"We Will Never Agree On THIS" | Agree to Disagree with Caleb Hammer
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What's up guys, George Camel here. And here is different today because I am not in my studio, if you can tell. And I'll give you a hint as to where I am. Caleb Hammer. That's a pretty good hint. And if you don't know who Caleb is, you do. Caleb is a super popular content creator. You know his financial audit YouTube channel with well over a million subscribers. And that's where he dishes out some gentle, affirming, even tender love, some might call it, to his guests who are experiencing some financial despair.

Fair? Very fair. Very kind. Some have called him the Mr. Rogers of finance. How have you had enough time to be as stupid as this pile of debt suggests? And there's a lot we agree on when it comes to money, but there's also things we don't agree on. And so today, back by popular demand, it is the segment... Agree to disagree. I don't agree to that. Neither do I. But before we get started, let's agree to hit those like and subscribe buttons because I got some catching up to do to this guy. And it's going to take years. So do us a favor.

Caleb, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Is it fun to be a guest in your own studio? It is, yeah. Except you're on the guest side, so I still feel like the boss here. Was it a power move? Yes. How come you get the aquarium plants in the back? You gotta ask your crew. What do I have? A singular plant? Singular plant. Thriving, though. It's a beautiful... Is that real? Oh, it's real. That's gorgeous. All day, baby. Just gorgeous. Well, we're gonna play Agree to Disagree Headlines Edition.

So here's how it works. I'm going to read a headline. We're going to hold up our little thingies here. If you agree, green to your camera. And if it's red, there we go. It's like pickleball, but less athleticism.

And so we're going to hold those up to see, do we agree or disagree with the spirit of these headlines and the implication? And then we vigorously debate them. I wouldn't say vigorous, although I do feel like you would have done great in debate club. Okay. Were you ever in a debate club? No, I'm a flubber. I can't do like half the words. Really? Oh, yeah. So you think you'd stumble on a court of law? I am a flub master.

I don't know if that means what you think it means. I don't know what it means. Okay, we'll let the audience decide. I don't get it either. Here's our first headline from Business Insider. Legalized sports betting is wrecking young men's financial futures. So, agree or disagree, is sports betting ruining young men's futures? We're off to a great start. I hate this, though. I hate this. I know you do. I hate this take. You hate the black and white. Yeah, it's too black and white. Because I think... You have your caveats and objections. If people want to gamble...

Whose house are we in? I'm sorry. We're filming at my studio. Golly. If people want to gamble, they should obviously be able to gamble. I think for some people that are obviously younger, more impressionable, brains not fully developed, obviously if they head into something that can be more addictive, there's obviously higher chances of risk there. So for those that have their life ruined for them, yes, I agree that their life was probably ruined for it. It doesn't mean I think it should be in a legal industry.

Well, this goes back to our conversation we've had, which is the majority of people will not do well with something like this. Sure. There's a small amount. Are the majority addicted, though?

That's the thing. Because that's where I start becoming concerned. If someone loses five bucks because they had five bucks of fun money. No one's financial future is wrecked over five bucks. But I think what we're seeing is a trend where more and more people, it's become socialized. It's become normalized where they go, yeah, it's a little money here, a little money there. And all of a sudden you kind of look up and you go, I'm glued to this app in the next trade and the next. Yeah. You know, because now you can bet on them.

little tiny minutiae of the game. Video games too. Loot crates, EA. Yes. You want to get the next skin, all that stuff. You're putting money in. You're kind of gambling that as well. It's the same psychology that they're tapping into. And that's what personally worries me. Yes. So is it wrecking everyone's futures? No, but for those that do it, I don't think it's a healthy habit. That's why I'm a green, but well, with a little softness on it. All right.

Next headline. This one's going to really butter your biscuits. Market Watch. A $100,000 salary no longer buys you a middle class lifestyle. So here's the question. Is $100,000 income middle class? I'm going to go. Can you basically can you still have a good life making $100,000? I'm going to say yes, you can have a good life.

