Q two.

Duds: I think a lot of people they had like on hold, right, through COVID and all that. It's like two years that they didn't do anything. And then they were expecting Kamala

Bright: They did during COVID they were all on hold that you didn't have to make payments, which which isn't

Duds: to come in and or Biden to f do all the forgiveness and wipe all away. So I think a bunch of people were just like, I'm not paying

Bright: Right, right. Which is

Duds: for these anymore.

Bright: which to me seems crazy. Like I I do understand the idea of this is a little bit of a ripoff, but one, like, why should it fall on us? I already paid my student loans, so as as the taxpayer or

Duds: You should get it too.

Bright: Right. Well that was gonna say, forgive my credit card debt. If you're gonna forgive let's just f forgive all debt. Let's just roll We're already at what, forty trillion dollars for the US debt? Let's just roll into grant at

Duds: We'll just send fifty grand to every taxpayer.

Bright: every second. Yeah. One point six five trillion, you know, that's

Duds: That's a lot of money, dude.

Bright: not that's not that much when you're looking at a forty trillion dollar US deficit. That's only one fortieth. Let's

Duds: Right.

Bright: just roll that right into it. I wonder what the credit card debt is. Grok

Duds: Just add it on. Big deal. It's not a big deal.

Bright: grunk that real quick. See, I think we've covered it before

Duds: What

Bright: in the past, but the US credit card debt, I know that we've covered it in the past.

Duds: actually I think you can go look at the debt calculator. Let me see. That's always fun. Have you ever looked that up? The national the national debt calculator. Yeah. Let's see what it's at.

Bright: For the for the US debt? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. But I I'm curious what the c credit card debt is and if you added that to the student loan debt and you just wiped out all credit card and student loan debt for all Americans, what would that do to the US deficit?

Duds: let's see. Let's see what the debt calculator is at right now. Me share this bad boy.

Bright: Yeesh, that looks scary. Right.

Duds: Forty trillion fifty three million. No wait, fifty three billion, sorry. Forty trillion, fifty almost fifty four billion. It just crossed forty trillion the other day and it's already up

Bright: Yeah, forty try million. Yeah. Forty million's all all forty trillion's all you need. Yeah, tariff revenue.

Duds: another fifty-four billion, like it's no big deal, you know.

Bright: Yeah. look at look at the f the fraud. We talked about that last week. Where was this last week? Six hundred and seventy billion dollars. Fraud per tax payer, five point eight.

Duds: Look at the debt per taxpayer. Three hundred and sixty one thousand. So

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: just send them three hundred and sixty one thousand dollars and we'll get out of debt. But everybody has to do it.

Bright: If everybody worked for free for five years or whatever, you know

Duds: This is the number have you ever looked at this? The US total debt? Hundred and fourteen

Bright: Mm.

Duds: trillion dollars.

Bright: I don't even understand how that works.

Duds: I think that takes into account like the Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, like all of the all that stuff. But here is the credit card debt. One point three, yeah. So eighty four hundred per holder.

Bright: Right. Right. All right. Well there's credit card debt. Is that one point three trillion? Yeah. That's not even that bad. All right. So so if you added that to the hundred per folder. All right. That's not that bad. So if you added the one point three trillion to the one point six trillion, you're at three trillion dollars, give or take. Just add that to the national debt. I mean, what's another three trillion? So you go from forty to forty three? We're gonna do that anyway in probably Trump's Trump's term. And imagine if you were able to wipe out every American student loan and credit card debt. All right, I could get behind that.

Duds: Man, look at this debt clock just gives me anxiety. Like it's pretty nuts. Total debt to GDP

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: ratio is a hundred and thirty three percent. That doesn't sound good.

Bright: Send me this link and maybe I'll link it in the show notes. We could we could play around with it a little bit. I mean that that's crazy. That's crazy. So the the credit card debt is a little less than the student loan debt, which which is crazy because the pool of Americans I would think that have credit cards is a lot bigger than the pool that have student loans. Although I made

Duds: Sure. Yeah. Well yeah, and then you gotta consider like if you have one credit card, you probably have multiple. So

Bright: Sure, absolutely. Yep, that is that's true.

Duds: But I'm guessing that's, you know, spread across all your credit cards. So

Bright: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All right. going back to student loans. Forty two point six million federal student loan recipients currently.

Duds: Did it student loan debt? Here you go. College tuition now twenty eight thousand dollars per year.

Bright: Is the average. I have that I have that information too

Duds: dear.

Bright: here. Yeah. So the average for public four year in state is about twelve thousand.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Out of state is about thirty-two thousand. Two year is about so if you went to like community college is only about four thousand, so that's really the the way to go. Private is forty-five thousand.

Duds: my gosh. Per year.

Bright: Right. So Per year. Yeah. And like I said, that doesn't even capture room, board, books, transportation, fees, technology, travel, parking. There's a

Duds: And actually forty five thousand for private is probably on the lower end because some of those like wash you they're like seventy thousand dollars

Bright: ru sure, yes.

Duds: a year.

Bright: Yeah, that's that's an average, so yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Duds: Right. So this this college tuition on this debt clock says I think it's probably an average and it says twenty seven five eighty nine per year. That's that's today.

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: It also shows what it was in two thousand. What do you think it was in two thousand?

Bright: I think I have that information as well. I don't know, I might it's w seven th seven thousand. Okay. Okay. Right. Sure.

Duds: Do you? It says ten thousand seven ninety three. Yeah, so about about eleven. So it's up almost three times in twenty six years.

Bright: Sure. Yeah, yeah. That's that's not so

Duds: Wild.

Bright: man. That's it's wild. It's wild when you look at it all. nine million borrowers owe two hundred and twenty billion were in default. So nine nine million borrowers are in default right now. And thirteen percent of those are on federally managed loans. So a lot of private student loans out there right now,

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: too. We were kind of talking about that. A lot of the ones that I did were all government backed. So I think they had b they had better terms.

Duds: Well, I think most I thought most student loans now were government backed because

Bright: Well they might be government backed but they're but they I'll have to look this up and and I didn't do the research now, but they're promoted by by big banks. Yeah, I guess like Fannie Mae, we did do that, right? Mohila

Duds: Well, I know that when Obamacare passed back in whatever year

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: that was. Do you remember twenty ten or twenty two thousand eight ish, two thousand nine? they

Bright: That was after us, so right. Probably. Yeah.

Duds: pri or they took all the private student loans out. Like there was something about that where you couldn't 'cause like Mohila and Sally Mae, they couldn't initiate I don't think they could make new loans. They could only do servicing of loans after that.

Bright: Right. I do remember that. Yeah.

Duds: So they basically took over the student loan industry because they saw how lucrative it was. And then what happened? And then the price

Bright: Right. Well, for sure.

Duds: of school went up. So 'cause the government got their

Bright: Right.

Duds: dirty hands into it.

Bright: Well that that's a good point. And then they look at forgiving the student loans, which is a whole nother episode, and they and they couldn't get it past. But They did they were able to forgive some student loans. They were just weren't able to do a

Duds: Right.

Bright: a blanket forgiveness. But they do that for a couple of reasons, because you're you're guaranteed to get a lot of votes. People are like, I want to get rid of my student loans. I'll vote for the person that says they're gonna get rid of them.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: But what happens to the new kids then that are coming in that have to get like, okay, so you have a fresh start, but it's not like you're getting rid of student loans. We're just gonna have the same problem all over again.

Duds: Yeah. So you have people that paid off, so they're kind of getting screwed because they had to pay

Bright: Mm. Sure. Or what about the people that chose not to go to college because they couldn't afford it? And now they have a less

Duds: Right. And though and all the taxpayers are the ones paying for it. Actually, any of the money holders, anybody who uses dollars is actually absorbing that through inflation, right?

Bright: Sure.

Duds: So why does yeah, somebody who's never gone to college, kids have never gone to college, why maybe they don't even have kids, why are they gonna be saddled with, you know, losing their purchasing power just because you can't pay back your student loan debt?

Bright: Sure. A hundred a hundred percent. No, I agree with that. and

Duds: Now and the other the other crazy thing is like there's two sides of it. Like it worked out for us. We paid back, right? Got got good jobs. But like you're eighteen years old, seventeen, eighteen years old when you're supposed to be making these decisions that could impact you for the rest of your life. You know, you don't know what you're doing

Bright: Yeah. Sure.

Duds: when you're seventeen and eighteen years old. And all of a sudden you're like

Bright: Well

Duds: getting all this debt that, you know, you're gonna have to end up paying back eventually.

Bright: Especially when it comes to money, because we don't teach that in school, which

Duds: No.

Bright: to me seems crazy. In in high school or anything, you're not learning how to manage household expenses, manage any kind

Duds: Balance a budget.

Bright: of investment, balance budg budget portfolios. So you just want to go to college because that's the American I don't want to say American dream, but the American lifestyle at the moment, right? You graduate high school, you go to college with all of your friends and party a lot. I I mean

Duds: And what do they do like first day you're college campus to try and get you signed up for a credit card?

Bright: Sure, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. even even

Duds: They try to get you anywhere they can. It's the banks, man. The banks will get ya.

Bright: Even even the schools themselves try and sell you the biggest meal plan, right? 'Cause they know you're not gonna use it. Then but they're like, three meals a day plus a snack here there. You need you're a growing boy. You need this meal plan. I remember signing up for the big meal plan. Well then you go to Jimmy John's and right

Duds: Get your freshman forty.

Bright: sure. Well, I was playing sports, so I didn't I went in I went into my sophomore year of of college weighing one seventy five, I think. I think I was

Duds: Pretty good.

Bright: one sixty five freshman. And one seventy five Southmore and they told me I was overweight. At one seventy five Crazy. Yeah, sure. Well

Duds: I actually lost weight my freshman year being on the football team. I think I went in at one ninety and my after freshman year and that first summer working out, I think I was like one eighty five.

Bright: And they were probably mad at you too, 'cause you didn't you didn't put on enough muscle. Right.

Duds: They were he wanted me to put on like twenty five pounds and I ended up losing five.

Bright: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that's the thing. Like I bulked up a little bit. although even back then you like you see a picture of me and you're like, Who is that scrawny kid? you know. And I'm like one ninety five now, so

Duds: Now after I realized that football wasn't gonna be my path to, you know, greatness when I

Bright: Sure.

Duds: quit, the following year I put on like forty pounds. That it was very easy to do after you quit.

