25 Scary Money Stats You Need to Know! (2025 Edition)

Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew reveals 25 terrifying financial statistics that expose why most Americans are struggling with money, from 78% living paycheck to paycheck and total U. S. debt hitting $18.39 trillion, to credit card balances exceeding retirement savings for millions, auto loans trapping people underwater, half of retirees fearing they'll outlive their money, and AI-powered scams stealing billions, breaking down exactly what each statistic means for your wallet and giving you clear, actionable steps to protect yourself, pay down debt, build emergency savings, and avoid becoming another scary statistic. How Andrew Can Help You: Listen to The Business Show here. Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest! Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here. Car buying Calculator here Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast DELL: Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $749.99, at Dell.com/ai-pc Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Acorns: Start investing automatically with Acorns and get a $5 bonus at Acorns.com/PFP Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Links Mentioned in This Episode: 25 Scary Money Statistics (Part 1) 25 Scary Money Statistics (Part 2) How to Break The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle (IN 2025) The Case For and Against Bitcoin (You Need to Hear This!) Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Free Guides: The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money How to Negotiate Your Salary The 75 Day Money Challenge Get out Of Debt Fast Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  Now, if you watch this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, you've probably noticed the wood slat walls behind us. We wanted this podcast set to look professional, but also not be a project that was overly complicated. And I found these slat walls on Wayfair, and it completely changed this space. And it's now basically the background that you see in every single podcast or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space. They also have Wayfair Verified Products that are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:17Speaker 01

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 1:20Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with HostingR's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And HostingR doesn't stop at launch.

• 2:04Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:51Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk through 25 scary money statistics of 2025. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

• 3:29Andrew Giancola?

  And if you want to get help from me, join Master Money Academy. That is our community of wealth builders of people who are transforming their finances every single day. If you go to mastermoney.co/join, you can check out more info on Master Money Academy. Now today, we're going to be diving into 25 scary money statistics of 2025. And if you've never heard these episodes, we do them every single year on the week of Halloween. And what we do is go through some of the scariest money statistics that have come out this year. And then I'm going to tell you how to solve some of these problems that are arising. We're going to talk about things like debt levels, buy now, pay later, sports betting. We have so much action packed stuff in this episode. And so this is one of the most fun episodes to do every single year.

• 4:14Andrew Giancola?

  And so with all these statistics, we're going to talk about, hey, some of these are scary situations and we want you. If you are in those situations to know what to do next, know how to solve that problem. My goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can so that you can utilize money as a tool to create financial freedom. And so really pumped for this episode, so we're going to get into it. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right. Scary statistic number one is 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. So if you don't know what living paycheck to paycheck means, that means when you have your income coming in every single month, all the income that you have coming in goes out towards your bills and expenses.

• 4:58Andrew Giancola?

  Now, this is a problem for a number of different reasons. Number one is you can't save for your future. You can't save for retirement. You can't save for those special occasions you want to take like a vacation, or you can't save for your emergency fund so that when life throws you surprises, then you're not able to take care of those surprises. So you need to take some action steps if you are living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of Americans right now are. We have episodes talking about how to get out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle, but I want you to understand what you need to do next. So number one is to start an emergency fund. If you don't know what an emergency fund is, this is where you open up something like a high yield savings account and start sending money over to this emergency fund to take

• 5:41Andrew Giancola?

  care of any expenses that arise when an emergency pops up. So if your car breaks down, or you have an issue in your house, or your kids get sick, or maybe your dog gets sick, you have money set aside to be able to take care of those emergencies. It's not if an emergency is going to happen, but when will an emergency happen? And we like to automate it into our high yield savings account. Number two is to automate your savings. So every single month, when you get paid, I want you to start automatically sending money to these savings accounts so that you can't just get it commingled in a checking account and go out and spend it. Three is let's look at our baseline expenses. These are our fixed expenses where we spend money every single month. Are there areas that we can cut back to find money within this fixed expense?

• 6:26Andrew Giancola?

  Four is let's look at lifestyle creep. Are there areas where we're just spending? Too much money because we have increased income and we've increased our income over time. Are there areas where maybe we need to look at cutting back? Lifestyle creep is as your income rises or you get raises or bonuses or tax returns, then your lifestyle also increases as well. And this is something that happens very, very commonly with high earners. There are a lot of high earners, people making over $150,000 per year, who are still living paycheck to paycheck. And so you want to make sure that you are avoiding lifestyle creep. Some lifestyle creep is great. In fact, I want you to spend part of your bonuses and your raises, but I don't want you to spend all of it and blow it all. Instead, some of it needs to go towards wealth building activities. And then your entire goal is if you're living paycheck to paycheck,

• 7:10Andrew Giancola?

  is to slowly start growing the gap. Create margin in your budget, meaning figuring out the difference between your income and your expenses. That is the gap. And if you can start to slowly grow the gap where you have extra money left over to put towards your investments, put towards your retirement accounts, put it towards your emergency fund, those are going to be the places you want to allocate dollars. Now, number two is 69% of households have less than $1,000 in emergency savings. Now, this is extremely scary and this is a very dangerous place to be. If you're listening to this podcast right now and you're saying to yourself, well, I have less than $1,000 in emergency savings, which likely a lot of you do because 69% of households are stating that they do, then you need to make sure that you start building that emergency fund as fast as you possibly can.

