 Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to dedicated to financial literacy. Again, Russell, more your host coming to you live. I just wanted to say hello. How you doing? I'm just going to do a quick video on inflation hacks. I started it on my previous video, but I thought I'd give a few more hacks. And I'm going to keep giving you hacks, keep giving you ideas on what to do during this inflation crisis. First of all, the CPI consumer price index, they're saying that we're at around 6 to 7%. I said that six months ago. They're incorrect. We're more around 10%. I would even suggest 11% of as far as an inflation rate. Things are expensive. Food is higher. Gas is higher. Even your utilities and your energy cost. And so I just want to quickly go over some things, hacks, the things you can think about what to do during this time to save money. One of the things I mentioned, and I'm going to reiterate this once again, is this is tax season. Most people are so excited about getting a refund. I'm going to tell you to do something that's unconventional. I'm going to say, forget the refund. Look at your W-4 this year and begin to pay less taxes. You can change your W-4 through your HR. Talk to your tax person. I'm not a tax expert. This is some things I've learned. But you can change your W-4. Change it to where you're not paying as much taxes. Why is that important? The reason why you get a refund is because you overpaid on taxes. But the money that you overpay, when you overpay, that money is just sitting. The IRS has it sitting and then they just give you your money back at the end of the year. Why not keep that money yourself and invest that money? So say you had a refund of $1,700. That means throughout the year you overpaid $1,700. So each check you overpaid on taxes. What I'm saying is change your W-4 and don't overpay and take that money and invest it in ETF or stock or the stock market somewhere where it's appreciating, where you're gaining. See, your money is not gaining anything when you overpay taxes. Now, you could do this. You could split the year up six months. You change it where you're taking out less taxes. And in the last half of the year, you go back to where it was. That will break you even. You don't want to owe at the end of the year. I get that. You don't want to owe. So do it for seven months, six months. And tell your employer, hey, I want less, I want less, I want to pay less taxes. That's all I'm saying. Pay less taxes, take that extra money, put it, invest it. Now you're getting more money at the end of the year versus just sitting with the IRS. Because I'm going to tell you, they're investing that money. Look, millions and millions of people are overpaying. And what do you think the IRS is doing? Do you think that money is just sitting there? Even if it's sitting at a bond, they're getting some interest on your money. And then they pay you yours and they keep the rest because they don't give it to you. All right? That's one hack, taxes this year. Number two. One of the things that my wife are doing, your laundry, electricity is going up. Your energy bills is going up. So why not on Sunday, hey, make it a family outing. Everybody goes to the laundromat. You take all your clothes, you go to the laundromat. Now you're using somebody else's water. You're using somebody else's electricity. And you're getting it done faster because you have multiple machines. So I go at 6am on Sundays. So what? We don't wash Monday through Thursday. We don't have to because I did all the washing on Sunday. Maybe you might have a few items on Friday or Saturday. But you're not using nearly as much electricity because you're using someone else's once a week. Okay? That's another hack. Number three. Instead of going online and buying a brand new desk on Amazon, a Wayfair, Walmart, why don't you just go and look at your neighborhood garage yard sales. And here's another one. Estate sales. They can be very, very, very, very, I mean, you can get some great deals at estate sales. Look at yard sales, garage sales. Sometimes people just want to get rid of stuff. Beautiful, beautiful furniture. Okay? Now some people are like, I don't want to do that. Look, hey, it's all about survival, saving money. Okay? Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed to go to a yard sale. Okay? And then two, you can generate extra money. You got stuff around the house, clothes. It's, hey, you got clothes that still have their tags on it that you have no, that you have no purpose for them. You're not going to even wear them, especially with the pandemic, the way things are going. We're not going out much. Hey, put it on Makari or eBay, do a yard sale and generate some extra money. But listen, when I say generate extra money and passive income, I always say it with the purpose of investing. You could have a yard sale make about $75 to $100 and put that money in the stock market. Now, right now the stock market is, it's crashing. It looks like we're heading into a bear market. So you want to be careful. But what I'm saying is when the market begins to go the other way, because it will, whatever goes up, goes down, whatever goes down, goes up. And eventually the market will begin to go green again. And you can take that money that you made from a yard sale, put it in a jar and then invest it later. Okay. All right. When you go to the store, the market, here's another hack. When you go to the market, write out a list. I've typed out a list from my family. We actually have a spreadsheet that I keep up on the wall on our board. And what happens is if a family member sees that we're out of something, they check it off. They just check it off. And so at the end of the two weeks, I look, I grab the list and I'm only getting the things that we need because how many times you go to the store based on memory. And you end up getting an item that you already have at home. And so you end up wasting. Here's another thing. Food is not lasting as long as it used to. And unfortunately, so I go to the store more often than I would like because I'm not buying a whole bunch of stuff because how many times it's expired because you bought too much and the food expired. Those salads that you get at Trader Joe's, how many times have they expired? Especially produce. Man, it does not last long. So don't buy excess. Just buy what you need, even if you have to go a couple of times. And then to another hack. Here's another hack. Stop going out as much because of inflation restaurants. They don't have the staffing. And if they do, they got to pay them more. So where did they they pass those costs on to you? If they give somebody $17 versus $15, where do you think they make that up on the prices? So now when you go into a restaurant, you're paying much more than you were two years ago. So my wife and I went to a restaurant the other day for both of us. It would have been $50. We looked at the menu. We said, no, no, we're not doing this. I went and bought the food. All of the things that were on that hide on that menu. I bought that for less less than half of what I would have paid in that restaurant. I think I paid like $17, $15 and went home and cooked it. You know why we do it? It's convenient. No, let's not be lazy during this time. You got to be diligent. There's a scripture in the Bible that says the diligent shall bear rule. The diligent shall bear rule. You got to be diligent during this time. So I said, no, we're going to go home and cook. We'll have some avyance at home. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't take my wife to a beautiful restaurant from time to time. But right now you guys things are expensive because of inflation and you've got to you got to counter inflation the best way you can. Okay. She knows I love her. I will I will make it up to her and she wasn't upset. She was in fact, she was the one that encouraged us. Let's get out of here. This is way too expensive. I'm sorry restaurant owners. You're going to suffer if you raise the prices. All right. I understand your side. I get it. You're a business owner. You got to survive. You got to stay in business. But right now everything is expensive. So if you go up on your menu, you're the one that's going to pay the price. People are going to go home and eat at home. All right. So let's work together here. All right. So that's it for today. I'm just doing these are the hacks I'm going to give you for today. But stay tuned tomorrow. Keep watching the channel. I have more to come. I want to thank you for watching the channel. Please hit the subscribe. Keep hitting that subscribe button. Give me a thumbs up. Hit the notify bell so you can continue to get the content. I'm out of here and love you very much. Have a great day everybody. It's going to be okay.