Bright: Forty pounds, yeah. Sure, sure. A absolutely, absolutely. Ay. Okay, so but going back to and I'm jumping around a little bit, but the people that choose not to go to college Right. And so

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: imagine forgiving student loans and then somebody that went into trades, in theory, they're making less than somebody that earned a college degree. And then they they end up getting that for free, essentially. That also isn't fair. So here's the story. Workers aged twenty-five plus with a bachelor's degree have a median weekly earnings of around fifteen hundred dollars and a two and a half percent unemployment rate, while people with without a a bachelor's degree, just with a high school degree, are earning on average nine hundred and thirty dollars a week and have a four point two almost double unemployment rate, right? So it it still pays to go to college. You earn more

Duds: These numbers were for how much experience? Like how long out of school? Did it or is this twenty five years? twenty five years old. Okay. Gotcha.

Bright: Twenty five plus. It's any it's just yeah. No. Correct. And older. So it's taken into account all kinds of different people. But

Duds: Okay.

Bright: people with bachelor's degrees earn more on average than people without them. Right? Which which of course makes sense.

Duds: Yeah. I wonder what the median is. I always like going by the median because the average are s skewed, you know. was okay. Use the correct terminology, would ya?

Bright: No, this this was median, sorry. It is me yeah, I'm just y I'm using them i interchangeably. So yeah, sorry. I I did originally when I read it I did, but

Duds: Okay.

Bright: but it i it it's interesting because okay, you earn more but if you're saddled with a hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt, the y the money that you're making is it's not going into your pocket, so

Duds: Well, sure, because like I said, not consolidating them. I think our monthly payment on it was over twelve hundred dollars. So

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: if you're making a thousand bucks a week, you know, that that's

Bright: Right.

Duds: a week's worth of your time already in to just

Bright: Yep.

Duds: your your and that's that's probably pre tax, you know, money too. They're probably not not after tax dollars either. So, I

Bright: Sure. Right. Right, right.

Duds: mean really think about your where you're gonna live, your car payment, all that stuff.

Bright: Yeah. Yep.

Duds: You probably don't walk away with much, you know, a after you've paid that off

Bright: No. And At that stage

Duds: each month.

Bright: in your life, I remember like I was going out more. You're trying

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: to meet somebody. So you you're going out to the bars or you're taking girls on dates and paying for restaurants or movies or w so you're spending more than w in now theory, like you're just happy to stay home in Netflix,

Duds: Right.

Bright: right? And and that wasn't even a thing when when we were out of college and dating girls. I like I do remember having Netflix D V D's delivered to the house. I don't remember yeah,

Duds: yeah. yeah.

Bright: I mean I did do that. But you didn't Netflix and chill, right? You had to you had to take out. You had to spend money.

Duds: No. Well yeah, 'cause I mean, you might have been paying for the two D V D plan, but then once those D V D's were watched, you had to wait like two days for the next ones to come.

Bright: Yeah, right, sure. Absolutely. And what if your date was in between those two days and you had nothing? Nothing. I think that's the f the reason I opened my first credit card was so that I had money to take girls out on dates. I think so. I that was the incentive. 'Cause

Duds: Is that right? That was the incentive? I mean it's a good incentive. That's a good incentive.

Bright: pretty much Every every dollar that I made went 'cause I bought a house right after college, so it was going to the house, to student loans, to gas. I mean gas was high back then. It was like three, four dollars a gallon or

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: something like that. And I remember struggling with the gas. I was like, I I can't keep filling up my tank. You know, so

Duds: I know. Although I do remember like there was a time when I was in school that gas was not very expensive. And I think I remember filling my truck up for twenty five bucks.

Bright: Well, the lowest I ever saw it w I think it was when I was fifteen. So we're going way back. And I d I maybe got my permit or was about to get my permit. I remember seeing gas for sixty nine cents. Yeah, that's my Yeah.

Duds: Yeah, that's what stands out in my we were in high school, yeah.

Bright: Uh-huh. And I know exactly what gas station it was. It was the quick trip on Bulls in Forty

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: Four. It was it was probably brand new at the time or close to it. And I and normally when you when you were growing up, gas was about a dollar. it was always around a dollar.

Duds: Yeah. I I I remember it being like around eighty, ninety cents, you know. Mm-hmm.

Bright: Yeah, maybe one nine, one nineteen. It was always near a dollar. So if you had to fill up your tank, it was always twenty bucks. It didn't matter what the price was, it was twenty dollars.

Duds: Well do you remember the gas stations? Do you remember a long time ago the the some of the gas stations didn't even have the ability to have more than cents on their prices? They were only up to ninety nine cents, so then they had to add the do you do you remember that? Yeah, for a long time I mean eventually they've

Bright: I believe it. I don't know that I remember that.

Duds: all changed over, right? Because

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: but for a long time when gas was under a dollar they We're never even expecting it to go over a dollar. So they didn't even have another digit. Yeah. Yeah, it was.

Bright: Yeah. It's Y two K Y two K for gas. Although with Y two K you knew that the the time was gonna flip like

Duds: The years were eventually going to get there.

Bright: Ay. Okay, all right. around thirteen million student borrowers were enrolled in income driven repayment plans, so garnished wages. So that's forty four percent of all borrowers. are just having their their wages garnished directly from the government. Right? Like that was never a thing. Like I paid. Like the government didn't come and take money straight from my paycheck. That's what

Duds: So they just said, I'll just wait 'til they take it. I'm not gonna voluntarily give I'm not gonna voluntarily pay.

Bright: Yeah, well exactly. So Uh-huh. So almost half almost half of all student loan borrowers that are I'm assuming delinquent. thirteen million. So I don't know. I

Duds: That's crazy. Almost half?

Bright: know. Yep. And sixty two percent of all balances, if that makes sense, right? So forty four percent of all borrowers, but sixty-two percent of the overall balances are on garnished wages.

Duds: You know the craziest thing about student loans has to be the fact that like you can't get you cannot get rid of it. Bankruptcy doesn't matter. You're stuck with it. It's like

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: there's no other debt out there that's like that, I don't think.

Bright: No, th there isn't. And they're they're exempt from that.

Duds: Right.

Bright: So so right, you can never you can never get rid of it. I don't know. What happened. What happens if you die? Does your next you get rid of it then? Your next of kin isn't responsible for it?

Duds: No, I think I think you get rid of it then. I don't think so. I think that's the only way unless somebody's cosigned on it, maybe.

Bright: Do you think that anybody has offed themselves because of their overwhelming student loan debt?

Duds: well, I guarantee that. Yeah. That has to have happened. I would bet.

Bright: Ugh I hope not, Mr.

Duds: I know, of all the things. But like I said, you you can't get rid of it. It would follow you around forever. I mean, you want to go get a job?

Bright: Yeah, that's true.

Duds: Well, we're gonna garnish your wages until you pay this back. And the whole time they're they're

Bright: Could you imagine being

Duds: accruing interest on it, regardless of if you're paying it on it or not. So it's just gonna keep growing. It's probably like one of those things like

Bright: Could you imagine being

Duds: hanging over your head forever.

Bright: Sure. Forever. St. Peter's Gates. The gates to heaven. And you're like, all right, I'm in. And they're like, ooh, those those student loans. You defaulted. You d

Duds: hold on a second. You know, that follows you up here too.

Bright: yeah, yes, it does. Yeah. You go go work that off. Go work that off in hell.

Duds: We're sending you back.

Bright: yeah yay. Okay, what else do I got here?

Duds: Yeah, unfortunately I do think probably people have have taken that route and probably saw no end in sight and thought that that was

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: a better idea, but it's unfortunate because

Bright: Yeah. All right.

Duds: it's definitely seems predatory.

Bright: It a little it it is a little bit. I think that's exactly it. It's predatory because like you said, these eighteen year olds don't know any better. They just wanna go have fun at school because that's what you're supposed to do. That's what everybody was taught to do. And it made sense for our parents. It w then I got those numbers right here. So among ages twenty five to twenty nine The share with student loans rose from twenty-eight percent. So twenty-eight percent of graduates in nineteen ninety two had student loans.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Now it's forty three percent of graduates. And that's that data is actually a couple couple

Duds: That actually is lower than I would have thought. Yeah.

Bright: years old. There's a lot of rich people out there. There's also yeah.

Duds: Apparently. Yeah, I would have actually I would have guessed higher than that.

Bright: Right. Now here's here's another crazy s crazier stat. Among ages thirty to thirty-four, it rose from eighteen percent to thirty nine percent. So you have a a lot of people that are holding on to student loans longer.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: So whether they they couldn't pay off, they consolidated into a longer term loan, whatever the case may be. 'Cause again, if you graduate at twenty two, you should have paid off by thirty two, right? Give or give or give or take. So so now thirty four you're still carrying still carrying loans.

Duds: I remember I had quite a few friends that, you know, their their parents were paying for their school or at least had some, you know, that they were paying. And I was very I was

Bright: Right.

Duds: very jealous at the time. I like, Dang, that's nice, you know, that's pretty nice of your parents

Bright: Yeah, for sure.

Duds: to do that for you.

Bright: Yep, definitely no requirement. Some of are taking out they you they cosign or they take out these it's a different type of loan. It's a loan that you take out as the parent for your kid to go to school

Duds: Mm-hmm. Right.

Bright: and you're a hundred percent on for that. Right.

Duds: Well, that's what my parents did. They it's they co signed for it. So like if I defaulted on it, they would have been responsible for it.

Bright: Right. Right. Well that's different than then them just taking out the loan and

Duds: Correct.

Bright: I'd have to look it up to s there that er there is a loan for that.

Duds: Yeah, my name was on it, but they've cosigned it. So if they could the bank could go after them if I couldn't pay it.

Bright: Right. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, my parents co signed I th they pro I think they had to co sign on my first house, I'm pretty sure, 'cause I had no credit. Definitely on my cars. When I when I bought cars when I was younger, they co signed on that stuff. I don't I don't know about the student loans.

Duds: You know, looking back on it, I mean graduating with over a hundred grand in debt, it really sucked having to pay it back. But it was very very

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: like fulfilling to pay it back and to

Bright: Sure.

Duds: actually like, the the career that I've got, you know, it became I became successful at it and I was and I was able to I was able to

Bright: You're an engineer, so

Duds: use that and pay that money back and you know it it meant something. Like it I felt like I earned it, you know, so I

Bright: Sure.

