As we just passed the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic changing our lives, we thought we would reflect on the past year. The financial and personal repercussions were many. We faced difficult situations, but also saw good in others and found some interesting surprises. Everyone faced challenges, yet through it all we found the human spirit is strong and resilient. People helped each other out both financially and emotionally. Some of us saved like we have never saved before, and others spent in areas they never would have dreamed. Some learned they don't need to grocery shop every day. Some became meal planners while others spent a lot on takeout to help their neighborhood businesses stay afloat.
As we enter spring and see more people get vaccinated around the world, we are optimistic that we are turning a corner, and normalcy is within sight. Whatever our new normal will be. Here's to a bright financial future for you!
As we just passed the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic changing our lives, we thought we would reflect on the past year. The financial and personal repercussions were many. We faced difficult situations, but also saw good in others and found some interesting surprises. Everyone faced challenges, yet through it all we found the human spirit is strong and resilient. People helped each other out both financially and emotionally. Some of us saved like we have never saved before, and others spent in areas they never would have dreamed. Some learned they don't need to grocery shop every day. Some became meal planners while others spent a lot on takeout to help their neighborhood businesses stay afloat.
As we enter spring and see more people get vaccinated around the world, we are optimistic that we are turning a corner, and normalcy is within sight. Whatever our new normal will be. Here's to a bright financial future for you!
[inaudible] Welcome to Talk Wealth to Me, a safe space podcast, where we chat about anything and everything related to personal finance, the information contained in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute as accounting, legal tax or other professional advice.
Chase Peckham:We are, we find ourselves in spring and we just did a SWYM Live this morning, talking about spring cleaning, uh, and, and not just your typical spring cleaning, right? We talked a lot about just spring cleaning your financial situation, which can go hand in hand with your, your spring cleaning.
Felipe Arevalo:Actual cleaning.
Chase Peckham:Yeah as your actual cleaning. And, and in this day and age where we're starting to coming out of a pandemic, I think we can see a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak more and more people are getting vaccinated. Uh, California is lagging a little bit, but that's a whole different topic and not for this podcast.
Felipe Arevalo:But San Diego, as a County, we're holding our own the numbers. Aren't that bad as far as how quickly they're getting it in people's arms.
Chase Peckham:Well that's good. I know that my wife, uh, being in, in education has got her last one tomorrow. Her second one. Um, my father has already been vaccinated. He's had both, so, um, and I know your parents have been through theirs.
Felipe Arevalo:My parents, they got their first one last week.
Chase Peckham:That's awesome. So it's kind of like, I think some of us feel like there's like, like a new air right there. There's something.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah there's that extra little energy.
Chase Peckham:extra a little bit, a little bit. Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:You hear things on the news, like Disneyland is opening up. Um, and I'm not going anytime soon, it's going to be crowded. It's hard to get in, but just the fact that it's opened back up, I was like, Whoa, that's cool.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. I mean, I think just getting back to normal, a little bit of normalcy. I mean, I think that we're never going to get back to completely the way it was. I think that the pandemic has shown itself in some ways that we can do life in different ways, but I think we've noticed that. Debt has been paid off more this year.
Felipe Arevalo:It's been going down!
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:And, and, and I know there's, you know, many Americans who are struggling and they lost a job loss of income. And so for some, it has been very rough as a whole Americans actually paid off more debt, um, than ever before. And that has a lot to do with, there were limited options to go out and spend, uh, you know, for, for a lot of people in some of the things that maybe we did habitually, um, they just weren't there anymore. And, and it was an eyeopening experience. Although people forecast that 2021, we'll reverse the trend
Chase Peckham:And I'm afraid that's true. And we've talked about that in this podcast a few times, the emotional side of spending and a lot of that, and I can tell you just from, in my house, you know, my wife, we've, we're a family that travels, we are a family that is one of those experiences over things, kind of a family. And we haven't been able to travel really this last year. Right. We haven't been able to do the normal things that we would plan on doing, and you can just see, you know, Kerri just beaming to do something else and, and go somewhere. And we have got those plans, you know, ready to go. So you can't, it can be a very emotional thing where you will spend more money than you normally would because of excitement just to change.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah.