I'm in the middle. You're in the middle. Yeah, if you're in L.A., New York City, probably not. Location matters. Location matters. Ultra high cost of living, $100,000 in L.A., you're going to be struggling. Yeah, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, it's going to be harder. But if you're in...

Kalamazoo? Kalamazoo, Michigan, you'd be doing pretty okay. You'd certainly be above the – I mean the median household income in the United States is $74,000, right? Household, yeah. So if you as just one person is making $100,000 a year, I'd still – You're well above the median. Yeah, middle class, definitely solid middle class. What is middle class? It feels like a squishy thing to even say middle class. It's like if you're not in poverty and you're not the ultra wealthy, you're middle class.

which is most people. Yeah, I wish I knew the definition off the top of my head, but... Even with the definition, it still feels squishy, but can you make it work on $100,000? I say yes, especially if you don't have debt. It's a very different ballgame. If you're stacked up to your eyeballs with debt, you can make $150,000 and be broke, and you've talked to some of those folks. If your risk profile is lower, you can properly budget...

On a budget, no debt, you're doing okay with $100,000 in most places. No bad debt? Don't even get me started. Here we go. Get your popcorn ready. Next headline, also from MarketWatch. Here's the headline. I retired comfortably on $100,000, so it's not a myth if you can handle the risk. So here's what this is saying. Can you retire comfortably on a total nest egg of $100,000? We both disagree that that's... I would love to hear their...

analysis behind that. Well, I remember reading the article and they were saying they're going to live off $1,300 a month, which is about $15,000 a year, which is still about 15% of that nest egg every year, which feels like a very high...

withdrawal rate. Wow. Okay. That's interesting. I don't know what they're invested in. Yeah. They're just, I don't know that you could perpetually live off of 1300, even with, with very little bills and payments in your life because things are going to get more expensive. Property taxes will go up. So even without a mortgage payment, this feels, that feels real thin. That's intense. Yeah. You might be able to do it for a few years, but for a 10, 20, 30 year retirement, no dice. Okay. We're off to a good start so far.

I will say, a lot of common ground here. Let's see if we veer off the track. MSN, here's the headline. Good debt makes you rich. Robert Kiyosaki and Ken McElroy are sitting on a combined $2 billion in debt, but they're not worried. Here's how borrowing can supercharge your wealth. So here's the question, agree or disagree, does good debt make you rich?

I'm sorry. You're halfway. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm bad at this game because that's such a, that's such a like assignment. That's such a 100% assignment. That's what headlines do. You can do good, bad. You can be leveraged up to your eyeballs and just be stupid and have no sense of risk and just get completely...

So no good debt does not get you rich. You can use proper leverage in certain ways that can accelerate you there quicker. It's true. But this strategy, you know, would you subscribe to the Kiyosaki method of leverage as much debt as you can? As much as you can? My risk profile wouldn't cover that personally. But obviously some people do do it successfully. Combining $2 billion in debt, that's pretty serious. Sure, but what is his overall, you know...

Who knows? Assets, what are they worth? Because if he's $2 billion in debt, but he has $10 billion of assets, I'm just like, okay. Okay, next one from CNAP Money. Today's American dream is renting, not buying. Not a lot of context there.

Today's American dream is renting, not buying. Is this what people dream of? Are more and more people, I guess, gravitating towards renting as a positive thing? I don't think that's true. I can see the mindset behind it. I'm going to go disagree from what I've seen. No one's going, I'm just dreaming of renting the rest of my life.

Yeah, that's fair. The only reason I'm going to give agree is because right now it makes much more sense mathematically to rent than own today with, you know, record home sale price last month. Interest rates still quite high. You know, a lot of people, they value being able to move.

pretty much anywhere. Now you can break a lease, hard to break a mortgage. You can break a lease even if you don't, you know, after a year, you go somewhere else. And if you want to sell the house within a couple of years of buying it, you're likely going to be at a loss. Actually, at this moment, you might get to the American dream a little quicker if you're renting now. At some point, if you want to be a homeowner,

Absolutely encourage it. Love it. I support it. I love real estate myself, but renting is pretty darn okay. Five years from now, who knows? Maybe it'll be flipped, but right now. Well, my take is long-term, if you look at your whole financial future, I think it's better to own something and reduce one of your biggest fixed expenses, which is your rent or mortgage. And so owning a house helps you get there. And rent, we know, will go up over time. So will your expenses with a home.