• 7:55Andrew Giancola?

  So we have something here called the 136 method. And within the 136 method, this means that you first save up one month of expenses. Then you're going to pay off high interest debt. Then we're going to work on saving all the way up to three months of expenses. And eventually we're going to work on saving up to six months of expenses. But to just get started, just getting the ball rolling, you need to save something. People who do not have cash saved up for emergencies are typically always either living in that paycheck to paycheck cycle that we talked about, where 78% of Americans are living in that paycheck to paycheck cycle and/or they are going deeper and deeper into debt every single month. Why? Because when an emergency pops up, they have to pull out the credit card and swipe the credit card just to be able to live.

• 8:40Andrew Giancola?

  And that, my friends, is what I do not want for each and every single one of you. I want you to thrive when it comes to money. I don't want you to be stressed about money. I don't want you to be anxious about money. So instead, what we need to do is find ways to reduce our stress and anxiety. And your emergency fund is going to do that. You have no idea what it feels like to have peace of mind when you have a fully funded emergency fund. You could lose your job. Your car could break down. You could have a health scare. You could go to the emergency room and all of these things are taken care of because you were disciplined enough to save cash on hand. Now, I get it. If you're just getting started, you're not making a lot of money yet. We're going to work through those situations to help you through that process. My entire goal is to help each and every single one of you, as much as we possibly can, learn how to solve this equation.

• 9:25Andrew Giancola?

  And so really, you need to start saving that emergency fund. Again, open a high-yield savings account somewhere. Start funneling small amounts of money over time, even if it's 10, 20, 30, 40, $50 per week. Start sending it over to your emergency fund so that you can start to get this built up. Then, what I want you to do is look at your recurring expenses. Do you have a bunch of subscriptions? Do you have recurring expenses out there that you could cut so that you can start to funnel extra cash into your emergency fund? Are there things that's in your house that you could go out and sell on Marketplace to put in your emergency fund? You need to protect your finances and the only way to protect them is to have cash on hand. So I highly, highly encourage every single person listening to make sure they are building up that emergency fund. Well, number three, 51% of people say they would run out of money in less than a month

• 10:09Andrew Giancola?

  if they lost their income. Now, that is a very scary situation. This is why the one-three-six method is so incredibly important because you want to save one month, then you want to get to saving three months, and then you want to get to saving six months. Because if you lose your job, you really need six months of expenses on hand. Why? Okay, let's think about this for a second. Let's say you lose your job and now you have to figure out a solution. Okay? So if you're in the corporate world, it's going to take you some time before you can find another job. You may have to send out your resume to a bunch of different people. Once you start doing that, then we have to go through a bunch of different rounds of interviews. I just saw somebody talking about the multiple rounds of interviews at Olive Garden they had to go through. And so most jobs now are going to make you go Through multiple rounds of interviews which take multiple weeks.

• 10:53Andrew Giancola?

  It's not going to all happen all in one week. So you're sending out resumes. Now you're starting to land interviews. Well, now you're in month two or month three, just for landing interviews. Now you're going through the interview process. Okay, that's going to take a couple of weeks. Now we're going into month four. And what if you don't land any of those interviews? Now you gotta go through the process again. Now we're getting into month five. And so this is why we need to have six months of expenses on hand. This is something where you should not be in a situation where if you lost your job, you would only have one month of expenses available. And so it takes time to build this up. I know how difficult it is. I know the prices of everything are increasing, but we're going to work with you step by step here, getting your situation positioned to make all this work. Now, a lot of you out there also who listen to this podcast are high earners.

• 11:38Andrew Giancola?

  And some of you high earners out there, you need to make sure that you're controlling your expenses if you're living paycheck to paycheck. If you are a high earner, meaning I'm talking to the folks who are making over six figures. If you're a high earner out there and you do not have an emergency fund in place, now is the time. You absolutely need to have it in place. You're wondering why you're broke because you do not have cash on hand to protect you when emergencies arise. You're wondering why you can't invest because you do not have cash on hand when emergencies come up. We need to make sure we have that cash on hand. It is really, really important. All right, number four is US household debt hit 18.39 trillion dollars. Now this reflects the dependency of borrowing money. And as interest rates remain high,

• 12:21Andrew Giancola?

  servicing this debt eats away at your income and it also slows down your wealth building. So when you look at your debt, what we typically want you to do is look at high interest debt and low interest debt. We categorize these very differently. High interest debt is any debt above a 6% interest rate outside of your mortgage. Now your mortgage, you can refinance down the line, which is why I am less worried about your mortgage than some of this other debt. So I want you to think about things like your credit cards, your auto loans, your student loans. Let's look at all those debts and see which ones are above a 6% interest rate. If you have a personal loan, that's another big one. A lot of people are now taking on the rise in personal loans is absolutely. Incredible how many people out there have personal loans that are just rising more and more and more.

• 13:04Andrew Giancola?