Chase Peckham:You know, the, the day-to-day monotonous that we've been through. Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:Right. Trying to play catch up for the year that was lost of certain activities of eating out of the, uh, you know, going out with friends, things like that.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. I mean, little thing, happy hours, right. I mean, how many people would die? I was just saying the other day, and I have really, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was, we were spending a lot of money in alcohol and beer and those kinds of things. Cause it was like, w we just didn't know what to do.
Felipe Arevalo:Right exactly.
Chase Peckham:It was like every night was a Saturday night, right.
Felipe Arevalo:No sports, no kid's activities.
Chase Peckham:We'd been sitting here all day, nothing, no nothing. And, you know, you gained a couple pounds, I'm now back way back down, but it took a while to, you know, for us to go, Oh, you know, this thing is going to stick around. I'll wait, we better, we can't do this every day.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:And we stopped spending money on those kinds of things. But just the idea of getting a beer on draft.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah!
Chase Peckham:Like that is like, and sitting down where there are other people watching video screens.
Felipe Arevalo:Endless chips and salsa
Chase Peckham:Yes. And be exactly whatever it is that your happy hour might be, or just being able to be with friends and being able to do those things.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah.
Chase Peckham:Uh, I think all of us are excited and, and take and took for granted. Some of those things that we got to do every single day. And yet those are some of the things that we talk about over the 11 years that we've been doing personal finance. Those are the kinds of things that always got people in trouble. And we'd be like, look, you got to keep track of this stuff.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:And here we are. Right. There's a lot of people going, gosh, I can't wait to do that if not, just for the social aspect of it.
Felipe Arevalo:Right. Yeah. I mean, early on, like I know you and your friends had them, me and my friends had them where I like virtual happy hours, but that was only like a short term fix. And then it was like, okay, this is old guys. We're all just sitting here in front of our computers. Um, so there is that urgency to say, Oh, I can go back out. And it's interesting that it's, um, like unlike a lot of other things, personal finances, this isn't like a San Diego thing, a California thing, or even a U.S Thing. This is a, like a worldwide thing where there's so many different parts of the world, all going through very similar situations. Like I know I'm part of a dad group on Facebook and there's a lot of, uh, guys from England. Um, and they're all saying the same thing. Like I can't wait to get out to a pub and it's like a worldwide thing.
Chase Peckham:It really is. It's, it's, it's one thing that we can all take into account that we're, we're going through those same experiences, um, same financial turmoils, same, uh, economic issues and, and social aspects and all of it. And unfortunately, uh, personal finances kind of are attached to all of it, right.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah.
Chase Peckham:I mean, that's, the economy in general is the way our society tends to lean one way or the other.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:Good things. We were talking with, uh, talking about the housing market, just with, with one of our colleagues and her looking for a home. And right now in this time, it's very difficult to be a first-time home buyer. It's hard to find a place is as organized as she is, right. She and her husband very organized and ready to go and have done all their things. They've done all their ducks in a row and they're still not able to get into.
Felipe Arevalo:It's so hard that her mentioning it got me thinking, like, let me look into this, let me look. Cause eventually Sarah and I want to buy a home and it's hard to just even go on these sites, like a Zillow, for example, and do any kind of research. Because if I jump on on Monday night and I go on there and I look through, and then I don't have time to look at them again and compare them into a Friday, they're gone.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:It's a whole new set of them and it's not many, but they're not on there very long. Um, it's just a very complex, very difficult market. Uh, I'm glad we're doing an episode coming up on this.
Chase Peckham:Yeah, I was going to say, it's coming up.
Felipe Arevalo:I have a ton of questions.