Duds: And I I wonder how people like you know, if people realize that sometimes paying your debts off makes you feel better than if it's just forgiven, if it's just handed out to you, you know, like you appreciate it more.

Bright: Course it does. Sure. Right. Yeah. Sure. I work for this. I I s y I accomplish this. And the same will be true when you pay off a house. I

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: I I loved it when I paid off cars. And I'm like, pfft no car payment. Feels great. I

Duds: Right. Feels great. Yeah, that last payment, I mean that's

Bright: own this car. Now you never actually own your house. I guess you never actually own your car either. They can always still come take that away, but

Duds: I got I got two two payments left on my truck. I'm pretty excited about that.

Bright: No, you're getting close, man. Getting close.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: I would just knock that out at this point. It's kinda like if if I finance but I'm only paying like five dollars a month or something. Yeah, it's not really worth it, right. Yeah, I do it with

Duds: I looked at that, but I'm only paying like five dollars in interest for the next two months. So that's like not doing it. I'm gonna make the bank wait for their money.

Bright: Sure. With cellphones sometimes if I finance a cell phone they just, you know, attack it onto your s phone

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: bill and then I get down to like four months left and I'm like, Let's just get rid of this you know, let's let's then the the bill drops from a hundred dollars to fifty dollars or whatever, so you're like, All right, yeah, it feels nice too. And then you go out and you get a new phone, but

Duds: That feels nice too. You know what else? You know what else feels really good is when you're like if you have a lot of streaming services or if you have a lot of like recurring things and you're like, man, I d

Bright: Sure.

Duds: I just don't feel like I use that as much as I should. And you cancel that. Like that feels good when you cancel one of those recurring services. You're like, that's just money in your pocket every month now. Because that's where they get you is those little things, they nickel and diamond, they all add up.

Bright: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But And it is little and that's the thing how how I feel about streaming services. It's twelve bucks here,

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: twenty twenty five bucks there, maybe whatever. Like I have the Disney bundle package and it was twenty five bucks the other day, but

Duds: got ten of them though, and it's like three hundred bucks a month.

Bright: That's the thing, of course, that they when you put all together they add up, especially you throw in like YouTube

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: T V or something like that. And I'm like, Okay, like, do I but if if I cut that out, what am I really doing with that extra twenty five dollars? I'm not gonna inv I'm not gonna invest that. I'm not

Duds: Right. Gambling.

Bright: right, like extra cheeseburger on a Friday night or something? I don't know. So I'd rather have the streaming service, I think. I don't know.

Duds: I guess. We have a bunch. I only probably use Netflix. Like I could probably get rid of the rest of

Bright: Netflix is the one I like the most. When people tell me they don't have Netflix, I'm like, that's the best one. How do you not have Netflix? Right? Like

Duds: Yeah, you know, I just finished speaking of Netflix, just finished the Death by Lightning. Have you watched that? Did we? We talked about that? It's good. I liked

Bright: Yeah, yeah. We've talked about it on the pod before. Yeah. Yeah yeah.

Duds: it.

Bright: It's good. It was all I mean it's only four episodes. true story though, obviously, so

Duds: Yeah. Never saw the ending coming.

Bright: I mean you knew he died, right?

Duds: Dude, I was so mad at that doctor. He's like, I think we made a mistake.

Bright: Right, sure. Yes. Yeah. W What about and we're we're going off on tangents now. Did you ever finish Dark Matter?

Duds: No, I still haven't finished that. But we still have Apple T V. I can still do it. I can still watch it.

Bright: Second sev second second season comes out next Friday. So I think a week from tomorrow.

Duds: Well yeah, I can't watch it, you know, too far in advance or I'll have to rewatch it like I had to do with Fallout or whatever. I had to rewatch the whole first season of that so I could watch the second season.

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't really r rewatch anything anymore. That takes way too much time that I don't have, so I go to YouTube and watch the recaps. Even if I have to watch a season by season recap, that's still way better. And you're like, Okay, it starts coming back.

Duds: Man, I tell ya, I went to watch the the second season of that and I was like, I don't remember any of the first season.

Bright: Well, because it's it it's two years now

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: sometimes between seasons. When it's when it's one year back to the Right. No. If if

Duds: I thought it would have came back to me but it didn't. So I like, I guess I gotta rewatch this.

Bright: it's if it's one year pretty much exactly, you're like, Okay, I g I can rem Once you get past a year, eighteen months, twenty four months, you're

Duds: That's gone.

Bright: like Yeah, we just finished the new Game of Thrones. Which what is that? House of Dragon, right? Season three.

Duds: yeah.

Bright: Season four isn't coming out until summer twenty twenty eight.

Duds: gosh.

Bright: You know, I'm like, it's not even

Duds: It's a long time to wait.

Bright: like Yeah it is. I was like that's not even fun anymore.

Duds: You know what I think actually helps too? So I told you it was re watching Stranger Things with Jameson. Spreading it. Right.

Bright: Yeah. With yeah. And that's fun if you're watching it with somebody that hasn't seen it before, it's a little bit more fun than re watching it just so you remember.

Duds: I think that you actually retain what's going on in the show better if you space it out 'cause we've been watching it like every Friday, right? Instead of binge watching it. 'Cause I think when you binge watch something and then you, you know, go two years, you really don't remember what you what you watched. But if we s if you space it out over ten or twelve

Bright: Sure.

Duds: weeks and you're watching the recaps and and that every week, I think you just you actually remember a lot more of the show because Now that I've watched it again with him, because the first time I watched the first four seasons, I kind of binge watched them. So we go

Bright: Course she did, right.

Duds: back and we watch it and I I remember some of it, but I'm definitely I think I remember a lot more of it now that we've spread it out and I'm rewatching it with him. So I think I'm gonna start watching more shows like that again and try to like sp

Bright: Right. Yeah. I believe it.

Duds: just like drag it out a little longer.

Bright: That honestly that's how I like to watch shows and and now they're now the streamers are starting to to come back and and release

Duds: Release them like that. Yeah.

Bright: right. I do like sometimes how they'll release like the first two.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: It helps get you started and get you into the season and then it's kind of week by week. We watched Ted Lasso last night, comes out every Wednesday. We're watching Stuart Saves Fails to Save the Universe, the Big Bang Theory spinoff comes out

Duds: Mm, yeah, I've heard about that.

Bright: tonight. So like well it it's it's funny. I mean it's dumb, but it's funny. It's it's basically sliders. We were talking about dark matter.

Duds: is it Yeah.

Bright: Stuart fails to save the universe is a hundred percent sliders. It's a straight ripoff.

Duds: And it's a comedy.

Bright: It's a comedy, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And a s a s a stupid one at that. But a lot of the Big Bang theory references and the old characters come back and and all of that. So it's it's definitely worth a watch 'cause it the I think one episode was only like eighteen minutes long, right? So

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: it's like okay. It's not that it's not like it's taken up a lot of time or anything like that, but yeah.

Duds: Right. I think yes, spreading out the the episodes week to week, just you get to build some anticipation for it, you know? Like he gets real excited,

Bright: Sure. Yeah. Well

Duds: he's like I can't wait to watch that episode tomorrow night, Dad. Like he he talks about it all week. He's just like ready for it.

Bright: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well I always go back to the X Files.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Right? Like that was really the first show where my dad and I especially, every now and then my brothers, but s when it moved to Sunday night, we watched every Sunday night. And I made popcorn every Sunday night and I had a root beer every Sunday night and it was a ritual. And it w they did two episodes. So they did the new episode at eight. after the Simpsons and

Duds: Mm.

Bright: and all that, you know, and then at nine they played a rerun. And

Duds: Of that one or the previous one? Or just any?

Bright: Any no, any like yeah, just an old episode.

Duds: It's just a random one. Mm-hmm.

Bright: Right, right. Which is crazy. I mean nobody does that kind of a thing anymore, but so we

Duds: What's a rerun?

Bright: Yeah, we were locked in. We were locked in for two episodes and you know, I used to record those on VHS 'cause it was it was before the days of D

Duds: yeah.

Bright: V R and you know I learned I thought I was the only one doing these things. Like when you you read about it now, people were recording them in the US and they were actually like shipping them off to like their pen pals in Australia and all

Duds: really?

Bright: kinds of things because it wouldn't air at the same time in the UK or Australia. yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: is that different? Wow. Wonder why that was.

Bright: Yeah. So so there was a lot of people that that recorded the X Files and I I remember like really dating myself here. You could change the time on the VHS tape. You remember how to do that? You could do two hours, four hours, or six hours

Duds: yeah, yeah. Slow it down. Yeah.

Bright: and it slow it down. Right. The frame rate or whatever. So I would always do six six hours so that I could I could get si

Duds: Yep. The high quality, your lower quality.

Bright: Yeah, yeah. I could get six Six episodes. 'Cause I'd had to pay for the tapes myself. I remember going into like Walgreens and buying blank VHS tapes so that I could record. Yep, yep. Uhhuh.

Duds: Yeah, you you break off the little tab so that it was a read only VHS after that.

Bright: Yep. Yep. You remember? Yep. Yep. And then I

Duds: Have your whole have your whole library. You know, my one of my great uncles, I remember this from when I was probably I don't know, seven or eight years old. He he lived out in I don't know, somewhere out Hillsborough or something like that. And he had he would go to Blockbuster and he had two VHS systems. What did you call it? VCRs. I was like, what are those things called?

Bright: Right. Yeah. V CRs. Not betamaxes, V CRs, yeah.

Duds: Right. And he would he would copy from from Blockbuster. So he'd get the Blockbuster one and he'd

Bright: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: set up his recorder and he'd go and he'd rent movies every week and he would record And he had two

Bright: Yeah. Yep.

Duds: giant bookshelves full of VHS tapes, and he had a

Bright: huh.

Duds: a binder with all of them like marked in there and had all these movies that you could go through like a little catalog. I was like, this is so

Bright: like marked in there. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Duds: cool.

Bright: Well and I I did that with D V Ds and it started with Blockbuster and it eventually moved over to Netflix and that's what I did. And I would rip and and burn And when I built I built my own computer, so I made sure that I had, you know, two D V D drives

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: and would would just rip right onto there and I put into a C D book and I had y two Big old binders that fit two hundred and fifty, three hundred movies each, something like that. And so I I'm at some point I've had six, six hundred movies easy.

