Transcript
The Jacobsen Group with Jon Jacobsen · Tue Mar 11, 2025
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Good Saturday morning.
What a beautiful springtime we're emerging into here as tonight we pick up that we jump forward we spring forward to pick up that extra hour of evening light with daylight savings time John Jacobson here on the eponymously named
Jacobson Group show here on KXEL, America's original 50,000 watt low torch on 1540 AM.
Along with that great 100.5 FM signal emanating out of Cedar Rapids.
And you can always listen live to KXEL as well as our podcast, Super Engineer Blake Griffin in here with me.
And we are brought to you by our great sponsors, James and Cindy Jandren, CPA.
Jim and Cindy, of course, founders of Midwest Renewable Energy, LLC.
Renewable fuels ethanol energy for a strong America as lean, as clean, and it's green emanating from eastern central Nebraska, bringing revenue vectors for our ag families, keeping us away from those mid-east terror state financial transactions, and keeping our food supply out of the hands
of the corporate concentrationists.
And we are also sponsored by Hames Homes.
The Homes people, we have a magnificent interview with Matriarch of Hames Homes, Barbara Hames Bryant coming up here later in the program.
Beautiful, safe, affordable, manufactured homes in Southwest Cedar Rapids and also sponsored
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Go to liferunners.org.
Get your t-shirt, like the lovely and gracious Deborah Jacobson.
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Life Runners, helping expectant mothers and babies on the way.
after birth as well.
Well guys, we've got a tremendous program today.
Let's get caught up with the Iowa Legislatures.
This is the blowtorch.
This signal not only carams through Iowa, but through all the original Big Ten states to 14 states, this union, as well as the two Canadian provinces.
I am joined today by Jacob Hall, returning the program.
Jacob Hall is the founder and editor of Iowa's most widely
red, including among the Midwest most widely read political blogs, the Iowa standard.
And then we've got the matriarch of the Iowa right to life movement and former head of Iowa right to life, Jennifer Bowen.
Guys, I'm
I want to touch on this topic today because I feel the tinge of sadness.
My feeling is that we've lost, we've squandered a magnificent opportunity with Funnel Week as it is and checking some of my sources.
I'll see if Jacob can gain Sammy, but it looks like there won't be any real pro-life legislation this session in the Iowa legislature, a legislature that I once served in.
And it breaks my heart because all the stars proverbially had been lined up.
Roe vs. Wade overturned a Republican governor, de facto supermajorities in the Iowa Senate and in the Iowa House, and now a friendly Republican appointed set of Supreme Court and appellate court justices and no movement this year in a non-election year with these supermajorities.
It breaks my heart
Jacob, is there still a, uh, a Hail Mary or a miracle here that can play out or where are we procedurally with this point in session?
No, I really don't think either of the, the two bills that I think most people in the pro life base would be most excited about are going to go anywhere.
They've obviously not been assigned subcommittees or anything like that.
Tell us what, Jacob, tell us what the two bills were and you're saying they weren't even assigned subcommittees.
plow through that just a little bit more for us.
One was an abortion abolitionist bill, and then another was more of your, your traditional sort of life at conception bill.
Neither one is going to get a hearing.
And really, I don't, I mean, there was, I don't remember seeing a whole lot in terms of excitement from the pro life groups.
here in Iowa about those bills.
That's my problem with them.
I think their leadership has, has, has dropped the ball too.
Continue Jacob.
That's just my opinion at this juncture.
Yeah.
I mean, to be fair, there was a lot of hubbub going on at the time with the gender identity and the civil rights code bill going through the process and everything else.
Um, but in terms of this year, anything, you know, overly meaningful getting down the pro life front, it certainly doesn't appear that's going to be the case.
Jacob, could there ever have been a better year right now given all the circumstances that I laid out here at the front of the show?
No, I mean, it's hard to envision unless you're looking for, you know, 75% of the seats in the Iowa house instead of 66 or 67%.
I mean, I just, these are historic majorities and historic margins right now.
Ultimately, I think it's just.
you know, the pro-life movement in Iowa has to come together and get unified and decide what its goal is.
It's just, it's just, it's really a terrible shame, I believe.
And to let an opportunity, you know, I'm in my soon to be 65th year and there has never been an opportunity like this in my lifetime.
And I'm convinced there never will be even if I live out to my actuarial life expectancy age.
Jen Bowen, let's bring you in.
Boy, you're a veteran of many decades of fighting for the unborn.
Jennifer, I'm disappointed.
What say you?
I
guess I would say I long past disappointed at this juncture.
I can't believe, you know, we're this many years into a so-called pro-life trifecta, the governor.
the Iowa House, the Iowa Senate, the federal seats, all claiming to be pro-life leaders.