Chase Peckham:In the next three or two or three weeks. We'll we'll have a realtor and, uh, a lender, both going to be on the podcast just to talk about the markets and not just locally and regionally, but, but nationwide because it, it looks like this is a nationwide thing. Now, every region is going to be affected differently, but it's not that much different as it usually is. And we were just talking about how, you know, just 10 years ago, 11 years ago when Kerri and I bought our house, the market was completely different. You know, we, people weren't offering a$150,000 over asking. We, I was, I offered 250 under and they accepted, you know, it was a completely different world, but the, when you are in it, when you are in that time, in your life, where you are making personal financial decisions for yourself and for your family and for your future, it seems like it's never going to change, but we know it's going to.
Felipe Arevalo:It's always going to change.
Chase Peckham:It is, it's just hang in there.
Felipe Arevalo:It's hard to see it when you're in it. Like everything else, you know, it's hard to have that, uh, hard reflection where you're like, man, cause it's happening to you at that moment. And there's so much to it, you know, with personal finances, but yeah, it's crazy personal finance. Hasn't been exempt from being an odd year, right? So there's, it's a component of so many other things in people's daily lives where it's, you know, it makes sense that the last year has been a little off for personal finances for a lot of people.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. And for so many different reasons, uh, you know, there's some people who have kept their jobs and they're actually saving more money than they ever have because they couldn't do anything. But then there's a large, large, um, part of society that has lost their jobs because they, they had to close their doors. They couldn't be visited. I mean, the restaurant industry has been hit so very, very hard. The entertainment industry has been hit so very, very hard, uh, hotels travel San Diego in general, which, you know, our number one is.
Felipe Arevalo:Could you have ever imagined a summer where no one visited San Diego? I would have never imagined that!
Chase Peckham:Our beaches weren't packed. Our beaches were closed.
Felipe Arevalo:The zoo was closed.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. I mean the, yeah, it was, it was, movie theaters. I mean, we may never see movies the way we are used to. I mean, you talk about it, you listen to other podcasts of, of, uh, like Dax Shepard or any, and a lot of the actors and actresses that he has on and Rob Lowe and some of those different, great podcasts, they talk about how the industry has so dramatically changed in one year.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:And they're making movies for different, you know, but how are they sad that the theaters aren't gone? And I think a lot of them are just kind of taking it in that that's, that, that part of our society, that part of what we knew could be changing, but at the same time, it could be one of those things where people are just clamoring to be able to sit with a very big screen in the dark and escape, instead of it just flipping the channels
Felipe Arevalo:And, and, and knowing that there's a difference, there's a, at some point too, there's like a nostalgia to it at this point. Because you haven't been able to do it for a year where it's like, man, I really miss the movies and I wasn't a big movie goer, but the fact that I couldn't go, you know, that's a different story.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:Uh, it's the fact that it's not there that it's like, Whoa, I do miss going to a movie. Um, you know, my seven year old, he had just barely starting to get into the hang of, I'm going to keep track of when certain movies are going to come out and I can try and get my parents to get me to go. Uh, and, and he is smart and you know what, it's a little bit of bribery on our part because get good grades do good for however long from here to there, don't get into any trouble and we'll bring you to the movies. Um, but it's just, it's different. It may not necessarily that industry is completely different. May not be there for that. I'm thinking of the new bribe.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. Yeah. You might. That's a very, very good point. You know, there was a great question asked earlier today on our SWYM Live too. And I think that we should cover this because in this day and age, the credit reports and credit scores are, I mean, there's no logic really to the way things are going right now, just, you know, with spending and not spending in what's being reported and what's not being reported. And the question was, he just paid off a lease and he noticed that with the account disappearing, that he was expecting his credit score to go up. And when he looked at it, his credit score went down and I wish there was a clean.
Felipe Arevalo:Nice, easy answer for this.