Duds: Where are those now?

Bright: And I might still have them somewhere. They might be down here in the basement. And I I guarantee you I still have not watched all of them.

Duds: You know what you could do is you could set up yourself a little server and you could put all those on there. Then you could get rid of your streaming service. You'd have all your movies already

Bright: no, I know. I yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: on there.

Bright: Well, we joked about it. I still torrent, and and I've got my I've got my cloud storage right behind me in the closet. So I usually just set it up to every now and then watch a show or whatever, but I was like

Duds: You just announced that the FBI's gonna come knocking down your door.

Bright: I know, I know. I need to I was thinking about it the other day. I like, I would love to set that up to be a more permanent thing to where it could have all of those movies or

Duds: Get an eight dog, he's got nothing going on. He can come over and help you out.

Bright: Yeah, I I could do it. And now you you could if you really you just punch it into Chat GPT, it'll help you do it. And I guess you can have it set up now to where it's just like Netflix. It imports all the information

Duds: yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bright: from the from IMDb, so y all you have to have is the media, the v the movie and it imports

Duds: It would be way better.

Bright: yeah. Yeah. And it's your it's your stuff. So you're not reliant on change the Sure.

Duds: They can't go and change it and edit it and make it all DEI and get rid of the stuff and give you the warnings and

Bright: Well, and we and we were talking about that a couple of episodes ago. But then there's also some of these movies that you buy, you will buy them on Amazon or whatever. same deal, just like your house. You don't actually own it. If they lose the license to that

Duds: Yeah. Go on.

Bright: movie, gone. And you're like, But I bought it. No.

Duds: Yeah. That's crazy.

Bright: And that's like with the new Xbox, new PlayStation.

Duds: How does it not give you a refund for that?

Bright: No, they don't. but yeah, the new gaming systems are looking to get rid of the the D the D V D drives or whatever, the disc drives. And some people are an uproar because they want the physical copy of

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: the game. I've moved past it. I do all digital now on on my Xbox and whatnot, but I get it.

Duds: We got the disc PS five

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: because I think for one reason, like some of these games, have you seen these? Like they a hundred and forty gigabytes, hundred and seventy gigabytes.

Bright: Are huge. Huge. Well, I don't know what I'm gonna I don't know what I'm gonna do. Well now Xbox has cloud gaming. You don't even have to download a lot of the games, you just play it and as long as your Wi Fi is good enough, you're pretty much in good

Duds: Need a controller and

Bright: shape. Yeah. But like Grand Theft Auto Six I don't know that my Xbox 'cause I got one of the earlier I'd have to I'm gonna have to go buy a external hard drive to play this game. So

Duds: Right. Yeah, I know you can hook one up, but the thing was, I looked at that on the PlayStation, you have to basically reload them. Like you can have an external hard drive. And I think PS four games, like the backward compatible ones, you can run them off the external, but a PS five game, you can

Bright: Right. Right. Okay.

Duds: you can like store them there, but would you have to like reload them back onto the console to play it.

Bright: Then what's the point? And what that's the thing though, what if what if the game is bigger than my console hard drive?

Duds: Just because you could have like a three terabyte right. I don't know if any of them are that big. Like it's got a one terabyte hard drive. So you have to delete your other games, you know. Like the save data and all that stuff, but the game right. But the games are huge. I and so

Bright: Well terabyte hard drive. I don't know. Well, and I and I do that. Yeah. Correct. 'Cause that takes up no no space. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: Battlefield six, that's on the on there. It's like a hundred and forty gigabytes. And that has a disk. Like you it doesn't use the disk for anything.

Bright: it's like a hundred and forty gigabytes. Right. And that has a disk. Yeah. No. To play

Duds: But you have to have the disc in to play it. I don't understand that.

Bright: it. Yeah, yeah. It it's to to authorize the fact that you own it, I think.

Duds: It's ridiculous. It's

Bright: That's what it is. I I do all of my gaming wireless now, but I have an Ethernet cable ready to go. It's hiding like in my ceiling. So if I'm downloading one of these games and I don't wanna wanna

Duds: I just plug it in.

Bright: have to wait for it, yeah. So I have to get my drop ceiling, you know, pull out my Ethernet cable, hook it up. and I I'm sure I could do it permanently. But actually then in my router I only have space for a couple of hardwired connections. So that's the thing. I have my media server, I have my my VPN. router. I have a second router for my VPN router. So so I have to unplug something to plug in the Xbox to the Ethernet so I don't have it hooked up all the time. So it's only when I'm downloading large games and I'm and I'm ready to go. I don't even get to play video games all that often anymore, but

Duds: We just downloaded the new Fortnite update. They just released a new season on that. We were playing that earlier. Have you played that? man, if you played it, you'd be addicted to it. It's pretty fun. Yes, it's a lot of fun. It's it's a little different, you know. It's

Bright: I don't know anything about Fortnite. No, Fortnite, no. You think so? Like Counter Strike back in the day, Rainbow Six. It's a little different. Yeah.

Duds: it's it's really a little weird to get used to because it's all third person view. It's not a first person. but you get

Bright: Right. Right. It's not a first person. Yeah.

Duds: used to it after a while. And It's it's all about like I mean they have a bunch of different games on there, like maps that people

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: make or whatever and different types of games. But the main game is like a battle royale where you just like helicopter and they drop you in off of a school bus or whatever,

Bright: Right. They just drop you in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Duds: you jump out. It's like a hundred people, and then it

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: go down to like the single winner or whatever. But me

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: and Jameson play together you can play two people on a split screen. And so you're and your teammates. So it's basically like fifty fifty groups of two.

Bright: Uh-huh. okay.

Duds: And and you go around and you open up chests and get different weapons and upgrade your weapons and stuff. It's fun. It's it's like it's a lot of fun playing with him 'cause you know, we're a team and we go we like to kill ever we like to kill everybody.

Bright: Sure. Well that'll be when Frankie gets to that age. Like I was even scrolling through the other day and I was like, they got a new teenage mutant ninja turtles game out. Frankie loves ninja turtles. As did I when I was younger. I

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: was like, All right, but I I he's just not old enough yet, you know. So

Duds: Yeah, we we have a Ninja Turtles game and it was it's fine, but we we kinda always

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: fall back on Fortnite. It's a lot of fun.

Bright: Sure. Yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. All right. Well, yeah, th right. Right. Sure.

Duds: It's kinda nice too because there's like not a lot of blood. You know, it's not like the those other games. They just people explode into loot into loot when they're when they get killed. So

Bright: Yeah, I tell ya. nothing beats the good old Halo days though, the

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: land parties and the screen looking and all of that.

Duds: That's what I really wanted was and I thought that that was gonna be how Battlefield was, is you could play some some

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: split screen online, but it you can't even do

Bright: Yeah. All right.

Duds: it. If you wanna play online, it's just single player online, multiplayer.

Bright: Right. The other thing now is I feel like s some of these maps are so big. No. We you we used to be able to No. No, I know. That's why yeah.

Duds: I I can't even do it. I can't even see the people. They shoot me and I'm like, where are they shooting me from? Like, so I don't even have fun playing it.

Bright: Yeah. Right, me either. I've lost interest because like I'll do the first player sometimes, the one the single player mode. But Yeah, I've lost interest because I'm not good enough. I don't have a the time devoted

Duds: Right.

Bright: to l to learn the maps, to get the better weapons. And that's how Call of Duty started being.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: You had to work your way up to get the extra stuff. And I was just like, I'm never gonna be a level thirty guy, so it's

Duds: Right.

Bright: it ain't gonna happen. I don't have the time.

Duds: That's why Fortnite's fun because you can like even, you know, my daughter, she doesn't play very often, but she'll still be able to get some kills on people. Because there's a lot I think

Bright: Yeah, yeah.

Duds: he was telling me that like a billion people have downloaded that game. So yeah, so like right now, even

Bright: Right. Yeah. It it was the most popular in the world for a a while for sure.

Duds: today, there was over a million people playing at one time on this. So it's like there's a lot of people out there and all different levels of, you know, skill level.

Bright: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people out there from all different levels of Right.

Duds: So anyway.

Bright: All right, well

Duds: Little tangent there.

Bright: little tangent there. We're not gonna go back to college debt. We gotta move on. but I think we all know we all know about college debt. Yeah,

Duds: Yeah, we're kind of screwed.

Bright: but that's true. We're we're not, but the younger people are. As a country. as a country we're screwed. Yeah, yeah. People forgive the country. Yeah, yeah. But like I

Duds: As a as a country. Like I don't know what's I don't know what's gonna happen. I mean maybe they will have to do forgiveness eventually and just say, you know, it ain't working out.

Bright: said, if you're gonna if you're gonna forgive student loans, you should forgive credit cards.

Duds: Mm, I could see that. That'd be fair.

Bright: Yep, just do I mean three trillion that like I said, that's a dent in now.

Duds: How about homes too? Just get rid of the mortgages, too.

Bright: well I mean I would love that too. Just free so it's just that at that point it's socialism. It's ca yeah, right. Yes. Yeah.

Duds: Free cars. Just forgive all debt. Do a debt forgiveness. You know they used to do that. I was actually listening to a book and it was talking about how they used to have like a debt reset. Back in the

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: back in the old days. It used to be a some

Bright: Huh.

Duds: s like civilizations would do it almost like every fifty years or something, where they would just

Bright: Hmm.

Duds: reset the debt and everybody would just go back to zero.

Bright: Interesting. Well, I mean, and if your country actually has enough money, I guess, like but we that's the thing, we don't. That's if if we had

Duds: We don't. We don't have an am We have a lot of debt.

Bright: if we had a surplus, we didn't have a debt, we had a surplus of cash coming in from taxes, from tariffs, anything else, right? And you could do that, great. All right, and then I'm all for it. But when you're forty trillion dollars in debt. And and money is worth less than it's ever been worth and the

Duds: So what happens if they start to compile all whole lot of Bitcoin? And then say the US like starts

Bright: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: building a Bitcoin reserve and they've getting, you know, I think already they have like five hundred thousand or four hundred thousand or something like that. Say they get to like a million and they're like the the largest

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: holder of Bitcoin in the in the world. And the pri and

Bright: But then they control the price of Bitcoin.

Duds: the price keeps going up. Right.