But I do think there's merit to the fact that people are going, you know what? I'm okay being more flexible and nimble right now, not having to worry about that. I'm trying to get my financial house in order, get my foundation set up, get out of debt. So I think it's wise. I think renting buys patience. And as you build that financial foundation, get out of debt, get an emergency fund, get a down payment. It's a great thing to do. This one, I don't know how you feel about this. Inc.com, Donald Trump supports a US Bitcoin stockpile. Economists aren't convinced.

So here's the question. Agree or disagree? Is it wise for the U.S. to have a large stockpile of Bitcoin? Is it wise to do this? Would I support a Bitcoin stockpile? I'm going to disagree. I don't like this. And it has nothing to do with hate against crypto. I'm going to disagree, but I'm also going to

confess my ignorance on it and say that I'm not really educated enough to have a good opinion. Okay. On that one. Here's my take. Did you see RFK? He did a speech at the Bitcoin conference and he said, I want the US government, when I'm in office, we're going to buy 550 Bitcoin a day until we get to 4 million Bitcoin, which is about 20% of total Bitcoin.

I did the math and I'm going, okay, buying 550 Bitcoin a day at today's rate, that's like $38 million. But where's this money coming from? It's taxpayer money. Sure. So we're just going to go probably further into the deficit with

With taxpayer money to buy Bitcoin? That don't make no sense. Honestly, in general, when it comes to crypto, I mean, I've just, I found my path of wealth and success of building business, investing in real estate and my low cost index fund. So honestly, I'm just really not interested in that world. So I haven't cared enough to become as educated on it as I, as someone would want me to be. I just honestly don't give a.

I really don't. Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm comfortable with where my investments are at. I don't feel a need to diversify any further into alternative investments. So I think we're on the same boat here, except I don't have any crypto. I'm more looking at my own house. Will I have millions in retirement when I get there? Yes, I'm fine with that. Oh, ladies, he's rich. In retirement. Also married. Hey, Whitney. So cute.

It's like too cute almost. All right, here's our last official headline. This one's from Gallup. Americans continue to name inflation as top financial problem. Here's the question, agree or disagree, is inflation really what's hurting Americans' wallets the most?

We're almost like 10 for 10 here. For me, inflation, you know, we're sitting at 3%. Some metrics are showing even less than 3%. So right now, no. Wages increased 3.5% year over year this last month, and inflation is below that. So technically, now wages have technically for a month, a month. Don't freak out. I know because the moment you say this, people are going to freak out. But mathematically— Also, the overall wages going up or down, that doesn't necessarily reflect on your personal—

Of course. And then I would obviously just say, I mean, I see the spending habits of people on the show all the time. We know where consumer debt is. If inflation was at 9%, even still, I don't think that's going to be the biggest determining factor when someone has $50,000 and 30% credit card debt. Can I show you a poll that I recently did on my YouTube community? Because it kind of ties into this. It's a reliable scientific survey.

12,000 people. That's statistically significant. Here was the poll that I did. This is one day ago as of this recording. I said, what's the number one thing holding you back financially? I said, is it debt? Is it your lifestyle? Is it inflation slash the economy? Is it your income or is it kids? What do you think the number one answer was for what's holding them back financially? They probably said inflation, right? That was number two. Wow, okay. Guess what number one? What? Which one? Income. Ah.

