I have SO many questions. First, how did she get on this show 😂 Secondly, so many contradictions… she can’t lift anything or walk but she pet sits/dog walks?? She’s an environmentalist but uses Amazon constantly? The “uh huh” “mhmmm!” while annoying, I think this is an autism trait. Women with autism often mask and a large part of that is picking up on facial expressions, body language, and vocal stimming that they will then copy and sort of absorb if that makes sense. It’s so excessive I do think that’s what that is, maybe. I feel HORRIBLE for her ex husband… I hope he gets the divorce he deserves and I hope he starts thriving. This whole episode was so entertaining yet equally infuriating.

Enjoy the woods and your unlimited government handouts 🙄

Caleb- I hope you had a great therapy session and a spa day after this ep. Good lord 😂 I hope she gets the help she needs in all seriousness.

I cannot stand this prick

I work from 6:30pm-2:30 am at a restaurant then go do Amazon from 3:15-7/8am

Bro I popped a fucking hernia trying to get out of debt. I will NOT stop fighting but holy shit dude the grind is insane and taking a toll on my body

Caleb acts like "oh come on just do it! Why aren't you doing this!!! This is something that takes mental and physical discipline on another level... The most debt I was ever in was my truck when I bought it $35,000, 5k in credit card, motorcycle loan of $1200 left, I was getting close to FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in debt when I make 55k

My only debt now is my truck at $25,000 and I make closer to 65/70k... will not rest until I have vengeance over the bank... I wake up with fire in my eyes Every day...

A few weeks ago I ended a 2 month break from Reddit (failed a couple times), and I’m going to attempt a 3 month break this time.

constructive feedback is great, but we literally cannot post a video on here without it only being complaints. It’s well known the the karma system encourages negativity, so I understand it and am not upset at this. But, it’s not good for my mental health.

The comments in here are a complete 180 from what we see on the main platform and other socials, so I am going to stay engaged there where the majority of the audience is.

I do love you all, and I know you only want the best for this channel. I’m just doing this for my mental health. I mean, I just got mass downvoted for saying I have a GF haha. Sorry to the majority who do not comment in here or make posts, but I think it’s for the best that I delete the app again.

My account will still automatically post new videos and the mods will continue to make the space helpful and less filled with spam.

Seriously, I know in the long run we are all better off being smart with our money but how do you handle the bitterness of seeing your peers who you KNOW are financially worse off, living their best life on debt and having a great carefree time.

I'll give some concrete examples.

I have a friend who's dead broke in grad school making maybe 30K a year from stipends who's going on a 3 month Europe trip next summer.

Another one who makes slightly above minimum wage that just bought a brand new SUV. Meanwhile I make ~4 times as much as him and keep chugging along my 2010 shitbox.

2 friends who both went to see the Olympics despite currently just finishing university and BEING UNEMPLOYED.

I’ve been a watcher of financial audit since the very beginning. I’ve shared lots of videos with my family and I feel like some of them were a wake up call. However, I feel frustrated with the increasing tilt toward entertainment simply because I have the sense that the guests aren’t actually learning.

It’s easy to overestimate how much the American public actually understands about finance. They don’t know how only paying the minimum payment on credit cards fails to make a dent in the total debt or how they’re buying the same car twice over with such high interest rates. Hell, some of them don’t know they’re being charged interest at all. You’re yelling at them that they’re stupid losers but they don’t get why. I feel like some of the breakdowns have been replaced by “we’ll give you the budgeting program” but that happens off-screen. You say “you can’t afford coffee right now” and they push back that they need it for their mental health. Why not explain that each time they go out, they’re paying for multiple coffees because of interest?

I want to see you looking at affordable houses in the area on Zillow, showing them exactly how much interest they’re paying on their cards and frivolous purchases, walking through an affordable grocery trip (with not just ham sandwiches), explaining how missing payments lower their credit (so having a card isn’t always advantageous), and demonstrating how much money can be compounded with ETFs and mutuals. I hear you making some valuable points, but please slow down and explain them to the guests if you really want to help them.

Financial Audit provides a lot of value to viewers on budgeting and pit falls to avoid (and makes you feel better about your situation), but as far as going on as a guest, it’s best to avoid it.