Chase Peckham:But there isn't because it matters so much on other factors in his financial background. But one thing that we can tell you that, uh, when, when you have the type of loan, like a car loan is, uh, it's not calculated. Your credit score is not calculated exactly like it is. If it were a revolving debt, like, like a credit card where it's taking into consideration your debt to credit ratio and how much credit you're using, this is based on, uh, a vehicle of whether you're making your payments every month. And when you stop making your payments and an account disappears that rotation of, and that, um, back-to-back payments every single month are they disappear and that can have an effect with it dropping off. And then depending on what other types of credit he has, um, it may not be as much and, or it doesn't fit into the equation as much, but chances are that with that fluctuation, it's going to come back and it will be fine as long as you make your payments on your other debts. Right. I mean, for all we know too, he doesn't have any other debts. And so if that's his only account and it fell off now, he doesn't have one. Um, he's not making payments per month. That can have an effect as well as, as backwards as that seems,
Felipe Arevalo:There's so many different components to it. It's like when we are out in the community or when we were out in the classrooms and you have students say, Hey, if I, if I paid off my$250 balance on my credit card, how many points would my score go up? You know, I'm, I'm not trying to Dodge your question. I just can't answer it.
Chase Peckham:Right.
Felipe Arevalo:You know, there's no fixed answer. Um, and you know, I think part of that is because they have those little calculators online sometimes where you can like it a little slider and you can kind of see like, Oh, if I paid off this much debt, but all those are estimates.
Chase Peckham:Those are serious estimates.
Felipe Arevalo:Right. It's not an exact science.
Chase Peckham:Don't take that verbatim.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:There's just, yeah. There's, there is much as know experts like we are. I mean, we read into this, we know this stuff backwards and forwards, and yet even for us, it changes. And, and it's, it's still very difficult to understand, we know the basics, but even, you know, my wife and I, we paid off, uh, some secondary loans when we refinanced our house. And, you know, just by taking on a new loan with our house, that first month, my credit score went down, probably like 30, 40 points. And yet I paid off other loans, but here two months later, my scores right back up and actually 10 points higher than it was before. So it, you know, it's just a period of time. It's, it's, it's a snapshot in that period of time. So don't panic. Um, it'll come back.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. Especially, you know, if you see just small fluctuations, a few points here and there, not something to panic about now, if you ever see like a huge drop in your credit score, you definitely want to take a look at your credit report at that point, just to make sure there's nothing going on there that, that shouldn't be
Chase Peckham:For sure. You know, we're also coming up on tax time, um, as we speak now.
Felipe Arevalo:Talk about things changing.
Chase Peckham:Middle of March. Yeah. And there was news that came out today, um, as of, as of this date and the week that this was released, uh, that it's looking like they're going to push it back to March or excuse me, to May 15th.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. Get an extra month for taxes. and I think it was sneaking up on people.
Chase Peckham:I think so too, I have a number of friends that are CPAs and they've been mad at work since, uh, you know, end of January really
Felipe Arevalo:Well, it started later this year. So I think that the filing period was going to be much shorter. Um, so this gives a little bit of breathing room for people who are genuinely trying to get their taxes done, but just,
Chase Peckham:Yeah, I think it snuck up you're right. I think it snuck up on a lot of people. Uh, and, and for those of us who were waiting till the last minute to get it all in.
Felipe Arevalo:Procrastinators.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. We're feeling a little bit more, uh, feeling a little better about it.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. I starting to look at my calendar. Like I really got a schedule this.
Chase Peckham:Well, and let's face it. I mean, who likes putting that information together? It's a pain in the neck.
Felipe Arevalo:It's so much work. And then trying to figure out even how they're being done these days, where I think you can, some places you can upload them or you could just drop them all off in a folder and they'll do them and get back to you. Or you could sit there and virtually as if, you know, we want to do another zoom, sit there with your tax person, do a zoom.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:Um, you know, and there's just so many different, uh, so many different ways and there's, it's not just show up and get them done or go online and do it yourself. You know, there's now virtual and all that other stuff. So,
Chase Peckham:Yeah. It's so funny when you look back at it and when you're younger and you're thinking, gosh, I can't wait as I get older and I get more entrenched in my career. I'm going to make so much more money and it's going to be so great. And then I have to admit sometimes I just, I miss just saying, no, I just hand over the W2 and do the.