  And so that's the case. We want to pay off that high interest debt first, make minimum payments on the rest of our debt that is low interest. And then we will work on a debt payoff plan. Okay. And so typically, there's two ways to do this. You can do the debt avalanche, which is paying off high interest first. Or you could do the debt snowball, which is paying off lowest balance first. So that you can get some quick wins and then moving towards the next one. Whatever one motivates you the most is going to be the best option for most people. In fact, from a psychology standpoint, the debt snowball, even though it's not the most efficient. It is the one where people have the most success because it helps keep them motivated. So that is one to think through as we start to look at paying down some of this high interest debt.

• 13:45Andrew Giancola?

  Number five is that personal savings rate just hit 4.6% of disposable income. Now, a really low savings rate means that it is impossible to build wealth. It is virtually impossible to be able to retire one day if you have a really low savings rate. And so if your savings rate is below 20%, here's what I want you to do. I want you to make it your ultimate goal to save 20% of your income. Now, what do I mean by save 20% of your income? That means that that money needs to either be going towards your emergency fund or going towards retirement and investments. It doesn't mean saving for your vacation. It doesn't mean saving for your down payment on a house. It doesn't mean saving for your car. It means doing activities that are going to increase your net worth. Okay?

• 14:31Andrew Giancola?

  And so because of this, we want to make sure that we are ultimately saving 20% of our income. Why do I say 20% of our income? Because that is the path that is going to allow you to retire one day and be able to build wealth. And so we want to, at a minimum, save 20% of our income. So if you're saving 4.6%, for example, what I want you to do is the 1% rule. Meaning that every single month, I want you to increase your savings rate by 1%. Or every other month, if you can't do it every month. And so gradually increasing your savings rate means that you're not ripping off the Band-Aid all at once and feeling the pain. Instead, you're gradually doing this so it's not as painful. What most people do is they try to do everything all at once. And when you try to do everything all at once, Typically, you end up quitting. I don't want any of you out there quitting.

• 15:14Andrew Giancola?

  And so our goal is to ensure that you gradually do this over time. The same goes with cutting back expenses. If you're going to cut back expenses, gradually cut them back one at a time so that you don't feel the pain that is cutting back expenses. Number six, 47% of Americans rate their financial literacy as a C or worse. So, most of you out there are fixing that problem by listening to this podcast twice a week, every single week. And so this is something that I think a lot of people out there have low financial literacy, and that's not your fault. Schools don't have personal finance. That's starting to change, but they don't have personal finance currently in a lot of different curriculums. And so you were never taught this stuff because your parents were never taught this stuff, and your grandparents were never taught this stuff. So who's going to teach you?

• 15:57Andrew Giancola?

  So instead, I want you to be the person in your family that changes your family tree. And the only way to do that is to learn how to manage money. So here's what I recommend. I recommend reading a personal finance book every single month. So in Master Money Academy, we have something called the High Performance Book Club, where we are reading one personal finance book together every single month, and then we're talking about it. We're chatting through it. I read a book every single week. That's how I accelerated my path to learning more. And so every single week, I try to read a book. But you don't have to do every week. You could do one a month and learning about more about money. Two is continue listening to this podcast and continue engaging and looking into personal finance content that are going to help you grow your wealth. I cannot encourage you more and more to do that.

• 16:41Andrew Giancola?

  Three is talk about money openly with people in your lives. So if you have your kids, maybe your spouse, talk about money openly. The more we talk about money, the more we're going to have an understanding about money, and the more we're going to understand what is right, what is wrong for our financial situation. And so it's really important to continue to talk and then taking small action steps every single week. So in Master Money Academy, one of the things we have people do is every week they list their goals, and they talk about these small action steps they're going to be taking. And at the end of every single week, then we celebrate those wins when they accomplish those goals. This keeps people motivated, and this is going to keep you motivated as well. So if you're interested in joining Master Money Academy, go to mastermoney.co/join. This is the community. People who are working on the same common goals that you are. You get live coaching from me in there.

• 17:24Andrew Giancola?

  You get accountability, you get motivation and all that stuff is really important. You do not want to be working on your wealth building goals alone. And that's what Master Money Academy is there to solve. Number seven is total credit card debt past 1.17 trillion dollars. So anybody out there who does not understand this, credit card debt is the absolute worst type of debt that you can take on. It is detrimental to your finances. Why? Because credit card debt has extremely high interest rates. And people who don't understand how high these interest rates are, are really going to continue to fall further and further and further behind. So let's say, for example, that you took out $10,000 on a credit card and you decide to make the minimum payments over the course of the next 10 years.

• 18:07Andrew Giancola?

  If you made minimum payments on $10,000 on a credit card, it would cost you over $60,000 in payments that you were making over the course of the next decade. Now let me explain something to you. So let's say you bought a bunch of just random things. You know, you did a bunch of target runs, you bought Amazon, maybe you put the holidays on a credit card. All those things that you just purchased, that was a total of $10,000, actually cost you 60. Do you know how detrimental that is to your finances? Credit cards are robbing you of your financial future. They are robbing you of the ability to be able to build wealth for you and your family. And so you need to take control back. The way we use credit cards here is we think about it this way. The only time you're ever going to swipe a credit card is if you already have cash in your checking account.