Bright: Why would it keep going up though? They control they would control if you own so much of it, you would control it. You would control the price. 'Cause you can decide how it gets distributed and who it gets distributed to. I mean, it's kinda like Elon Musk with shares of his stock when he

Duds: Well, I mean most of it doesn't move though. You know. It's all about trading, like how

Bright: Right.

Duds: much trades during the day.

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: I like I think I don't know, we could probably look that up, like how much Bitcoin actually transfers, you know, changes wallets in a day.

Bright: Well let let's save it for another episode, but I like that hypothetical. Maybe we'll look at

Duds: But what I was getting at was like i if the US shifts to say they start building this Bitcoin reserve and the price keeps going up and meanwhile the dollar in relation to Bitcoin is collapsing, right? Well,

Bright: Mm.

Duds: our our debt is all dollar debt, right? It's all USD. So

Bright: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: if they build this reserve of Bitcoin that starts to kind of overtake I mean I'm not right now it's like it dwarfed by the debt, right? But if that starts to go up at a at a different rate,

Bright: Right, right, right. I understand your theory. Right.

Duds: and could they somehow manage to work themselves out of it in a more, I guess, strategic manner than to just have a total collapse

Bright: A hundred percent. And I think that's

Duds: of the currency, you know?

Bright: I think that's ultimately what will happen is we'll change the rules. The US government at some point will change the rules. They'll reset the system. So

Duds: I mean it can't continue the way it's going.

Bright: No. And so they'll figure it out for the country, which I guess is good, and all the rich people, but then somebody is gonna get somebody will get screwed, right? It's so yes, yes. So they'll But they will reset the system. Have you ever seen I think we've talked

Duds: Somebody's gonna get left holding the bag. So basically you'd I mean right. The the key is

Bright: about it, Mr. Robot. Go check out the show Mr. Robot.

Duds: You don't want to be holding on to actual dollars. If you have any assets, you wanna have assets. That's what you want, regardless of what they are. Real estate. Right.

Bright: Yes. Right. Well that's why everybody that was so big on on gold and now Bitcoin or real estate or whatever. I mean, real estate can fall, but you still have your house

Duds: Right.

Bright: as long as as long as you own it, as long as they can't take it away. Yeah.

Duds: Right. The key is you don't want to have dollars. That's like the worst thing you can have, which obviously everybody knows because

Bright: Right.

Duds: if if I was just to give you a million dollars today, what would you do with it? You wouldn't keep it. You'd go buy something with it. You'd you'd buy assets or an investment with it. So that tells you right there that tells you right

Bright: You have to invest it or buy something. Right. Buy assets. Buy assets or you invest it you 'cause you have to earn money on that dollar. Yeah.

Duds: there how bad the money is. If you're not willing to hold on to any of it, I mean you'd hold on to some, but a small portion.

Bright: Sure, right. Right, right. But that's that's also what they want. They w that's the only way that the economy keeps going. So they're

Duds: Because we're consumers.

Bright: haven't you seen that South Park episode? It is, I think, the best episode. where with the the Margaritaville machine and stance trying to the economy's

Duds: maybe.

Bright: colla my god. Go. watch it. It's so funny. And it's all it's all about the economy and and Kyle, of course the the Jew,

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: is he's the savior because he gets a credit card without any limit on it. And people

Duds: of course.

Bright: are like a no limit, you know, and he just starts buying up everybody's debt. He was like, I'll like just bring me and then eventually he gets so tired from buying up people's debt, he cut he dies, right? And they're carrying him off. And Cartman's trying to work the system and as is ca is Stan's dad and Stan just wants to return the Margaritaville machine that his dad bought for like four hundred dollars because they don't have any money. And so he goes to the store, the store says, Well, we can't return it because we actually took all of the your dad bought it on a payment plan, bought it on a credit card, and then we took all the people that bought the Margaritaville machines on that payment plan and we sold it to this big bank. And so they they turned it into a whatever conglomerate of right.

Duds: Like a derivative.

Bright: And then they sold it to the government and then the government had to bail out the bank. it's

Duds: It's like with the mortgage backed securities.

Bright: it is hilarious. You have to go check that one out. And it star it's the classic

Duds: I don't think I've seen that one.

Bright: it's the classic where I think I think it's Stan's dad goes into the bank to open up a bank account for Stan

Duds: Mm.

Bright: with his first one hundred dollars and the guy's like, Sure, we could take that and it's gone

Duds: yeah.

Bright: Yeah right. And then stance down like, What do you mean it's gone? I just gave it to you.

Duds: And it's gone.

Bright: He was like, You did, but it's gone.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: It it is such a funny episode and it's it's pretty accurate. So yes.

Duds: That's a good meme too. And it's gone.

Bright: It right, it's classic. And and again it goes back to the Greaves episode where we talk about how the country's not built on the dollar, it's built on

Duds: That's

Bright: the debt. Right. And 'cause that's they want you is consumerism. Like you get you get a hundred bucks, you spend a hundred bucks. Well yeah, that's that's what you're doing on the fact they don't want you to save. Right.

Duds: Well yeah, that's exactly. You hit the nail on the head. It's like they they don't want you to save. Like they don't the the whole goal is for you to spend and keep that's how you keep the economy going. That's the Keynesian economics, you know, philosophy.

Bright: Correct. That's how you keep the economy going. Right. Right. And again, it's it's it's work to an extent. We're the largest economy in the world, and a lot of other countries economies rely on ours. Well and that's how that's how everything that's

Duds: It works until it doesn't. Yeah.

Bright: how everything is. That's how my refrigerator was.

Duds: Right.

Bright: Which is fixed. Okay. I was like, let's see if we can wrap this up in the next six minutes, but now I got I got all kinds of things. All right. I'm gonna talk we'll s this will be two weeks in a row that I'm gonna skip this story, but we'll come back to it ne we'll come back to it

Duds: Mm-hmm. What is the story?

Bright: next week. Alright, a tease for next week is Double Lives of Suburban Wives. Have you heard about this?

Duds: No, c keep me on the line for next week.

Bright: next week. Yes, absolutely. It's the it's the new show on TLC about St. Louis suburbanites that are that are also sex workers or only only fans. It was in the group chat, but we never talked about it on the pod. But that's that's what it is. So it has

Duds: Didn't we talk about this? Okay. Okay. So that's an actual T V show, right?

Bright: it is an actual T V show and it premiered recently on TLC. I did a little bit of homework and I watched the first episode tonight, but maybe I'll I'll watch next one. We'll talk about it next week

Duds: How was it?

Bright: just because we're running short on time. I mean it's not it's not anything that I'm gonna be like super interested in and of course they they drag it on a little bit but but it is local. It's local to

Duds: Right.

Bright: Saint Louis, give or take. you know, they're all

Duds: Are they just really dumb? Like

Bright: they're all people that are kind of around our age, like late thirties, maybe early forties.

Duds: they but they're not like are they famous for anything or is this No. Okay.

Bright: No, they're famous for this now, but they're and they're OnlyFans people, right? So the the one was remember that remember

Duds: they are. Okay. Yeah.

Bright: that teacher that got exposed and she lost her job? This was like a year or two ago?

Duds: What's that like I don't is it Eureka or something like that? Yeah.

Bright: I think it's something like that. Yes. Yes. So she's on the show and I think she's like the ringleader. So now she went out and got all these other teachers and things like that, and they're all OnlyFans people now. We'll we'll dive into it a little bit more next week.

Duds: Okay.

Bright: Cause there's a couple of other stories just in the next couple of minutes that I wanted to hit on. one is Joshua Baez. Did you

Duds: yeah.

Bright: see his St. Louis Cardinals debut? Holy hell.

Duds: Best debut of any baseball player in major league history.

Bright: That that is true and we'll get into some of the stats, but since we were talking money, did you see this? If you bet ten dollars

Duds: I did say that.

Bright: for him to home earn his first three home runs, do you remember how much money you would have won?

Duds: Wasn't it like four trillion dollars or forty trillion or something like that?

Bright: Seven point five trillion dollars.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: I was like, how does that how that doesn't that's not physically possible? Nobody has that money.

Duds: Could you imagine could you imagine the bookie that would take that bet? You're a bad bookie.

Bright: Well that's I mean that's I don't But now you have all these Vegas kind like somebody I guess was paying out on this. I don't know. Otherwise how else can you even look it up?

Duds: No. I don't know. I mean they probably just took out the odds. Like yeah. 'Cause nobody nobody made that bet.

Bright: Just running up the odds? Well, obviously the odds are astronomical. Baseball has been around for a very long time and this has never been done before.

Duds: Guaranteeing they're not paying that. Caesars is like, nope. there was a glitch in our system. It shouldn't have been like you shouldn't have shouldn't have won that.

Bright: You c you couldn't nobody has that money. And then that goes back to that's a great callback to it's a great callback. Seven and a half trillion dollars. I mean crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. So first player in major league history to hit three home runs in his major league debut. Not only was it his major league debut debut, but it was in his first three at Bats.

Duds: Yeah. I think it was the first pitch he saw too, right? He hit Homer.

Bright: Yes, the very first pitch. So he's the eleventh Cardinals hitter. It has happened,

Duds: Which I I've seen that happen before. Yeah.

Bright: which i is nuts. Eleventh Cardinals hitter to hit a Homer in his first career at bat. So eleven Cardinals have done it. That's pretty cool. Thirty third MLB player to Homer on his the first pitch that he saw. So another crazy stat. Yeah. I remember a couple of cardinals doing it, yeah.

Duds: Yeah. I remember a cardinal doing that too. And then I think I saw and you might have this that wasn't there two other people that homered in their first two at bats? And I thought they were also cardinals. Let me look it up. Because I I thought I saw that.

Bright: I don't have that, but really? Alright. You look that up while I I go through a couple of other things. That that is crazy. I mean the we've had a lot of great Cardinals players. It's nuts. This is crazy. And then of course I think he went for eighteen after that. So

Duds: Yeah. That's of course gonna happen. You knew that was gonna happen.

Bright: Now what was cool though that we're playing in Wrigley, he hit his first three homers were to left field, center field, and then right field. So he homered all over the ballpark, which is just kind of cool. And then when he lined out in his fourth at bat, Which imagine if he would have gone a perfect four for four with four home runs. I'm sure he was trying to do it at that point. But

Duds: That would have been cool. Yeah, you have to.

Bright: he he got a he got a standing ovation from the fans in Wrigley, you know, Cubs fans. So that's something. And of course

Duds: I mean you got to, right?

