I stumbled across a YouTube channel which has gripped my attention, and suprisingly so. Caleb Hammer is a slightly pudgy Millenial who has a primary interest in personal finance. His show is simple – someone who feels like they are struggling with their budgeting will come on, and over the hour Caleb will go through their financial statements and figure out a solution. It seems pretty dry, but in the same way Jamie Oliver had millions of people tune in to see him make an omelet, the joy is in the host.
Caleb has the best interests of his guests, but he delivers his message with a hefty dose of spice. To be fair, the most popular episodes, and the ones I have watched, don’t include people deciding whether they want to diversify their portfolio into emerging markets or double down on domestic equities. Nope, the guests that come on are complete and utter messes – both financial and pretty much every other aspect of their lives.
My favourite so far has been a 23 year old self-described sigma male, who after being medically retired from the military, is working in security in Kansas City (a town not, in fact, in Kansas). Well, I would describe it as security, he described his career as “beating up hobos”. Those two income sources provide him with 85k a year, in a city where the average HOUSEHOLD earns 65k. Plus, thanks to his service, he has access to military benefits regarding houses, so he owns his own home. Overall, things are looking up for this young man!
Well, that starts to unravel when the guest decided to refi his mortgage, so he could pull equity out of his home to pay off his credit card debt. Now, credit cards have higher interest rates than mortgages, so maybe there is a good reason for this? Not in this instance, this guest had racked up almost 10k in credit card debt, mostly because he had a very expensive cost, strip clubs. Yep, this guy was spending between 80% and 90% each week of his income on strippers. Wild.
Other highlights include having a $35k car balance on a 2018 Dodge Durango (current worth $14k), and spending his GI Bill payments not on tuition, but on, yep you guessed it, strippers. Also, spending $1.5k on Twitch donations; not to support the creators, but donations of that size can somehow “crash” their UI, causing their stream to crash. He found this “funny”. Now, I don’t yuck someone’s yum, but this is unusual behaviour.
It’s just an entire hour of seeing someone in a crazy financial hole. In this situation, most people can, and I would argue should, be somewhat sympathetic. We have all been young and foolish at times, and finances are difficult. However, some people have EXTREMELY unlikeable personalities. This guy is one of them.
When you see someone, who is in a dire situation, with an opportunity to do better, and all he does is smirk, make crude jokes, and say extremely peculiar things such as “I’m a sigma male”, then the joke, it seems, is on them.
Caleb Hammer is certainly more on the entertainment side than the education side, but he is entertaining, and I have learned a bit about personal finance watching. I imagine his show could become stale, but good on this young man for making it work.
If you’re interested, you can check out the episode on YouTube.
Leave a Reply