• 18:50Andrew Giancola?

  If you don't have the cash in your account, then you're not swiping the card. But if you do have the cash in your account and it's not already allocated for something else, then you can go ahead and swipe that card. But this is really, really important to note because we need to make sure that we get this credit card debt paid off as fast, as fast as we possibly can. Number eight is the average credit card balance for those who carry debt is $7,321. That, my friends, is something, like I said, if you carry that balance, you're going to be paying well over $40,000 in interest over the course of 10 years. If you're just making minimum payments on that balance. Because credit card debt has this extremely, extremely high interest rate that is just going to eat into your finances. For years and years and years and some people it takes so long for them to pay off their

• 19:35Andrew Giancola?

  credit card debt because they're just making minimum payments. No, if you have credit card debt, you need to pay off as much of it in as big of chunks as you possibly can. Sell everything that you can in your house that is worth value. Figure out ways to reduce your expenses because this is a pants on fire emergency. I don't say that about many things, but credit card debt is the emergency where you're going to have to live very lean until you get that paid off because it is a huge, huge deal. Nine, 14.1% of credit card debt is now 30 plus days delinquent. So that means most people still aren't even paying off their credit card, meaning the interest is compounding against them even more and becoming even worse. And so two things I would say, one, set up auto pay to make sure that you are paying off that card every single month. Two,

• 20:20Andrew Giancola?

  add payment reminders to your calendar so that you can avoid any slip ups. If this is because you're not automating your money, like you have the cash and you're just not paying it off on time, that my friends is a huge, huge problem. So just automatically set up payments so that it works in your favor to get that paid off every single month. I pay off my cards on a weekly basis. Why do I do that? Just to stay on top of it. It doesn't help my credit score. There's no other benefits out there. I just like to stay on top of my cards and that is the best way to do that. Now, call your lender immediately if you fall behind. So if you're starting to fall behind, look for hardship programs. See if they can work with you in some way, shape or form to help you through this process and then tackle one late account first and then make sure today that you go and tackle one late account first. If you're in this situation to stop the bleeding, you need

• 21:03Andrew Giancola?

  to stop the bleeding. That is the big, big thing. Number 10, 23% of credit card users go deeper into debt every single month. If you're digging yourself a hole and you're standing in a big pit, the first thing you want to do to get out of that hole is to stop digging. And that's what's happening when you continue to swipe your credit card when you're already in credit card debt. 23% of these users are going deeper and deeper into debt. That is a dangerous game to play, my friend. So track your spending, start to set up a budget because you have no other option but to start tracking your spending. I don't think you have to track your spending fully every single month, granular, like getting down to the penny. I don't think you have to do that once you get control. Your money, but for you, if you are in debt, you're going to have to absolutely do that because we got to address what the root cause is and why this is happening. It could be an income problem.

• 21:48Andrew Giancola?

  And if you have an income problem, we're going to have to work on ways to increase your income. But it could be, you're going to have to make some drastic changes if you're going deeper and deeper into debt. Thirty seven percent of Americans have more credit card debt than retirement savings. And this one breaks my heart because high interest debt grows faster than investments. And your debt outpaces your retirement savings and every single year that you wait to tackle it makes it worse and worse and worse. And people who are chained down by credit cards, they are just not able to go and pursue financial freedom like people who actually understand how money works. And so I want every single one of you to work as hard as you possibly can to get out of this debt. The worst one is debt peaks for ages 40 to 49, just when people should be accelerating their savings. That's number 12, and that is one I absolutely can't stand.

• 22:32Andrew Giancola?

  Just to wrap up this section here, debt is one of the worst things that could happen to you when it comes to high interest debt, specifically credit card debt. And I want you to avoid it as much as possible. It is one of the scariest statistics out there is how this is growing. And really, we need to find better ways. Our goal is to be here for you. We need to get you out of this credit card debt and we need to move you on to be able to thrive. Imagine, for example, maybe, for example, that your family has always been into debt. Your parents were in debt and so you go into debt because you just think it's normal. You think it's normal to be in credit card debt. It's not. Let me tell you right now, it is not. You want to change your family tree. If you want your family to be better, if you want your family to thrive financially, if you want to be the first millionaire in your family, you have to make a change. And you can change your family tree.

• 23:14Andrew Giancola?

  That's what I want you to know right now is you can make a massive change in your life, in your family's life, in your kid's life, in your spouse's life, but you have to be the person to make the change. Because if you don't, nobody else is coming to save you. And I want you to be able to do that. That is our entire goal. Let's go to break. We're going to get into the next section.

• 23:34Andrew Giancola?

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• 24:17Andrew Giancola?

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• 24:59Andrew Giancola?

  It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is

• 25:43Andrew Giancola?

  Is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things. But nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Leesa.

• 26:27Andrew Giancola?

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• 27:04Andrew Giancola?

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• 27:48Andrew Giancola?

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• 28:33Andrew Giancola?

  Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. All right, number 13, and we are going to get into some fun stuff here as well. The average car payment for new vehicles is $734 per month. Now, when it comes to new vehicles, my friends, there's a number of different things I want you to know. Number one is the moment you drive a new vehicle off the lot, it loses 10 to 20% of its value. So, brand new vehicles are typically not the route I like to go. In fact, I've never driven a new car in my entire life and I buy vehicles in a very different way. Let me explain how I buy vehicles. Typically, I'll buy them one to three years used.

• 29:12Andrew Giancola?

  And I say one to three years because my vehicle that I'm currently driving, I found such a good deal on it being one year used that I bought it. But typically, I look for one to three years used because they take a big depreciation hit. Usually in the first couple of years, they depreciate 25 to 30%. And so because of that, I can find a vehicle that is pretty much in the same condition as it was new, but it already took the depreciation hit. So, I'm buying into it when the value reduction already happens. The person who bought it new is the one losing the most money because vehicles are depreciating assets. And so over time, they go down in value. And so I follow something called the 241210 rule, okay? 20% down is what I like to put down on my vehicles. Why?

• 29:54Andrew Giancola?

  Because if your vehicle depreciates 20% when you drive it off the lot, then guess what? If you get in an accident a couple of days after you buy that brand new shiny car, then you're Underwater on that car and you're gonna have to pay out of pocket if you get in an accident or you totaled that vehicle. Two, I want your payments to be four years or less. Why? Because I don't want you having car payments your entire life. We're trying to avoid that at all costs. Four years or less on those payments. Okay. 12. What does 12 stand for? 12 should be how much you're spending on your car payment and how much you're spending on maintenance. So here's what happened to me and why this number exists. A while ago, my wife and I bought a vehicle that we no longer have, and there's a lot of reasons why, a luxury vehicle

• 30:35Andrew Giancola?

  that rhymes with Mercedes. And when we bought this vehicle, all of a sudden, we realized very quickly the maintenance on this vehicle is just absolutely crazy. And so oil changes every single year were $2,000 to $3,000 just to get an oil change. And you only get them once a year, but it's $2,000 to $3,000. And so you had to do all these other maintenance things. And it was just astronomical what the costs of maintenance were. And so I think for most people, you need to look at having your car payment be 7% or less of your income. So the average car payment here is $734 per month. And your maintenance should be about 5%. But 12% overall. Fenege that number any way you want. 12% of your income is what your ongoing costs should be with that vehicle. And then 10. What's

• 31:19Andrew Giancola?

  that 10 number mean? That means you drive the car for 10 years or longer. Why? Because you're going to squeeze the maximum value out of that vehicle. And what we don't want to do is just keep buying depreciating assets over and over and over again. This is why we only have car payments for four years, because that gives you six years of no car payments, that you can take those extra dollars and put them towards retirement. You could do 401k sprints during that time. You could do all these different things because you decided to live differently. What most people do is every three years, they get a new car, or they get a used car, and they just kind of keep recycling that cycle. Not you, though. We're gonna drive our cars for longer, because the longer you drive your car, the more value you can squeeze out of it. For example, I drive a 2018 truck, and I'm gonna drive that thing until it dies. Let's see if we can get it to 300,000 miles. We're gonna find out if we can. And it's gonna be one of those things that I cannot wait. It's gonna be

• 32:04Andrew Giancola?

  a badge of honor to see how many miles I can get on that vehicle. Now, number 14 is auto loan debt totals to 1.63 trillion.

• 32:13Andrew Giancola?

  Listen, everybody, I don't think this number would be that high if more people would drive their cars 10 years or longer. Find a reliable vehicle that will go for 10 years. Some of you are buying these cheap cars that are junk that will not go for 10 years. Find a reliable vehicle, Toyota, Honda, all are top tier in reliability ratings. Go find one that has top tier reliability ratings and drive it longer because we would not have this much auto loan debt. Imagine if everybody drove their car for 10 years, that means 40% of people would be having their car payments going. If they followed the 24 12 10 rule, then people would be having 40% of Americans would be having a car loan, 60% would not. And there would be a lot less auto loan debt out there and they would be much, much better off long term.

• 32:56Andrew Giancola?

  Number 15, let's get into mortgages now. 2.1% of mortgage balances are 30 days past due. This is a scary statistic for a lot of people out there. It could be a lot worse. In fact, in 2008, 2009, it was a whole lot worse, but there is a rise in delinquencies from last year that can signal broader financial strain. And so we want to make sure that we have our emergency fund buffer in place. Another reason why we want to have it in our emergency fund is because if we ever got in a situation where we needed to pay our mortgage, we have an emergency fund in place that takes care of our expenses if we lost our job or if something else arises. Two is make sure you're setting up your mortgage payment on auto pay. This is one of the easiest things to do, and if you're manually going in and paying your mortgage every month, you could very easily forget. And so automatically making those payments is really important.

• 33:42Andrew Giancola?

  Three is if your payment is too high, see if you can refinance. If you got a mortgage during times when interest rates were super, super high, maybe you have an 8% or a 7% mortgage. See if you can refinance over the course of the next couple of months and how much it would save. And then always avoid borrowing against your house unnecessarily. A lot of people are getting HELOCs now and all these other things, and it's fine to have a HELOC open for various reasons, but do not just go out and then go spend that money on something random. Number 16 is 56% of Americans aren't saving for retirement at all. So if you're not saving for retirement, then you're fully dependent on social security. This is going to be a huge problem because if something changes with social security in the future, and we have no idea if it will. In fact, I like to treat my social security like it's not going to happen.