And we just don't have the backing of any substantive, life-saving abortion bans, life protection bills.
I mean, we're just not seeing that.
And I just, I'm at a loss.
It's a heartbreaking loss.
John, it is a squandering I never could have imagined.
When we took the Iowa Senate, we just took every seat possible.
In 2016, we went into 2017 very strong, and then we did eventually get a heartbeat bill years later.
But what have we accomplished?
And I know that those that are going to consider themselves pro-life leaders in organizations outside of the political arena are going to point and say, oh, but, you know, abortions are 32% down in Iowa, and, you know, we're no longer, you know, we're saving babies.
Well, are they telling you that...
Over 63% of abortions are now happening by mail order.
So sure, we can point to 2023's health and human services abortion rates in Iowa and say, oh, we only had 2700.
Praise God.
That's awesome, they would say.
Can they tell you any number?
of babies that are dying by male-order chemicals in the state of Iowa.
And to sit down and be quiet on this issue, it's inconscionable with this group of leaders.
You know, I serve with a lot of these current members, although there has been some attrition even in the short time that I've been out of the legislature.
But some of these are stalwart pro-lifers.
At least they certainly were back in the day.
And for whatever reason, things just seem to be stagnating.
And as an attorney, I just, Jacob, I don't see the legal arguments for slow walking this.
The Supreme Court struck down Roe versus Wade and said, it is up to the states.
And so this is,
that the light is green.
It is time to put the car into gear and to put the, uh, the foot on the pedal and Jacob, I don't see any legal reason why a very strong, uh, abolition, uh, or, or, or, or, or personhood bill.
I don't see any legal reason why that cannot be passed by the state given the ruling to overturn.
row that the US Supreme Court, uh, clearly telegraphed in the holding that it is now up to the States.
Why the reticence?
Is it, is it political cowardice?
Uh, you know, Jacob, any thoughts, opinions, or what you're hearing?
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's just, uh, that there's still a lot of consternation over.
whether the abortion issue and dobs cost Republicans nationwide, I think in 2022.
And I think that's still at the forefront of a lot of their minds.
I
agree.
It's a craven political concern, a little bit of flinching card, as I would call it.
Go ahead.
And I just think it's a matter of
trying to see how everything settles now.
They feel like they've done a lot the last five years or so here in Iowa, whether it's school choice and ESAs or whether it is, you know, this gender identity thing.
Last year it was parental rights and education.
It's been a plethora of things and I almost feel like they want to just kind of hit the pause button, let things simmer for a bit and then see how much
further they can go on some of these things now obviously none of these things is as important as the life is
uh... which which is kind of what
what causes the heartburn
for
many of the Republicans across the state.
Yeah, I consider it the preeminent issue.
The life issue is the preeminent issue.
Jacob, I'm going to let Jennifer have the final word here, but Jacob, I want you to opine one more time.
Jacob, it seems to me like there's a vacuum in the statewide pro-life leadership, whatever that is or whoever it is.
I don't see any
institutional momentum from any of these pro-life groups?
Any muscle at all?
Where am I wrong on this?
I don't think you are.
I think right now it's just kind of understood.
I think the legislative leadership, perhaps the governor, they're content with the heartbeat bill.
They really don't want to go any further than the heartbeat bill.
And they just want to see where everything settles.
And I think that, you know,
some of the advocacy groups probably are well aware of that and there's other priorities that those advocacy groups have so they don't want to upset the apple cart by going after something that isn't going to happen anyway.
Yeah, here with Jacob Hall with the Iowa Standard.
Jen Bowen, the matriarch of the Right to Life movement in Iowa, former head of Iowa, Right to Life.
Jennifer, do you think that our advocacy groups need to drink a cup of coffee and take some stimulants and get back in the game here to put public pressure on our executive and legislative branches?
Yes, absolutely.
make two arguments.
The first is, you know, it's all well and good that the Iowa legislature has been doing what they've been focusing on, as Jacob mentioned, the last five years or so.
And my argument to that would be those are all born children, born individuals, and they have had the opportunity to survive their mother's womb.
And if we're not going to go the distance and protect unborn lives, all of our lives at some point will be at risk because we're not willing to go the distance.
None of those, not one issue matters to a dead, unborn child and their grieving mother.
It doesn't.
That said, I would argue to, argument argues too strong a word, I would say that they can put their
politically wagging finger in the air and say, oh, dogs, 2022, oh, bad, we don't know, we don't know.
But, you know, I would argue that the lack of a backbone, a lack of a spine died here in Iowa years before 2022.
I would ask beyond the heartbeat, though, what has happened in this
so-called pro-life state years before God's decision came down.
It's a handy excuse to use, especially in light of the fact that they never thought they were going to lose the cover of Roe v. Wade.