Bright: you have to. The Cardinals fans were tarp tarps off in in right field, waving their shirts around. Pretty crazy. I'm sure that would have been fun.

Duds: That would have been really cool. here we go. Here we go. So the only three MLB players that have ever hit home runs in their first two career at bats are Bob Neiman, Keith McDonald, and Joshua Baez. Bob Neiman, St. Louis Browns, September 14th, 1951,

Bright: Browns.

Duds: and his MLB debut at Fenway against the Red Sox. let's see, and then Keith McDonald, Saint Louis Cardinal, July fourth through sixth, two thousand. Hit a pinch hit home run in his first career at bat, July fourth against the Reds. and it was a separate game. his next

Bright: Right.

Duds: at bat was on July sixth, so he spann games. But all three of Saint Louis. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

Bright: Saint Louis. That's nuts. That is a crazy stat. And you know, I was thinking about doing a whole episode or segment around the Saint Louis Browns.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: I think that might be something fun to do sometime 'cause when you look into the history of the Saint Louis Browns, it's pretty crazy. It is it is pretty cool. I think yeah. Yeah, yeah. So

Duds: Yep, cool. They're the Orioles. No. Yep. I got a Saint Louis Browns ball cap. I I like that.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty neat. And th y they should really do like a Saint Louis Browns day. Maybe they have at the Cardinals where they wear yeah, where they wear old Browns stuff.

Duds: I think they have. Yeah. I remember my grandpa telling me he would probably, you know, where where they lived, he would sit on his front porch and his neighbor was a a Browns fan. So they'd be listening to the game and sometimes they'd play each other, you know. And then I think they actually had a World Series against each other. Yeah. And yeah,

Bright: Yeah. Right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. then I think they actually had a world. They did. They did. Yep. Yep.

Duds: there was it was kinda like the Chicago rivalry, you know, with the White Sox and the Cubs and

Bright: Right, right. well there was a big brawl at the Cubs White Sox game the other day in in

Duds: Nice. Saw that too.

Bright: center field in the Bleachers. And it took a long time for security to break that up, and I don't think there were any arrests or anything like that and just Yeah. No. No.

Duds: I think it's the White Sox fans, man. I don't think they're very they're not very polite. Which is funny because growing up I always, you know, you always heard about the Cubs and a big rivalry with the with the Cardinals. But I think they're very Yeah, I think the Cubs

Bright: Well, right, 'cause that was the team that we played and I th I think it's more of a fun rivalry now.

Duds: in Chicago are very similar to like how the Cardinals fans are, actually. And the White Sox are yeah, yeah, yeah. Rigley's cool. I mean, old, you know, it's old

Bright: Sure, yeah. Have you ever been to Wrigley for a game? Yeah, yeah, that's fun. Yeah.

Duds: school.

Bright: Right. I enjoyed it.

Duds: And the whole area around it's pretty neat. Like Wrigleyville. I think that's

Bright: Yeah. We you know, we did the we did that and went bar hopping and all that. No, no, us us either. We went up

Duds: And the funny part was I didn't have any no issues with no fans there either. Like it was very playful, you know.

Bright: right when Caroline and I started dating, so we're probably going back thirteen years or something like that. It was pretty pretty early on. We went up there, did a road trip and I remember the game. I'm pretty sure we won two nothing.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: And I predicted it. A Yadier Molina home run. And we were sitting with our friends from Chicago and I said it. He gets up and I'm like, all right. And other fans around me. And I said, Molina's gonna home her right here. Next pitch. Blast it out to left field home run. It was the

Duds: Man, what a great player.

Bright: only two runs of the game. And yeah, it was it was pretty cool. But I remember that one for sure.

Duds: I saw some some stupid post on X and they were calling out the top ten catchers in the in major league baseball history. He and he wasn't even on there. He wasn't even on there.

Bright: To not no, it's it's it's preposterous and I get it that his offensive numbers might not be among the best, but his defensive number and his offense got better every single year. But when you

Duds: Right. Yeah, he got to be a good hitter.

Bright: look at just the stats of attempted stolen bases, that's the that's all you gotta look at. It

Duds: But not even close. Not even close.

Bright: wa it's like less than half of the next team during his career. He like it it's

Duds: He shut the running game down.

Bright: They w they didn't even try to steal off of him because they knew that they were gonna get caught. So j just that he was a lot of fun to watch. And he had some big

Duds: He was so much fun to watch. He became a very clutch, like big time hitter. Like in in situations you needed a hit, he would deliver. Mm-hmm.

Bright: Yes he did. Yes he did. He was really good at poking the ball over second base. He hit some major home runs. He had over two thousand career hits. he he has some crazy stats, and I betcha he could have kept playing.

Duds: It wasn't like Johnny Bench, but he was still really good.

Bright: Right. Yeah. He could have kept playing too. I really think he could have. but knees catcher's a a tough position to

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: to do for that long, so But cool that's another record that'll never be broken. I mean, speak about Baez, I don't I don't know that anybody could ever break this record. That seems crazy. We got the Fernan Fernando Tatis, who two grand slams

Duds: break it? Yeah, four home runs. yeah, the world's the Grand Slams.

Bright: two grand slams and one inning. No way.

Duds: Right.

Bright: And then the Wainwright Molina. That I mean, technically I guess that could happen, but the the fact that players don't stay on the same team that long They both played their entire careers with the Cardinals. Yeah, battery mates.

Duds: Was that games pitched to each other? Yeah.

Bright: Yeah. Pitcher catcher duo. And I remember Braight when they broke that. That was that was super cool. And y think about it, I think Wainwright lost at least two years to his career.

Duds: Who was before him? Was it a was that a Yankee record before that? I bet it

Bright: Mm, I don't know.

Duds: was.

Bright: Yeah, I don't know. And they they played a couple of games beyond that too. All right, we'll stick with sports. just real quick here, we got Bell Reeve BMW Championship here in Saint Louis this weekend. So

Duds: Yeah, it's always fun.

Bright: I think it's a f five way tie for first place right now after after the round today.

Duds: Yeah, I feel like that was just here. What was that, like six years ago it was here? Something like that?

Bright: Yeah, I mean Tiger Woods, he it was it was it was a different tournament though, wasn't it? I don't remember.

Duds: Was it? I thought it was I don't know, might have been.

Bright: W was it also BMW? I don't r I thought it was I thought it was a major. what? Yeah.

Duds: I thought it might have been. it was. It was a PGA championship.

Bright: PGA championship. Yeah, yeah. And Tiger Woods came in second.

Duds: Yeah. Yeah.

Bright: He came out of nowhere and came in second, which was huge and it was a lot you know, good good for Saint Louis. We're not massive on the golf scene per

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: se. But anytime they have these PGA events in Saint Louis, prime primarily

Duds: They're fun to get to.

Bright: at Bel Reve, I've never been to one, but we're on the national stage. Everybody compliments the city. The players are all here. The

Duds: It's a nice course too.

Bright: Yeah, it's a super nice course. Seven hundred seven thousand four hundred and forty eight yard por par seven designed by Robert Trent Jones Senior. and again, this is part of the FedEx Cup. So twenty million dollars total, three point six million dollars to first place. And then this helps determine the final thirty in the FedEx Cup championship or whatever it's called. So

Duds: So whenever it was six years ago, I went to a practice round. I think it was like Wednesday. but

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: then before that, I had gone when I was, I don't know, eight years old, seven years old. my grandpa

Bright: Mm, mm.

Duds: had some tickets and we me and my dad went and we went to, I don't know, a Saturday or something like that. And

Bright: Right.

Duds: I remember vividly, John Daly was there and he was getting ready to tee off on one of these holes and I

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: Crawled up like between all the people standing there, like crawled up on the ground to like see him. And he

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: went to tee off and I guess he looked at his ball and maybe had like a little crack in it. So he chucked the ball over to me. I was like, yeah, got a little golf ball from John Daly. It was cool. I don't think so. Be collector's item now. Yeah, it was

Bright: Do you still have that? I don't think Bummer. Good story though.

Duds: fun.

Bright: Yeah, it was fun. Yeah.

Duds: Apparently I had heard that that same day he let some or maybe it was during a practice round, he let a kid get up there and and tee off on one of the holes he was on.

Bright: Yeah. He's still a character in in the new Happy Gilmore movie and Yeah. Right. read his books.

Duds: I love I I love him. Read his books. He's he's awesome. Have you ever seen him have you ever seen him tee the ball off like out of somebody's mouth?

Bright: I have seen that. I've seen that on social media. Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: It's insane. Like I I don't know how you can do it. Like even though you know you're a good golfer

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: and you're to you might miss it. You might kill the person. I mean, it's insane.

Bright: One screw up man. At least have no teeth. You're gonna lose all your teeth or something. No thank you. No thank you.

Duds: He does it with no shoes on too. It just

Bright: Well you gonna are you gonna watch any of the tournament this weekend? I'll probably try

Duds: I'll probably try and watch some, yeah. I like watching golf.

Bright: and watch one. Yeah, I think I I do too, maybe Sunday. I mentioned the

Duds: I don't like sit down and watch the whole thing, you know, but

Bright: whole thing. No, I mean no. I kinda throw it on in the background,

Duds: Right.

Bright: doing other things. Maybe as it starts to get to the last three holes if it's real close. yeah.

Duds: yeah. Yeah, watching the end's usually fun. So

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll I'll take a look, maybe on Sunday.

Duds: It's nothing better to fall asleep on the couch do than golf.

Bright: W well, I sometimes I used to say that with baseball, especially on a Sunday. But

Duds: That's true. That's a good one too.

Bright: before I had kids, I would watch like innings one and two fall asleep for three through seven and then wake up and watch eight through nine. It's the best.

Duds: There you go.

Bright: Honestly. Before kids, you can't do that anymore. did you watch any any soccer?

Duds: so we had volleyball practice last night and one of the other dads had it on on his phone. So just

Bright: Yeah. Yeah.

Duds: saw that did we end up tying?

Bright: We ended up tying last night. It was a terrible game.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: Terrible. I mean, we played so bad. And if you listen to City S C posse last week, we had s we had a good listenership. over two thousand views on our clips and then podcast views and all of that. But We kind of said like this was the game you had to go in and you had to win because we beat San Jose three to one and San Jose is ahead of us in the table. We kept that unbeaten streak alive, set a franchise record, and I said previously, like, you kind of come away with four points, right?