• 34:27Andrew Giancola?

  Because if it does happen, it's gravy on top. I can use that money for vacations. I can use that money to help out people. I can use that money to whatever I want with it, but it's just gravy on top. Where 56% of Americans aren't saving for retirement at all is going to be a huge, huge problem. You need to have a retirement plan in place and Master Money Academy, we teach you how to map all of this out. But if you do not know how to map all of this out, then you need to have an understanding of what to do next. So number one is you need to start saving as soon as you possibly can. Start saving in retirement accounts, Roth IRAs, 401ks, HSAs, or taxable brokerage. Start saving money somewhere and investing those dollars for retirement. Because if you just save cash, you're never going to be able to retire.

• 35:06Andrew Giancola?

  You have to invest your money because those who do not invest, they will never, ever, ever be able to comfortably retire. Living on social security when it continues to be edging on a cliff is not a retirement strategy whatsoever. You need to make sure that you have cash and money invested for the long run. Now, if you're brand new to investing, we have an investing class that's free, Investing for Beginners. So if you go to mastermoney.co/investingforbeginners, you could check out that free class there. Number 17 is nearly half of Gen Xers say they're behind on retirement savings. So Gen X is entering the final stretch before retirement and catch-up time is limited. And the cost of waiting grows exponentially for every year they miss out. So a couple of action steps if you are in Gen X and you are behind.

• 35:50Andrew Giancola?

  Number one is to max out your catch-up contributions. So once you're over the age of 50, you can add an extra $7,500 to your 401k in 2025 and an extra $1,000 in your Roth IRA in 2025. Also, make sure you're auditing your expenses. Look at your expenses and make sure that you're looking at those so you can actually get some free cash flow to catch up on retirement savings. Three is if you are paying for your children's college expenses or if you're paying for your children's housing, if you have adult children, you need to stop that. You need to take care of yourself first because there are no loans for retirement. And instead, they're going to have to go ahead and take out student loans. This is the reality of this is you got to take care of yourself first and then help out others. It sounds counterintuitive as a parent. I know, I understand. I have three kids.

• 36:33Andrew Giancola?

  But it has to happen this way because otherwise your kids are going to have to take care of you in retirement and that's going to be a way bigger financial burden for them down the line. You need to understand that taking care of yourself and your retirement first, then you take care of your kids down the line. Next, invest aggressively to make up lost time because if you do not start investing aggressively now, you are going to run out of time to get compound interest working for you. And so you got to make sure that you are investing aggressively and investing early. The number 18 is 53% of millennials say their debt exceeds what they've saved for retirement. And so a lot of millennials out there are struggling with debt because they feel as though, or because they have

• 37:13Andrew Giancola?

  gone through a cycle, a long cycle where affordability is at an all time low. And if that is you, then there are a lot of things you can do. First, get rid of that high interest debt. Two is work through a five-year plan to eliminate debt and start to get positive cash flow, a positive net worth, so that you can get to the point in time where you are investing those extra dollars. Number 19 is half of retirees fear outliving their savings. So one of the biggest financial anxieties in America is retirees are worried about outliving their savings. And without a sustainable withdrawal strategy, people either underspend out of fear, or they overspend and they will run out. You need to know the 25X rule, meaning how much you spend every single year, you multiply that by 25 and

• 37:56Andrew Giancola?

  that's how much you need to have invested. So if you spend $80,000 per year in retirement and you multiply that by 25, you need $2 million invested. That means you can withdraw $80,000 per year based on the 4% rule and still preserve that wealth throughout retirement. And now that number is slowly ticking up based on the creator of the 4% rule, Bill Bangen, he just wrote a new book stating that he thinks the real retirement number now is about 4.7%. And we'll dive deep into that in a future episode coming up. Two, in retirement, see if you can diversify income streams. So you got your investments, maybe you have a pension, social security, and if you can get some side income going too, those four things are going to tremendously help you in retirement. Three is if you're approaching retirement, make sure that you are building up that emergency fund. Having

• 38:38Andrew Giancola?

  an emergency fund of a couple of years of cash on hand can be very, very helpful for a retiree because when the market Is down, they can pull on some of that cash. If there are drastic market downturns where they don't have to pull on a damaged portfolio during that timeframe. And then if you can, if you have the ability, look at social security options. What happens if you delay social security? What happens if you take it early? Think through those options and how you want to handle that going forward. Number 20, buy now, pay later users missed payments at a 41% clip this year. So buy now, pay later feels invisible to a lot of people. And more and more people are taking out buy now, pay later loans. And this is something where I have seen buy now, pay later for folks on Uber Eats. If you're taking out buy now, pay later for something like Uber Eats, you've got yourself an issue.

• 39:23Andrew Giancola?