Felipe Arevalo:And have them do them.
Chase Peckham:Do the taxes like that. Right. I mean, it's, it's so much more complicated.
Felipe Arevalo:Well, I mean, when I was in college and, and, and, you know, as a single person, it was just early on it. I'do it myself.
Chase Peckham:Sure.
Felipe Arevalo:Going online with one of these software things and they're very intuitive
Chase Peckham:And TurboTax nowadays makes it so easy,
Felipe Arevalo:So easy. Yeah. Um, and you know, some people would say, even with complicated taxes, TurboTax is still making it easier.
Chase Peckham:You got people to talk to now. I mean, it's, it's great, but that you have to pay for that part, but it's still worth it a lot less than you might pay for,
Felipe Arevalo:for a tax person.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. I just don't trust myself and there's too many moving parts. I need to have a tax person take care of all that.
Felipe Arevalo:I always feel like I'm going to make a mistake. And I know I probably won't, but you know, there's that feeling of what if I just mix something up and then I caused myself just more work, uh, down the road and I don't want to make more work. I don't want to revisit my taxes. You know, you got a done and the outcome is what it is, and then not have to revisit them again until a year from now,
Chase Peckham:You're going to laugh. But I did my taxes by myself. One time when I was in my late twenties, mid to late twenties, and I completely forgot about some freelance work that I had done early in the year. Um, and I was just getting into free rent, freelance work. Didn't really know what it was about. And that was, I had to 1099, the company and they paid me in full. So if I, I think it was like$150, it wasn't a ton of money, but it ended up that I, they, the IRS found me two years later and realized, or yeah, two years later and realized that I hadn't paid that. And I w I owed well over$1,200, by the time it was all done in penalties.
Felipe Arevalo:Wow that's an expensive.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. And I'm like good God. So from then on, I had somebody to prepare my taxes and I kept every single thing I ever did.
Felipe Arevalo:Very good records?
Chase Peckham:Yeah. And that's just smart. I mean, it's keep records of things. If you think you need to keep it, if it's a transaction, keep it cause it can help that's for sure.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. And, and, you know, the good thing also about having someone, or, you know, help you with your Texas is those laws, like everything else are always changing.
Chase Peckham:Absolutely.
Felipe Arevalo:Whatever it is you did last year, isn't necessarily going to be applied this year.
Chase Peckham:Well especially.
Felipe Arevalo:And it's not just just the brackets. It's just so many other rules, but especially in like COVID world. Um, you know.
Chase Peckham:And yeah, I mean, in the political world that we live in, you know, depending on who's in the who's in office and who's, you know, who owns the house and, you know, who's got the majority in the Senate and all those kinds of things play on this as well. I mean, you know, Trump made so many tax changes and simplified things, quote unquote. Um, and now, you know, the Biden, administration is changing some things again. And so yeah, it, it, it's so confusing. It really is. I mean, that's, I, you have, you're a special person to be a CPA and keep up on all this stuff.
Felipe Arevalo:Oh yeah. Them and accountants, I don't really know how they do it.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. It's not my kind of brain. I mean, there's one thing to keep track of a household budget, and it's another thing to do those,
Felipe Arevalo:Right to specialize in doing it on a daily basis.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. And being able to answer questions on the fly. I mean, that's pretty good, especially for those that do it for businesses and small businesses and that, but make sure you get them in. And, and, uh, if sometimes it's penny wise and dollar foolish to do it yourselves, unless of course it's pretty simple.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. It's very, uh, it's very interesting. Lots of changing, moving pieces. Um, but it's been like a year since this all started.
Chase Peckham:Yeah it's the anniversary and that's why we're doing this now. Right.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:This is the shooting, the financial bleep. Uh, I don't think we've ever cussed on this podcast.
Felipe Arevalo:I don't think so.
Chase Peckham:And I think I'm going to keep it that way. Um, as much as I like.
Felipe Arevalo:We don't have the explicit content one yet.