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Out of these two games. And we did we did that, but we did it backwards. Like I was like, All right, a tie in San Jose and then a win in Kansas City. Well you get the win in San Jose, and I'm like, Well, now I want to be greedy, I wanna go for all six

Duds: Right.

Bright: and Kansas City. City is the worst team in the league.

Duds: Take advantage of it, you know?

Bright: Yeah, worst team in the league. And and we haven't we've never won in Kansas City in in the it's a trap game a

Duds: That trap game you were talking about though. Yeah.

Bright: little bit. And I and I said I said rival rivalry games.

Duds: Never one in KC, huh?

Bright: No, not yet. I mean, it's we're only four years being a club, but we haven't beat them yet. And rivalry games don't follow the rules. It's the same cards, Cubs, Blues,

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Blackhawks. Doesn't matter what the standings are, like it it means more to the players. And I feel like at the moment it means more to the Kansas City players. But I'm sure they came in being like, We gotta end this streak. St. Louis, we're not gonna make the playoffs this year. This is our game. Let's end their unbeaten streak. And they couldn't quite do it. We we snuck out of their with a tie. So now we're eleven. Sure. Of course. Yes. Of course.

Duds: All the teams are capable, you know, all the teams are still professional level and anything can happen. So you gotta play your best game. Yeah.

Bright: Over a long season like that, you're gonna have games like this. Yes. You're not gonna be unbeaten. So but it's a good screen.

Duds: They still got a good streak going, so

Bright: Yes, eleven matches,

Duds: keep it going.

Bright: unbeaten. Now Saturday night we play Houston, which is they're now the number one team in the conference. So

Duds: At least we're at home though.

Bright: we're at home, so I'm excited about that. And our power rankings, we're now number seven in the whole league across

Duds: Wow.

Bright: thirty teams. We're ranked seven in the power rankings and climbing. So that's exciting.

Duds: So what's our record and our division or whatever?

Bright: well we're in sixth place right now. I'd have to look up our exact record, but we're in sixth place and we have opportunities, man, because Dallas is right ahead of us. Houston, they've they've really climbed the table now, so now they're in first place. and then we then we played Dallas at home, so we have a chance to hop them. I think we if we win this weekend and they lose, I think we can hop like two teams. We could end up in fourth place after this weekend. But then we play Vancouver the following week in Vancouver, so that's to start September. Labor Day weekend, and they're number two in the conference. So there's but then you got Portland, Minnesota, Toronto, New York, Galaxy. Those are all winnable games. So I think I'm I well, we

Duds: So not a terribly tough schedule for the remainder.

Bright: we had such a tough schedule to start the year, so it's a little bit easier on the backslide. And I think the the new simulation Reports put us around an 85% chance to make the playoffs and a four percent chance to win the MLS Cup. Yeah,

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: I'll take those odds right now.

Duds: Yeah, four percent. It's probably I mean, the best team's

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: probably not much higher than like ten or fifteen percent, right?

Bright: I think it was like eleven percent Nashville,

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: eleven percent Miami with Messi. Yeah, those were the highest. Yeah.

Duds: Yeah, I mean it's still tough to win at all, so yeah.

Bright: It's always tough to win. Yep. Alright. Well, we're gonna come up with a new episode probably tomorrow as well. So NFN P pod will launch, CD SC policy will launch before the matchup on on Saturday.

Duds: Can't wait, can't wait, gotta get my S DL City.

Bright: Get your your city fix. I do you have any other stories? I have one more and it's it's a quick one. It's not really a story. It's Did you hear this?

Duds: no, not really.

Bright: All right. Well I'll go with you. Did you hear this? Did you know A C D C's coming to town next month?

Duds: I did not know that, but I knew I C P was coming to down.

Bright: I C Pff. Okay. I C P. Would you go see I C P

Duds: No, but I was looking at like stuff that was going on on our anniversary 'cause I was like, what what can we do? What events are

Bright: Yeah. okay.

Duds: going on? Happens to be the insane clown posse playing at the pageant that night. I was like, hmm. That would be interesting.

Bright: Shh, at the pageant. Woof. I'm sh I'm sure your wife would love that. please.

Duds: What are they what are they called? The the gigolo, the is that it's like the

Bright: Yeah, the the jiggleas. Yeah.

Duds: what do they call that though? It's like the clu the call of the gigolo or it's like a gigolo club.

Bright: Something I don't know. Yeah, the insane clown posse for anybody that's curious as to w what ICP, what the hell are they talking about? that's we're dating ourselves a bit.

Duds: We should go. We should go. It'd be fun.

Bright: I d I don't know that I could do that. I'm interested in this one now. If it was just A C D C like, okay. I mean, of course they're awesome and they but they're old, right? So I'm like, I don't know. But they're playing at the dome, so big thing. But

Duds: Who's with him?

Bright: They were supposed they were supposed to have the Pretty Reckless open for them on this whole tour. Which actually I like the Pretty Reckless, right? Chick singer, good good band, right? You'll know you'd know a couple of their songs. But like that's kind of like okay, you know. But now, I guess they couldn't do it. So coming to the rescue to open up for ACDC, fucking Foo Fighters. Now all of a sud that is that is a show

Duds: hm. That could be. That's yeah.

Bright: now. Dave Grohl. Foo Fighters opening for AC DC? Of course they're going to.

Duds: And I'm sure they'll do a little collaboration, you know. Yeah.

Bright: You're telling me Dave Grohl's not gonna come out and sing a couple of songs with AC DC? You bet your ass he is. Yeah, that'd

Duds: Yeah, that'd be kinda fun to watch.

Bright: be kinda fun to watch. So Foo Fighters are off doing their own global tour.

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: And they're making a little pit stop to come to St. Louis, which we were not on their global tour, I don't think. So they're coming to St. Louis to open up for AC DC next month.

Duds: Can you believe we saw the Foo Fighters at the pageant?

Bright: It was my very first concert. Real concert. Yeah. Yeah. So

Duds: Yeah. I mean that's a small small venue for that band now, you know.

Bright: the w when when I get asked that question at work or anywhere, people were like, what was your favorite what was your first concert? Not many people are able to top Foo Fighters. At their I I don't want to necessarily say their prime, but they had were just just getting big. Nine well, we were fifteen, so

Duds: They were Yeah, they were kind of just coming out. What was that? Ninety seven? Eight? Ninety nine?

Bright: probably like ninety eight, ninety nine. We certainly couldn't drive yet. Nate Dog's dad had to drive us down there.

Duds: Yeah. Dropped us off and

Bright: The pageant was brand new. It had just opened up.

Duds: Yeah, my parents probably didn't even know we were going. They're like, No, you can't go to that

Bright: Really? They were just like, Nate Nate's birthday party, you know. That th yeah, it was it was probably Mr Burkhart just telling her parents, I got Yeah, just

Duds: Yeah, 'cause I think there's like an under or under twenty one section, right? I don't know, they still do that? Do they still do that, I guess, so?

Bright: Yeah, that's what we had to do. they do, yes. And you have to get your like your hand stamped or something

Duds: Mm-hmm.

Bright: and yeah, so they they still do it and the the door on the left is over twenty one and the door on the right is under twenty one. And it almost amazes me that almost anybody's under twenty one there. But when I go, parents bring their kids sometimes to some shows, 'cause I'm going to shows of with the crowd is mid forties, right? So they're bringing their kids. So

Duds: Yeah. I haven't been there in so long. Like how many people can even go in there? A few thousand? Yeah, three.

Bright: Three thousand. Three thousand, give or take. Yeah. And then Delmar Hall, which I think did we go to Del no, I don't know. Delmar Hall is right next to it. That's about half the size, maybe, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred. So Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know.

Duds: So you gonna go?

Bright: Maybe maybe. I'm gonna look it up at least, see if it's In in the budget and if it works out on I think it's like a it's not necessarily like a Friday, Saturday. It might be like a Sunday or a Tuesday or something like that. So trying to get the wife to go on a school night, that's that's something. But

Duds: That's a little tough.

Bright: speaking of Foo Fighters, we went and we saw Foo Fighters during COVID. So I don't remember it was twenty twenty-one, maybe twenty twenty two, they came through St. Louis at the amphitheater and it was also a school night, and I was like, We have to go. We have to. We like there were no concerts. This is like the first concert. I was like, we got and

Duds: Open it back up. Yeah.

Bright: it was packed. So and I was that's what I knew. I was like, COVID is not real. Nobody here cares. And yes, we were outside. But come on. I mean, they're just you're wall to wall next to people, screaming music, singing,

Duds: Super spreaders.

Bright: super spreader event. I was like, these people don't care. They just wanna see fucking Foo Fighters. And Dave Gro they played for three hours, you know, to absolutely crush it.

Duds: saw that out at the amphitheater? It's a good venue. Yeah.

Bright: Yep. And I think it's only the s think it's I love it. I think it's only the second time I've seen him. I think I think I saw when we saw and I think I saw him then. And then that was Taylor Hawkins died three three months later, something like that. So Yeah. Always something. Yeah.

Duds: Might have to look that up. Might have to go that that A C D C that'd be pretty good.

Bright: Yeah. Right. All right. Well, maybe

Duds: Hey C Dixie.

Bright: I'll may Maybe I'll take ya since I'm bailing on this charity thing you asked me to go to. Maybe I I owe you one.

Duds: It could be fun, you know. It's kind of an all day event. Both of yeah.

Bright: A C D C or the charity thing? Yeah. I don't know. I looked at the time, I was like, bowling and golf? I was like, what time is this? I was like,

Duds: Yeah. It's like a triathlon.

Bright: nine to six. and it was it was a it was expensive too. I was like you gotta be

Duds: It's an all day event. Drinking all day. It's a charity thing, you know?

Bright: I get that, but I was like you have to pay for the bowling and then the golf and then you you pretty much have to pay for the the extra thing. You the

Duds: The mulligans and all that. Yeah. I think you get like three strikes and mulligans and

Bright: Everybody does it, I'm sure. The mulligan yeah, right. I was like, this is gonna cost three hundred something dollars and then there's a silent auction and the you know, the only Yeah,

Duds: Well, you don't have to do that though. That's optional.

Bright: I guess not. The only good thing is that they probably provide beer and everything like that is perfe is free.

Duds: Beer and food. And they feed you lunch and dinner and yeah.