  Do not do that. Buy now, pay later for groceries. So they're going into debt for certain necessities that they need. If you have buy now, pay later on hand and you're missing payments, then you need to treat buy now, pay later as any other loan. Only use buy now, pay later for essentials if you're going to use it. I would never, ever use it. In fact, my rule is to never use something like buy now, pay later. It is not worth it. Pay early or on time. So if you are going to use it, you need to have the ability to either pay it off early. And I'm talking months early before major interest kicks in. If there is major interest, depending on what type of plan that you have. If you're not going to listen to me, if you're going to say, I'm going to do buy now, pay later anyways, especially if it's 0% interest, something like that. Only do one at a time. If you're going to go that route and you're not going to listen, only do one at a time.

• 40:06Andrew Giancola?

  And then really the reality is build a real emergency fund. So you don't have to utilize buy now, pay later because I am not a fan. Number 21, this is a big one that's happening right now. The average American spends $3,284 on sports betting over the course of the past year. Now, let me tell you something. Sports betting is going to become a bigger and bigger problem. And for a lot of people out there, when they cannot handle sports betting, it becomes an issue that ruin your finances. I don't mind someone's sports betting, you know, small amounts of money. But here's what I would say. When you bet, number one, set a hard spending limit. You are not going to spend over X amount of dollars per bet. And you're not going to spend over X amount of dollars per week. For example, if you love betting on football games, then set a $20 limit per week.

• 40:51Andrew Giancola?

  There are mentors that I've had who are billionaires who have had to go. Like casinos for business meetings and stuff like that. They said, my limit to gamble is $20. I will not gamble more than $20. I understand math. It's just for entertainment value. And this is what I want you to understand. You need to set limits surrounding these types of things. If you're going to partake in them. Hey, I know it makes the game more enticing. I know it makes it more fun, enjoyable, whatever else you want to say. But you gotta make sure that you have parameters set in place. Otherwise, you're going to get excited. You're going to get emotional and you're going to buy into something and do the wrong thing. So really set hard spending limits. Two, never ever gamble with borrowed money. If you gamble with borrowed money, you are really doing yourself a disservice when it comes to your finances. Three, treat gambling like entertainment, not investing.

• 41:34Andrew Giancola?

  There is a lot of people out there who think gambling is investing. And I cannot tell you that there is nothing further from the truth. If you think that, you don't understand math. Gambling is not investing. And if you treat it that way, that is a huge problem. Number four is if you struggle with self-control, there are blocking tools out there that you can utilize. There's one called GamBan that you can put on your phone and it will block all those apps for you. And then number five, re-debrack the portion of your gamble money to actual investments and savings. If you are winning at some decent pace here, okay? I do not want you to just continue to reinvest your gambling money into gambling. Because guess what's going to happen? It's going to go away at some point, even if you've been winning for a couple of years. It's not going to end well. Okay, so just remember that gambling is a huge, huge problem. And it is rising at a rate that I don't love.

• 42:19Andrew Giancola?

  One in four married Americans admitted to some form of financial infidelity. This is number 22. So hiding debt, secret accounts or spending creates financial chaos and erodes trust in a marriage. And so you want to make sure that you are on the same page in your marriage. So have regular money dates with your partner to review finances regularly. Use shared financial dashboards like Monarch Money. That is a great place to have a financial dashboard shared that you can look at. Three, set agreed upon personal spending limits so that each of you knows how much they're spending. Continued communication is just the biggest thing when it comes to money in a relationship. And so continuously having this communication is really, really important. Four is create a shared financial plan. Now we have a checklist that we talked about a number of different times on how

• 43:03Andrew Giancola?

  To have conversations surrounding money. And one of the big things that I want you to understand is that you need to have shared goals that you agreed upon. And you need to have a shared financial plan and really you need to have regular money meetings. You need to have conversations that are happening all the time. And I want you to frame these money meetings in a specific way. I want you to say, what are our dreams? What is our dream life that we really want to pursue and go after? And when you figure out what your dream life is and you have those shared goals, all of a sudden managing money together becomes so much easier. But you got to reframe it from, we gotta stop spending so much to, what is our dream life? What are we going to be doing in the next 20 to 30 years? Where do we want to live? What vacations do we want to go on? And create this safe space that you can both work towards. That is the way to do it.

• 43:48Andrew Giancola?

  And if you haven't tried it that way, I highly encourage you to try it out. And then figuring out the underlying trust issues that are happening, not after a blow up, but having this conversation. Hey, I don't love it when you spend $300 on something without having a conversation with me. And it's not like you have to ask for permission, but I would just love to have the conversation and know what's going on. Stuff like that is going to go a long way with trust. Number 23, financial scams cost Americans $12.8 billion over the course of the last year. And AI scams are surging. Now, this is a huge problem, my friends, that most of us need to make sure that we are protecting against. So number one is using multi-factor authentication or authenticators like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator

• 44:31Andrew Giancola?

  on all of our financial accounts or any other accounts that store our credit card or password. That's number one. Number two is making sure that you freeze your credit. So you can go to all three major credit bureaus and preventing new account fraud. You can freeze your credit so that anytime someone wants to try to open an account in your name, they can't do it. Cause your credit is frozen. Then let's say, for example, you want to get a mortgage or you want to open a credit card. You just call the three major credit bureaus, make sure you get it unfrozen. Boom, it's done. You open up the card and then you freeze your credit again. That way, no financial fraud can happen to you because you are freezing your credit. Okay, so that's number two. Number three is to remove your personal information from data brokers. So data brokers out there have your personal information and they are selling.