Chase Peckham:But it is so interesting to look back at all of this and how the world has changed. Stayed the same since, you know, this is the anniversary of when we all got shut down and we're doing, uh, doing this from home. And, and at this time, last year we were all in shock. We had, you know, this was going to last two weeks or, or maybe a month. And some people said 4th of July and we were like, freaking out, there's no way we're going to be at home for two or three months.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:And here we are still not back in the office.
Felipe Arevalo:Right.
Chase Peckham:It's still doing our podcast from our home, not doing it in person in our little makeshift studio. So, you know, I do miss that.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. And, and yeah, it was, you know, get to sit around a little, our little desk and do our podcast in person that, that that's fun. And, and you know, it, it's funny. What have you, have you made any, uh, fun, exciting purchases or interesting purchases in the last year?
Chase Peckham:No, my wife did. We found out through this thing that my wife as type A as she is and is level headed as she is. Um, and you, and you got to know her, if you listened to the Valentine's Day, you know, on a budget episode, she's very kept together, but this pandemic unnerved her a bit. Um, whether it was, you know, being at home all the time, being on top of each other, uh, which we are not used to. I mean, we're both, we're a household where both parents work and so we'd go our separate ways. And we see the kids at the end of the day and the kid, you know, there were all, and now all of a sudden we're shoved into seeing each other 24 seven. Um, that was, that was an adjustment. Uh, and, but then, you know, the kids being out of school and all that stress, they went with that. And looking back at, you know, whether we were failing as parents, because we weren't good, uh, teachers, right. We, we were failing at teaching. Our kids.
Felipe Arevalo:You're not caught up on your common core?
Chase Peckham:And I. No. and I didn't know how to help them. And it felt very difficult, but we found out that she's an emotional spender and that she would go online, buy, her thing became, and I'm going to throw a plug and they don't do anything for us, but VIORE, which is a really cool they're growing like crazy. They're, they're athleisure comfort clothes, and they're locally here in San Diego, but they're getting national and, and all over the world, she was buying joggers and these comfy pants and all these things that like, and, and athletic wear again athleisure because we actually bought the Peloton.
Felipe Arevalo:You guys had it right before.
Chase Peckham:We had it about eight months before we got it the fall or late summer before this all happened. And we were just getting into it. And then when the pandemic hit, I mean, thank God for that thing. Cause I mean, Peloton went back order for, I don't know how many, um, on those. And so that I could, I was going to say that, but that wasn't technically a pandemic purchase, but, but, uh, let's just say, Kerri kept Amazon very busy and you know, the other thing she bought, we bought multiple air fryers. We bought different things for the kitchen. Cause we were trying to find different ways to cook.
Felipe Arevalo:All of a sudden trying to make a different.
Chase Peckham:That was a different thing for us because Kerri is not, God bless you, baby. I love you, but she's not the best cook in the world or doesn't love it either. So if you don't love to do something, you're typically not going to be great at it. And I would typically do more of the cooking or at least prepping and, but she got way more into that. So that was good. So, you know, purchases in the kitchen that we normally maybe wouldn't have had. Um, but you know, that was, that was really, that was really it.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. Well we did the Bowflex early on.
Chase Peckham:Right away. Right.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah right away. Um, and I was like, I need to do something. Um, and like you mentioned earlier is because it was easy to go, Oh, you know what, I'm off work and I have nothing to do for hours. You know, I want to support my local brewery because I want to make sure that they stay in business.
Chase Peckham:Yeah. That was big. We did a lot of restaurants and bar. Right, that was big.
Felipe Arevalo:And then it was like this isn't calorie free I need to burn off some of those calories.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:Um, but you know, also for me it was, uh, the silly and it's like you said, for the kitchen, uh, the Soda stream.
Chase Peckham:OK.
Felipe Arevalo:So I can make my own bubbly water because I drink that all the time. And instead of buying cases, on cases of it, um, it was just got the little soda stream and it seems like now it's like, how did I ever do this beforehand?
