Our Biggest Money Mistakes and Regrets with Hector and Garrett
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Gym, our host is Hector Lopez, an LA-Based Financial Trainer. He is joined by his colleague, Garrett Faulconer to discuss their biggest money mistakes, regrets and stories.
Podcast Notes
Hector has a background in adult education, non-profits, and city organizations. Garrett worked at a non-profit after college for six years. He majored in psychology in college and had a scholarship for football. Garrett also has a background in investing.
Financial Trainers don’t just change your money organization, they help you change your mindset as well. Hector and Garrett have different categories of money mistakes including cars and investing.
Hector loves cars and owning a reliable one. He was looking for a car for about a month or two and found a low-cost Honda outside a mechanic’s garage. He didn’t do any research on it and there were red flags, including the owner not letting Hector test drive it. The motor and transmission were bad and he had a lot of mechanical issues.
Garrett loves investing, but he needs to remember due diligence and not get wrapped up in the excitement. He decided to invest in Bitcoin and it didn’t keep going up, instead it went down hard and he lost a lot of money. To remind himself of this mistake, he kept his original investment.
Make sure you have your bases covered before investing, by establishing your emergency fund and paying down your debt. The market ebbs and flows and you need to be prepared for it to happen.
Hector calls one of the categories “Death by 1,000 cuts”. For him this is Starbucks. Prior to COVID, he used it as a social excuse. It starts with a cup of coffee and then you download the app. It sucks you in and it is a slow burn, because it starts with $3.00 a day.
Garrett is a big fan of media and shows. One of his “Death by 1,000 cuts” is subscriptions to streaming services. He started with Netflix, then Hulu, then Peacock, and on and on. He signed up to watch a show someone recommended and before he knew it he was paying $200 a month. Food subscriptions and Audible are other ones that are not much each, but they add up.
Another category is retail. Hector is big on tech and he follows it closely, but he has never waited in line or preordered. One of the purchases that still hurts is when Hector decided to buy a drone with a camera. He used it, but the functionality he had in mind didn’t manifest, and he hasn’t flown it in about a year.
Garrett is big on gaming, especially PlayStation and Xbox. He gets remorse when he buys a new model and it ends up having issues. For any first generation tech product, you are paying to be the beta tester. Those models are more expensive and will be cheaper if you wait.
Your journey is unique. Try not to compare yourself with other people.
Learn more about Hector and Garrett and sign up for a free consult call here!