• 45:13Andrew Giancola?

  It to a bunch of different places. If you go Google your name, Google your address, look it up in quotations. Data brokers have your information and they are selling that information. So if somebody gets a portion of your information, let's say they get your name and your address, and they're trying to find even more information about you, like your phone number, those types of things, or maybe they get a piece of your social security number, or they get some other information that is very, very sensitive. All they have to do is go to one of these data brokers and get the rest of your information and they can open a bank account in your name, or they can open up student loans in your name or a credit card. And this, my friends, is a place you do not want to be. So to get your personal information removed, the best thing to do is use a service like Delete Me. So if you go to joindelete.me/pfp20, you can get 20% off Delete Me. And what they do is they go to those data brokers and they say,

• 45:58Andrew Giancola?

  "Hey, please remove this person's information from your data bank." And they get your information removed off of these websites so that you do not get exposed. And Delete Me does a ton of work to do this. And so it is really, really important to make sure you get your personal information removed from these websites. And they continuously get it removed so that you're not susceptible to any of these scams or fraud that are out there. Number four is if you get phone calls in and you're not sure if you're talking to the right number, hang up and call back on an official number. Because I've seen a lot of people who will call it and really make sure it's an official number. So I actually Googled a customer service line recently, and I talked about this, I think, on a recent episode. But I Googled a customer service line recently, and on Google, someone had the fake number as the number one search result on Google. And so I

• 46:43Andrew Giancola?

  called and I go, "The questions they're asking me are very fishy." And so I hung up and then dug deep and found the real customer service number, which was like number three or four on Google. And I know better. And I did that. And so it's going to be one of those things where I want you to make sure that you're verifying identities independently, and then talk openly about scams and making sure with friends and family, you're always staying alert. These are getting better and better. And with AI, it is going to be one of those things where people are going to get scammed more and more and more. So removing your personal information becomes even more important. So if you go to joindelete.me/pfp20, that is the best place where you can join Delete Me and ensure that you're getting your information removed. It is the best service out there by far, and a service I've been using for years and years and years. They've been a partner of the show for a long time, too. So love, love, love, delete me,

• 47:27Andrew Giancola?

  and you got to make sure that you are not getting scammed. 18% of American adults, this is number 24, have lost money to a scam. So that's nearly 1 in 5 adults, and these losses are rarely recovered. So a lot of times, I just heard a story about someone who lost $100,000 to a scam, a really good scam, and they just caught the person at the right time, they took $100,000 from them, and they could not get the money back. So you need to educate yourself on the most common scam tactics, number one. Number two is you need to regularly check bank and credit card statements for this reason. Number three is keep personal info off public databases. Again, delete me will remove it from those public databases. Four, report scams immediately if they do happen, and make sure you talk about scams openly,

• 48:08Andrew Giancola?

  because again, this is how we spread this information. And so it's really, really important to make sure your data is secure, and make sure your data is structured in a way that is hack proof. And in Master Money Academy, we're going to be working on a course to protect your data and your privacy. And so that'll be a really, really good and important thing that we need to note. Number 25 is there has been roughly $20 billion in crypto stolen or lost between 2021 and 2024. So unlike traditional bank accounts, crypto often has no protections or recourse. So one hack or rug pull or lost key can wipe out an entire savings. So never store large amounts of crypto on an exchange until you can do cold storage or remove it from those exchanges. That's going to be number one. Number two is use hardware wallets for long-term storage. Number

• 48:51Andrew Giancola?

  three is only invest money that you can afford to lose. If you can't afford to lose it, then it's something where we're going to have to figure out ways to protect that money. Number four is making sure that you vet projects carefully in crypto. So I only invest in Bitcoin when it comes to crypto, a little bit of Ethereum in the past. And so most people are looking at get-rich-quick tokens and things like that. Just be very, very careful. And then always keep crypto as a small portion of your portfolio, not the entire portion, because there's a lot of scams going on in crypto. Some of it, like Bitcoin, is the one that, you know, is getting institutionalized. So that is a different thing. If you haven't heard our episode talking about that, that is a whole different scenario. But just making sure that you are very, very careful is really, really important. So those are the 25 scary money statistics of 2025. If you guys have any Questions, please join the Master Money Newsletter, go to

• 49:36Andrew Giancola?

  mastermoney.co/newsletter and send in your questions there. We'll have some Q and A's coming up and we will be answering your questions on those Q and A's. So make sure you send some of those in coming up over the course of the next couple of weeks. Thank you so much for being here on this episode. Our goal is to bring you as much value as we possibly can. And again, if you're interested, join Master Money Academy. Go to mastermoney.co/join and you can get more information and get a video that shows you backstage what happens in Master Money Academy. So thank you so much again and we will see you on the next episode.

• 50:21Speaker 02

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