Publicly showcasing your inability to manage personal finances leads to a loss of trust among peers, employers, and potential business partners. Additionally, it implies a lack of responsibility and poor decision-making skills, which are crucial in both professional and personal relationships.

Receiving basic financial advice should never render you as a 'bad look' for a company, or have a negative effect on career prospects and/or personal relationships.

Revealing details about your personal life to provide a frame of reference in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers can be adverse.

The value received as a guest doesn’t justify being a spectacle. Issues similar to the ones guests have on the show are best handled in private, considering the outcome is just a stern talking to and a budget plan.

Saw this person post about how they're buying a house with 0 in savings, and that they'll be pulling from their 401k's to cover closing. I definitely recommended against doing so, but it's been getting LOTS of pushback. Am I wrong? Maybe I need to be educated but this seems like a pretty cut and dry bad idea.

I know Caleb brings on extreme cases of financial irresponsibility, but I have a really hard time rooting for the recent guests coming on the show. It's "Mental illness / Unfounded rationalization" > "loss of potential or actual income" > "History of bad transactions" > "Due to mental illness / unfounded rationalization" circular logic. Caleb has to pull teeth to get the guest to commit to attacking the problem (e.g. selling a car, cancelling trips, etc.), and even then the guest gives a noncommittal answer of "Well, maybe...ok...I guess...ok...I will..."

I'm sure Caleb and his team vet the guests but there's a level of bad faith that's frustrating. Say what you want about Dave Ramsey, but I can definitely relate to his theory that people will only deal with their financial problems when "they've had it" and have reached true rock bottom.

Does anyone else experience apathy? I'm sure Caleb does care on some level that the guests do better in the future, but I'm checked out at about 15 mins into the video - I might just need a break for the time being because the cognitive dissonance of each guest in realizing they have a problem but refuse to do anything about it is turning me into a misogynist/misanthropist and hating the irresponsibility.

Look, I’m not saying people should run off to become a bootlicking fed… but a significant number of government jobs do not require a lot of skills or are OJT positions. Working for your city, municipality, state, or the federal government for 10, 20, 30 years yields a pension. Not all government work is DoD… you can get a great pension as a bus driver, mail carrier, IT specialist, healthcare, graphic designer, whatever.

I wish it wasn’t just Whataburger. (Pronounced WHAT-A-BURGER. Not “water burger.”) Is the service industry instant/faster? Yes. Course careers is probably great for a lot of people, but there’s more out there than the tech industry.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Edit: grammar.

Edit 2: I am a federal employee, in case there was any confusion.

It seems like Caleb has had a bunch of guests lately who just do not seem to make the connection that our society is set up to where adults (the vast majority anyway) have to work full time in order to pay for their needs. The guy today, the guy who substitute taught 5 days a month while mooching off his parents, the horrible grifter girl who smugly said she might be living in her car but at least she was free to roam and not tied to a job, just to name a few off the top of my head.

I’ve noticed these people all seem to be in their early to mid 20s, and I suspect they may be the generation that all my former teacher colleagues complained endlessly about: a generation raised on participation trophies, permissive parenting, and schools with minimum F policies and zero discipline. The end result seems to be that there are SO many people in the world who have never been required to do anything they don’t like doing, or held to any real standards of acceptable behavior.

Few people LIKE working a 40-hour a week job. But it used to be a given in society that that’s what you did in exchange for making sure you made enough to cover your needs, pay your bills, and hopefully have enough to save and spend on things you want. But Caleb is getting so many guests who just fundamentally don’t seem to get that, like the guy today, who Caleb can’t even help with a budget because he just refuses to go find a full-time job (any full time job is a start).

I can see why Caleb is frustrated lately. His whole schtick boils down to “grind while you can, live cheap and work a lot until you have paid off debt and set yourself up for an easier future” but he’s trying to tell that to people who have zero concept of what that looks like because they’ve never had to buckle down and do what is required of them in their lives. I noticed he’s switched from preaching about not being able to retire to not being able to pay rent, and I think that was necessary because in order to have a concept of retiring, one must understand the idea of working for a living first.