Oh, interesting. That their income is the number one thing holding them back financially. It always feels like you never have enough. I feel like that's kind of like just human psychology, right? If I made more money, I'd be better off financially. And we know from reality that that's not always the case. Yeah. The more you make, the more you spend. Lifestyle creep. That's real. And so what we were just talking about is really that debt and lifestyle are way bigger factors. Yeah.

as far as how we're doing financially, what's holding us back versus inflation or even our income. Would you agree on that? Absolutely. Hey, we'll get back to the game in just a moment. But first, let me shout out a sponsor of today's episode. And that is Telo, a mobile service provider designed to save you money. And I think that's something we can all agree on, that it's good to save money on your cell phone plan and that you shouldn't overpay. And Telo has plans as affordable as five bucks all the way up to 25 bucks for their unlimited everything plan.

plan. And the best part is there's no contracts. There's no sneaky fees. You can upgrade, downgrade, change your plan whenever you want. And I love that about me. And because you're a George Camel fan, you can get an extra five bucks off. If you go to tello.com slash George, you'll get five bucks off the unlimited everything plan for your first month of service. So go check them out. Tello.com slash George or click the link in the description. Today's video is also sponsored by Delete Me. One thing we can all agree on is that scammers, spammers, and stalkers...

Bad. That's a thumbs down right there. And that's why I love Delete Me. They scour the internet for these data broker sites that are keeping all of your personal info, putting your business out there, and they remove it for you, saving you time, hassle, and the risk of fraud and scams. And here's the best part. They've saved me 44 hours so far just by using their service over the last few months. And with that time I've saved, 44 hours, I could watch like three, maybe four of Caleb's financial audits. And that is time well spent.

So if you want an extra discount, go to joindelete me.com slash George and you'll get 20% off any of their plans or click the link in the description below. All right, back to Caleb. There's a lot more we disagree on. There's a lot more we agree on. Oh, sure. Is there any beef you have with me that you want to bring up with this? Beef? Yeah. I don't think so. Well, you've said things on other podcasts.

Have I? Like, I'd love to hang out with George. Oh. And here I am. Yeah. We're hanging out. Well, can I ask you to agree and disagree? Sure. Do you agree or disagree that 7% is a safe withdrawal rate? In case you didn't know, a withdrawal rate is the percentage of your savings that you can withdraw each year while still having enough money to last throughout retirement. Now, back to this incredibly nerdy conversation. Depending on your situation. What situation could make that safe? If you have $7 million...

Should we run that simulation? Go for it. Okay. This is fun. I'm being such a naughty little boy right now. Some men just want to watch the world burn. How long will I have in retirement? How long before I die? Well, actually, how long do you? Well, let's say, you know, the average person retires at 65. At 65. Median. And they make it, let's say, let's give them 95. Let's be really generous. Is that fair? Sure. So you get to take out $490,000 a year. Here's the thing.

Am I going to take out $493,000 a year? If you're following the rule, you are. On an actual expense level, my expenses are not going to be $490,000 a year of what I need to live. Sure. Even have a very comfortable life, no one would be like, I need half a million dollars. But we're saying that people can. And we're saying that people can, right? Let's say my expenses, I'm going hog wild. I'm traveling.

Failure rate of 51.8% based on entering every year within the stock market history of the United States. A failure rate of 50%. For someone and an organization that...

isn't willing to accept a 2% interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage because that's considered too much risk, I don't think a 50% risk is considered acceptable. Well, in this scenario, it's not real anyways because no one's going to go, I'm going to withdraw half a million dollars a year no matter what happens in the stock market. Well, if they knew what was safe. Computers don't reflect reality. That's the problem. So we're saying if it's down, people would do small. I'm saying this would never happen in reality.

And we live in reality. And so while we can run simulations on computers all day long, truthfully, that person is going to go, ooh, down here in a stock market, I'm going to use my cash reserves. I'm going to limit my spending. I'm going to ratchet it down. They didn't have cash reserves. We said they had 100% in stocks. Well, I'm saying you have cash reserves. Mm-hmm.