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:Um, even like at night after I put the kids to bed it's, like, Oh, I'm going to go make myself a, a bubbly water or whatever, uh, which then keeps me from consuming some of the other drinks that do have calories.
Chase Peckham:Right.
Felipe Arevalo:Because it just gives me something to drink. Um, I think that I did have to replace my air fryer as well, just because the other one.
Chase Peckham:Just so much use?
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah it gave out. Um, but I think that was, that was pretty much it. Um, Oh, I bought a bunch of cheap t-shirts at beginning because I realized I didn't have a lot of t-shirts and all of a sudden we weren't dressing up for work
Chase Peckham:Were not wearing polo shirts and collared shirts,
Felipe Arevalo:Polo shirts, and the collared shirts are just going to hang in there. And I realized, I don't really, I don't think I'm going to wear a button up to go to my living room,
Chase Peckham:My the amount of money I spent on clothing and, and dry cleaning. And that kind of stuff went way down, way down. We just went to a friends of ours daughter's wedding who used to babysit our kids a lot. Really good friend. And, um, she, we, we, I was wearing. I hadn't worn a suit in well, more than a year, um, to cause we haven't been able to go anywhere to do anything that would do that. And I realized that, you know, I needed to buy a different shirt. So buying a new colored shirt was a, was a different experience too. It's been a long time.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah. One of my friends is getting married and uh, uh, we actually had his fiance on as a guest, uh, Paulina.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:When we did the immigration one.
Chase Peckham:Right.
Felipe Arevalo:Um, they're getting married, but they're gonna do a virtual one. They told us recently. And I asked him like, even though it's virtual, I think I'm just going to dress up.
Chase Peckham:Yeah.
Felipe Arevalo:I needed an excuse to wear a suit.
Chase Peckham:You should.
Felipe Arevalo:So I'm just going to throw one on for the zoom.
Chase Peckham:There you go. Well, good for them. I mean, that's gotta be a hard decision to make, but you can only wait so long. Right?
Felipe Arevalo:Right. Yeah. Or have so much uncertainty where it's like, is it gonna be, am how many people can I have be allowed to have big groups, you know, here in San Diego or whatever the case is. So.
Chase Peckham:Right. One of the things we got some great questions on our smart with your money lives. And we've been getting a few questions here and there from listeners on the podcast. So if you have questions, if there's things that you want answered, or you have an idea for a topic or something that you would want us to discuss, that we haven't covered, let us know, contact us at info@sdflc.org. Um, or you can get us at talkwealthtomepodcast@gmail.com also, uh, you know, like us follow us if you're enjoying this podcast, uh, follow us on our social media platforms and, uh, write a review. I mean, tell us what you think it matters.
Felipe Arevalo:Yeah, absolutely. We have, uh, on social media you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at@ SDFLC. You can find us on Facebook, San Diego Financial Literacy Center, um, or facebook.com/ sdflc, and then also on Twitter at@TalkWealthToMe, uh, so different handles out there and, you know, we'll keep up with the most up-to-date episodes, uh, interact with us, let us know what you think. Give us some feedback, let us know when you love an episode or what we could do better.
Chase Peckham:Absolutely. And again, that is talkwealthpodcast@gmail.com or you can get us at info@sdflc.org. We've got some great interviews coming up, uh, in this next couple months of spring and heading into summer, uh, talked about the housing market and lending and where we think it's what the pandemic and the effect it had on it and where it's going to go. Uh, we're also gonna talk about bite of reality and the great RMJ foundation and the work that they are doing to educate youth in San Diego. And then we're going to talk about the economy.
Felipe Arevalo:Oh economics.
Chase Peckham:Yeah And the way students are. Yeah. The way the kids are learning economy these days and how that ties into personal finance. So we got a lot of things coming up as well as we're going to discuss elder abuse as well. And the financial elder abuse that goes on. And that's a tough one because my grandfather got well taken advantage of through the years, but stick with us. It's going to be a fun spring.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].