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trade show chicken as I like to call it though.

Duds: So a couple of years ago I met up with my buddy after that and they were at that what was that bar we went to for the guys night but the the wives went, right there on one forty one. Truman's that's that's where they hung out at

Bright: Truman's? Truman's. Yeah.

Duds: the after it was all over. And they were still buying beer for everybody

Bright: Nice.

Duds: up there, so

Bright: I c I could see that it would be fun, but do we know anybody else that's going?

Duds: One of my fraternity brothers. Yeah.

Bright: Yeah. I don't know. You just end up getting paired with other people.

Duds: Yeah. I know it is kind of pricey. So I was like, if you wanted to do it

Bright: Yeah. I don't know. It is kind of pricey. Yeah. I would like to Yeah. The only good thing is is Yeah, then you right. I under I do understand some of the allure. It's like like, honey, it's it's for charity. I got I gotta go. Dud's invited me,

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: and then you're gone from eight until like let's be honest. You're gone all day and

Duds: Eight till eight, yeah, probably. Eight till ten.

Bright: you the th and you're wasted, so then that you're pretty much like the next day you're out of commish. At least the morning, the

Duds: You're out of commission. Yep. It's built in the whole weekend.

Bright: the AM hours, yeah. I checked 'cause the first thing I looked up was like, do I have a soccer game that Saturday? And I like, no

Duds: Are you gonna get up and mow the lawn?

Bright: soccer game. I thought for sure you were gonna be like, Let's do an Axis and Allies Day. I thought that's what you're that's what you were asking. Yeah, yeah, that would be fun.

Duds: Well that would be fun too. I could be on board.

Bright: Uh-huh. I thought you were gonna be like, My dad's ready to go, he wants to play.

Duds: They're over in England right now with my brother

Bright: nice.

Duds: and his wife. They're on a a cruise, they went to Ireland and they stopped in they

Bright: A cruise. Yeah, okay.

Duds: were in England, so they're doing like all the Brit British Isles, so it was like a

Bright: Cool. Right. Right. Nice.

Duds: fourteen day or ten, eleven day trip or something.

Bright: Right. Right. Yeah. Good for them. Good for them. That's fun. All right. Well let's call it. That all

Duds: Is that all you got?

Bright: you got? That's all I got. We're an hour and forty five. We'd been doing pretty good. The several episodes only had an hour, but if I'm wanna watch

Duds: Yeah, we lost everybody a half hour ago probably, so

Bright: a hundred percent. No doubt. But I'll break it all up. I posted more clips from last week's episode. That the pr the program that I use now has gotten much better at creating these clips. Like I can start all like it takes me probably I don't know, two minutes to edit a clip now. So,

Duds: Hm. Im improving your efficiencies.

Bright: Yes, exactly. So I I put out like maybe four clips from last week's episode. I'd have to go count up count up the views. But it's it's working. We're getting comments, we're getting likes, our our viewership numbers are up. The Greaves episode surpassed three hundred views. So and that's only the second one.

Duds: Nice. Gotta get Greaves back in here. Greaves is fun to talk to.

Bright: Well We were talking, we were talking the other day just on text or whatever, and he was just like, Dude, that was the most fun I've had in a long time I was like, you could come on anytime you want. We record every Thursday night and it's basically

Duds: Yeah, but it's just bullshit.

Bright: Yeah, it was like it's just an excuse to hang out. We just happen to record it and post it on the internet.

Duds: Yeah.

Bright: That's the really the that's really the only thing. But I was like, You come on anytime you want. So we'll we'll have him back on. We'll get another episode where he knows something. He's an expert in a lot of things, I think.

Duds: He is smart dude.

Bright: Smart dude. Maybe we'll we'll talk I don't know, the next Olympics. We could talk men's volleyball, maybe?

Duds: There you go.

Bright: what else does he what else does he know about? His his brother is in pharmaceuticals. H

Duds: One of his high school volleyball what he teammates is Jameson's coach. Yep. No,

Bright: Yeah? Phil?

Duds: Adam. You remember him? No, he's a few years older. He was he was probably a senior maybe. Junior or senior when we were freshmen, so

Bright: He wasn't in our class. I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. Junior or senior. Well, speaking of Phil, I won't say his last name, but he's got a good story too. He's been featured in books, on podcasts.

Duds: The superstore guy?

Bright: yeah. Well, you 'cause you know, he he made millions in the stock market. Young. yeah. Like at twenty.

Duds: did? Well he was like a day trader, right?

Bright: Yeah. He be he became a millionaire by like eighteen, twenty years old. Yeah,

Duds: Dang, good for him.

Bright: yeah. Yeah. So I don't I don't know I haven't seen him probably since Greaves' wedding. Or actually his wedding. I went to his wedding too, which was after Greece's wedding. So that was probably the last time I saw him. Except every now and then we're in Naples, Florida. Actually almost every year, we're in Naples, Florida at the same time, but we've never met up. He's with his family, I'm with my family, and we'll we'll chat on Facebook and I'll like, Hey, I'll be downtown if we run into each other, but we never actually like meet up. But

Duds: So he still isn't sale us?

Bright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still lives in Saint Louis. But he so we can you never know, we could have him on the the pod too, 'cause he has he has a great investing story.

Duds: So he does his own podcast too?

Bright: I don't know if it's his podcast or if he just does other podcasts, but I've seen him post stuff like I said, he's been in not necessarily he didn't write the books, but people have used his story in investment books and things like that. I I think so. Yeah. I thought he's pretty successful at

Duds: Does he still do that? Is that like his he must be pretty successful at it, obviously. I mean

Bright: it, obviously. I I'm pretty sure he's pretty successful and and he has I'm sure other investments. I remember he he made a bunch of money and then got into like real estate and so I'm sure he has just a boatload of of investments now. But I think he yeah, I'm sure he's still in the in the stocks. So

Duds: Very good, very good.

Bright: I know. Why not me?

Duds: Well, you gotta put the money down.

Bright: Hey Bitcoin was up. Bitcoin's up to like seventy five K

Duds: Is it seventy five, really?

Bright: NXL was close to that. It was like seventy four and change. I don't know if it hit seventy five or not. So it's more app. Yeah.

Duds: Let's see here. Nah. yeah, you're right. Seventy four and a half. It got up to that's about did it. Seventy five and a half was the hive. So it's kind of going straight

Bright: Seventy five and a half. All right. Yep.

Duds: up. I mean see what happens. Bobcat man, you're

Bright: Yep.

Duds: missing out.

Bright: Mm-mm. If you would have just bought one Bitcoin when it was at sixty K, you'd have seventy five K now, right? That's

Duds: That's how it works.

Bright: how it works. Just like that.

Duds: And you don't even have to buy a whole one. Just buy a little bit every day. You know? Just transition your dollars

Bright: obviously. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's what I do.

Duds: into bitcoins.

Bright: Yep. I gotta I gotta start doing it more. But maybe we'll talk about that. Maybe you can give me a rundown and I'll I'll get the credit card and all those things. Okay. Okay. Well

Duds: okay. Get a credit card and buy Bitcoin with it.

Bright: no no no, but y you don't you have a credit card where you get the the I have a that's what I mean. All right.

Duds: I do, I have the Gemini card. Except I haven't been able to use it the last month because I missed the payment on accident. And they kinda screw you because I no No,

Bright: You've been shunned?

Duds: I stopped using it, I paid it off, I missed it by like a day, I just forgot to pay it, right? So

Bright: How do you not I always just set up my credit cards to do automatic draft

Duds: Well, I did that. I did that now.

Bright: so that yeah, I do that just like I normally pay more or I pay it off completely, but just in case I th the daily admin tax of laugh. In case you get too busy, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Well imagine if it was

Duds: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And I looked at it and I was like, I just forgot to set up that payment. I was like, you know what? I gotta go in and I gotta do these auto payments because what am I what am I doing? I mean I might as well do it. So so the

Bright: Yes. What am I what am I doing? What do it What is the penalty?

Duds: penalty, I mean they they charge you the late fee, which I I told them and they refunded me the late fee, not a big deal. And then there was

Bright: Okay. Yeah.

Duds: the little bit of interest, right? So I think it ended up being like sixty dollars in interest. So whatever. But the problem

Bright: Yeah.

Duds: was they don't allow you to have a grace period until you make two more payments on time because of the late

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Duds: payment. So if I were to use it, they would charge me interest on all the the the new transactions. So I was like, well now I gotta wait two months before I can use it. So kind of screwed myself. But other than that, I love the credit card. You get like four

Bright: Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. Some of these other than that, I love the credit card. Sure.

Duds: percent back on gas and three percent on groceries or something like that.

Bright: Sure. And it's all on Bitcoin.

Duds: And it's all in you can actually it doesn't have to be, but I have it all in in Bitcoin. You can you can set it to

Bright: Right.

Duds: like any crypto. If you wanted something else, you could have it in that. But yeah, it it

Bright: Right.

Duds: it just it gives you all your rewards in Bitcoin. So kind of nice.

Bright: Yeah. That's cool. but some of these credit cards, like if you have a Lowe's credit card or like a Best Buy credit card or something like that, and you're on a no interest plan and you miss a payment, that's it. Then then then it all the interest

Duds: Mm-hmm. yeah. yeah. All the interest from day one.

Bright: and so from day one and you miss that whole thing. So you could be on week seventeen or month seventeen of your eighteen month no interest plan and you miss that payment date. Could you imagine? Yeah.

Duds: Big time. Big time. Yeah w

Bright: That's why you I always set up that's the first thing I do is like just pay it. I'm usually ahead of I I'm almost on it every day just messing around and paying, doing whatever it is. But God forbid you get busy or you go on vacation or whatever it is and you forget to make a payment. That's exactly what happened. Yep. Yeah.

Duds: And that's exactly what happened. I just I kind of spaced out on it and I looked. It was at a weekend, you know, it was it was due on like a Saturday and

Bright: Right.

Duds: on Monday I was like, shit, just forgot that. So it's two days past. I was like,

Bright: Yeah. Yep. Mm-mm. Two days passed. Yep. Yep. Well, we could tell us more about the credit card, but maybe we'll talk more Bitcoin. There were a couple of other things on this. I was like, that could be a whole episode. So we'll see. I'll source next week. until then, join the posse.

Duds: Adios.

Bright: Audio. NFNP Pod.com.

Duds: Later.