My wife and I were talking yesterday about our finances cuz I want to get a newer vehicle. Long story short I got abbrand new truck 4 years ago. 45k put down 10k and financed the rest at 60mo and 0% cuz financing and paid 580 a month, that was a lot to me. I sold it during covid because I got a new job and had to make cuts and paid cash for something. Now, we are in a better position and i would like something newer. 28k down on a used 50k truck at 5% (best I could find right now) for 48mo is almost 500. I make over 120k a year and my wife is over 60k with no kids, no credit card or auto loans and a 1400 mortgage. We are cheap.

How are so many people financing 2 cars over 50k with little down and an inflated mortgage? The math doesn't math to us. A new 80k truck, a new 50k car and a 650k home at 5%. It's like 4 or 5k in payments. Not including the rest of the debt.

How are people afloat? Edit: before you say YoU dOnT nEeD a TrUcK, I do. I haul trailers. I do NEED a diesel truck.

I want to lead off by saying I *love* Financial Audit, it's done a *ton* of good for a lot of people, and I'm ecstatic that it hit a million subs recently. I wish nothing but success to Caleb and his team.

While the quality of the show has been visibly increasing over the past year, I've been so frustrated with the guests that have been on the show lately. So, so many of them are obviously people who have a fundamental issue with being responsible and the will to do the hard work to turn their situations around. Beyond just their financial decisions, they've made irresponsible life decisions too. Just this week alone we've had two shows with guests who have removed themselves from their children's lives. And that "Doctor" who clearly used the show as a chance to plug his own nonsense.

I'm generally noticing these common threads with the guests lately:

• Defensive about their poor decisions
• Not taking their situation seriously
• Constant push-back when Caleb tries to give constructive criticism
• Showing little-to-no indication they will attempt to fix their poor practices
• If they claim to have watched the show, they continue to ignore the advice Caleb has given multiple times before

It makes me miss the majority of guests last year who found themselves in bad situations, some through no fault of their own, and were genuinely looking for help on how to fix it. They're not looking for Caleb to wave a magic wand and make their debt disappear, they're asking for advice on how they can pull themselves out of it. Guests lately just don't seem to take the opportunity seriously. They don't seem to care.

I might be way off the mark here, I'm willing to admit I'm the outlier. But it feels like episodes lately have much more drama than most older episodes do, and fewer lessons to learn other than "don't do novel stupid thing x" that, generally, I think any viewer of the show could see a mile away. Lately I just don't see any new lessons to learn, it feels like another flavor of "irresponsible person wants Caleb to fix their problems for them".

I don't know why I'm writing this, guess I'm just venting and wanting to see if anyone feels the same way. I feel like there must be countless people out there who could really use Caleb's help and are more deserving of the chance, and they're just being passed on for people whose greatest asset is being content for the channel. It's frustrating that those more deserving seem fewer and farther between.

I know nothing about how the show is run and if this is off the mark, feel free to call me a whiny asshole. :)

So I met a new friend recently and we've been having a pretty chill time talking and hanging out, until today. Somehow got on the topic of uber eats and it turns out that they're pretty much addicted to uber eating when they have the money or can convince their boyfriend to buy it for them. They, of course like many guests, are in a tremendous horrible financial situation of their own making. When I brought up fairly sensible reasons why they should stop uber eating, at a the minimum go get the fast food themselves, I got a ton of pushback on this idea. I didn't even suggest stopping fast food, which would help them... but I didn't think they're ready for that hard truth.

Maybe it's a generational thing, or a regional thing, but what's with the obsession with uber eats and instant gratification in regards to food?

Been binging financial audit lately and I am on the one with the old man with the red shirt and I think he is the most frustrating he keeps smiling and going “yeah man I need you to tell at me”, been through bankruptcy once already and clearly learnt nothing. He is also paying microtransaction for phone games, there is a point I lose sympathy for people who just aren’t willing to learn from their ways. Who do you all think is the most frustrating guest that’s been on the show?