You have your emergency fund and even a retirement. Let's have it. If it's me in retirement, I'm going to have a year or two of cash reserves for my expenses. We should have baked that for, you know, down years to where I'm not touching it on the down years. And so that's where I'm going. Like, it's just more nuanced. I'm not saying you've got to do seven or you got to do four. Not got to do. But if like people are listening to a trusted voice and we say that it's safe to do 7% a year, we're saying if the market did this, you can take out this.

And what we're saying for the market that it averages 10% a year. So up years, down years combined, averaging a 10%. That's been the argument that's been made. But it's a hypothetical. Here's what you could do. And the reality is we meet people every day who have they call into the show and they have a million or they have a million five and they live great lives. They're debt free. They have low expenses and they don't need to withdraw. That's that's incredibly fair.

And so that's why I'm like- But isn't it dangerous to then say though that 7% is safe? I don't think we were out there saying, this is what you have to do in retirement. Not have to do, but saying that it's safe. Or saying, here's what you could do based on the math of if the market did this- 50% failure. And here was inflation. That is not reality. That's the reality. If you invested in the stock market every year- And I spend a half a million dollars a year. Every year, I still have a 50-50 shot of making it 30 years.

Okay, well, so that's $7 million. It would be the same failure rate or pretty darn close if someone only had a million dollars and withdrawing 70%, 7% would be $70,000 a year. So they might need to spend $70,000 a year. Maybe. Maybe.

At that case, and if it's a 50% failure rate, that seems scary to suggest that that's okay. But again, it's all relative to your life, your expenses. And if you follow the plan, you have very little, you don't have a mortgage. Yeah. And so I'm not going to advocate someone up to debt in their eyeballs go, well, you should just withdraw this percentage. I'm going to go, well, follow the plan as part of the plan, withdraw what you need for your expenses. Mm-hmm.

Don't have a crazy, lavish lifestyle that's out of your control. If the market takes a real harsh downturn, let's try to limit our withdrawals. Let's ratchet up our budget. That's what normal people would do. Sane people would do that, which then changes the numbers, and we can't account for all of that in our simulations. I'll leave you alone now. I've had my cheeky moment. You had your fun. We'll get there, and we'll talk about it when we're both retired and old, crotchety men. Yeah.

George, come back on financial audit. And we'll both be going, I withdraw 1% from my retirement to cover my medications. Who knows what it'll be. But, you know, I'd rather you have more than you need. Do you have a retirement date? You're like, hey, I'm out at this. Are you going to just kind of work until you stop enjoying it? There was a number I wanted to hit that I hit and I said I was going to retire when I hit that number, but I ended up really liking the job. I used to, like, I don't know, I used to really care about

because like when you just all of a sudden get into this and it blows up you really care about what people think about you because only you know you your friends know your family knows you and then just random people and they comment on you it's like oh my gosh you know nothing about me this is so parasocial and weird but you know I've been able to separate from that and just like never see it never care and they'll never meet me I'll never meet them so literally nothing they say it matters

That's actually impressive. And once I got to that place, which has been, you know, that started happening just like a couple months into this year. When I started working on that therapist therapy, it's good. I really started liking the job more. Therapy. I'm sure it's got, you know, it's ups and downs. Yeah. You know, it's not all fun and games.

Yeah. But today, it's games. Oh, yeah. Would you agree that we had a good time today? I agree. We had Summer Moon. That was good. We got to debate a little. Yeah. That was fun. I feel like you got... I think you needed to get that out. I think it was, you know...

Cathartic. It's fun because, again, we agree on 99% of the things, but what you agree on is no fun to talk about. That's not good content, and I want your channel to have good content. Wow. Well, it currently doesn't. So this is the first piece of good content we've had. And, Caleb, I have enjoyed hanging out with you. It's been a long time coming. Hope you guys enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it.

Thank you to Caleb and his team for letting us take over the studio for this segment. Very kind of you. And if you like this segment, check out the last time we did an Agree to Disagree with Jaspreet and Humphrey. Nice guys. Wow. Yeah. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.