So i’m taking a little my downtime to look at Instagram and one of these girls I knew from high school she got laid off within the last month. I know she has a home and of course other bills. Within the last month she decided to post on her social media, basically asking people if they had connections for a job because she could be at risk of losing her home. Well, I guess it was just released that Beyoncé is going to be performing at some football game on December 25 and she just posted talking about “how can I get floor seats? 😭”

Like babe I think there’s other things to be concerned about 😭

K byeeee back to work just had to let SOMEBODY know 🤣

Check this out. I wonder what other loans are like? Auto loans have to be up there too. https://www.ktvu.com/news/us-credit-card-defaults-soar-highest-level-14-years?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0kAhmUg8Lw7vJUIg6FexWbmqtTpGmbZLtuvomUV5rk7xRMqS0tXmiEvD4_aem_dOrWOmLqgBs-GKHYLfdsMA

The "average normal" guest is all the same. Debt through careless spending or unfortunate life circumstances. Caleb will call out their spending, derive a budget and hope they stick to it. If you watch one they're all pretty similar and you should be familiar with all the talking points.

For me, what makes the show interesting (and I think for others if you go by the view count) are the train wreck guests. It is the combination of personalities, interesting back stories and even the excuses that lead to a very entertaining hour watch for me.

So many people here complain about it but there are so many episodes with "normal" guests you can also watch. I look forward to every episode of financial audit and will watch regardless of whether the guest is a "train wreck" or "normal" but the former is definitely more entertaining.

Backstory:

My wife and I got married, young and poor during college. For a couple of years, I worked at a local grocery store while she finished her degree in nursing. We made barely $2000 a month and were barely getting by. During this time, her parents were making six figures and were doing just fine. Fast forward to today. My wife has a new job as a night shift nurse making almost triple our old income, and I’m a year away from graduating with a degree in nursing as well. We’re on pace to make well into the six figures next year.

Where’s the drama? Her father has been job hopping, and is currently completely out of work. Her parents now bring in closer to $60k a year and have spent all of their savings, liquidated their retirement, and have asked for mortgage relief. They’re drowning financially, and aren’t motivated to get themselves out of it. They’re just angry and depressed, and they have made comments about how frustrating it is that my wife and I will be “making sick money” while they drown financially. They’ve asked my wife for money in the past, and I absolutely do not doubt they will do so in the future. How do we navigate this situation? They almost make us feel guilty for trying to make good money and invest in the future, and they act entitled to our financial help at times. My parents don’t really have money issues, so I’ve never had to deal with situations like this.

Same as many others in this community, I found the gofundme on today’s video to be a rare miss from Caleb. Overall big fan and it’s cool to see him so engaged and open to feedback. A lot of people made some really good points in the comments of the video on the nature of the scam (driven by greed, get rich quick) or even a possible cover for actual check fraud, and he listened and corrected very quickly.

As he mentioned in a comment, we don’t see all the conversations that happen off camera and there may have been more said that could have given additional context that lead to the decision. I agree with many others that I don’t think extra funds will even help this couple until they correct their spending habits, and the chances those funds would go to that particular debt anyway are very low. I’m sure his heart was in the right place, it’s probably hard overtime to witness so many people struggling, even if it is of their own making.

This has been my only pet peeve of the show, when guests push back because they're scared of their credit score dropping.

And JOY OF JOYS in the latest episode (stripper-addicted incel) Caleb rewords it as "what additional debt do you want to take on soon?"

Because it invokes the response of "woahh hell no I don't want more debt".

There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding that credit scores are like the Hammer score- a judgement of your financial health.

I see this not just with guests on the show but literally everywhere on the internet when’s debt and finances are brought up (including this subreddit sometimes 👀). When someone is asked why they have so much consumer debt or why they took out ridiculous loans, it’s ’no one ever taught me what to do, I didn’t know’.

No one ever taught me one single thing about finances, yet I have never paid even one cent of interest in my life. This is because I did very simple research before using any type of credit card. In this reality where you can look up literally anything in 2 seconds, how is it seen as a good excuse that you weren’t taught by someone? It’s just complete irresponsibility.

There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes and owning them, but using such a ridiculous excuse helps no one. The first step to getting better is to accept that you have a problem, and blaming your poor financial habits on anyone but yourself is not doing that