I have had ad nauseam conversations with almost every single legislator that is still in that building.
over and over and over.
We have all been promised.
Well, if Roe v. Wade were ever to go away, let's just make that Roe v. Wade.
And we had that miraculous intervention from the Supreme Court in June of 2020.
And what happened in Iowa?
We became an abortion sanctuary state for years.
We are now a state.
where we don't even have a clue how many unborn babies are going to die by chemicals their mothers purchased on the internet.
From Mexico, from New York, wherever they're coming from, we don't know.
And what we have said to those unborn children and what we are saying to their abortion-vulnerable mothers, we don't even care.
We're done.
We don't care.
I don't know how else John
and Jacob, you can look at this and tell me at this point in time that we can say we have a pro-life, we have a pro-life government in the state of Iowa.
I'm just not going to buy it.
It's very sad because as someone who is now aging in my own lifespan, I believe there will never be an opportunity like there was in 2025 with the DOB's decision
with a Republican governor de facto super majorities in both houses and a friendly court system.
I just, you know, one thing about the Democrats, they govern brutally when they get power and they use political capital.
What is the use of having political power if you won't use it, if you won't govern with it, if you won't expend that capital?
This would have been the year to do it in my humble.
opinion.
I thank Jacob Hall.
Jacob, how can they find you?
You're up to speed on all of this stuff.
It's such great reading and you're moving public opinion in your own way my friend.
You're quite the influencer as we would say here of late in the Iowa legislature.
How do they find you Jacob?
Yeah, people can look us up on theiowastandard.com.
That's the website.
Otherwise, we're on Facebook.
That's a place you can catch all the live streams of subcommittee and committee meetings that we go to.
There'll be fewer of those now.
Obviously, the funnel week has passed, but if people want to keep up with us, find us at theiowastandard.com.
And Jennifer, you're writing these days.
You're still advocating for people from room to tomb because you're working against this.
big push toward euthanasia, you're working against the deliberate killing of people at the other end of the age spectrum as well as the unborn.
Jen, can they find your stuff anywhere?
Facebook, any other websites, that type of thing?
Yes, I would say coming soon, JenniferBowen.com is just about to launch with all things
past and present my writings and things like that is going to be launching very, very soon.
And it's just going to kind of be an aggregate of all the things that you've said.
There's just a mighty battle ahead of us.
And we need everybody equipped and engaged as we can be on that.
So Jennifer Bowen dot com, Jennifer Hess one end.
Well, there's no one more authentic and more courageous than Jennifer Bowen fighting through this incredible battle that she has been fighting for now in her seventh year of this, stage four cancer and
by a miracle of God.
Thank you to Jesus, the divine physician.
We not only have Jennifer with us, I think she's better than ever and more authentic and eloquent because she knows just how precious life is.
Jennifer, thank you as always for joining us.
Thank you, John.
You'll listen to the Jacobson Group on KXEL.
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And this is our wonderful business entrepreneur of excellent segment.
We're back with Barbara Hames Bryant, the matriarch of Hames Homes.
beautiful, affordable, safe, and just absolutely lovely manufactured homes in the Cedar Rapids area.
Barbara, so great to have you back on the program with us this morning on this beautiful spring Saturday.
Well, John, I'm so glad to hear your voice.
This is a beautiful day, and it's a great time for you and I to have a conversation about whatever we want to.
Well, it is, and we love our Hawkeyes.
You know, the Hawkeye women have exceeded expectations, gotten all the way to the quarter-final round of the Big Ten tournament.
Think of it, a conference with 18 teams.
Now we're in the final
eight and I think that locked up a secure NCAA birth for us they're talking about possibly even 11 big teams getting tickets to the women's dance and we're in the final eight so that shows things up and my mom has survived the LA fires and is back home in Marion thanks be to God and Barbara I go back over half a century with your family
through watching your early television commercials on WMT, your family, patients and my father's dental practice, your great late.
father being an iconic hero of mine who encouraged me to do what I did.
And that was serving the Iowa legislation for just under eight years.
I voluntarily term limited myself, never lost an election.
I know Kurt would tell me just when John, you know, he wanted to see some victories there.
And you guys at Hames Homes are winners, Barbara.
You've been recognized in the community on multiple occasions for your civic stewardship.
Barbara, not only
Do the Lord's work, I think, in providing homes, not houses, homes for people that are safe, that are lovely, that are affordable, but you also do so much in the community.
You've got a food pantry, you've got safe neighborhoods, you do so much.
for the area itself.
You've got walking parks and dog parks and frisbee golf, all the amenities, Barbara, I think that's what makes you guys stand out.
It's a totally holistic project.
John, everything you just said was true.
I'm blushing.
It ain't bragging if it's true.
That's what Yogi Berra always says, Barbara.
Well, and no one would argue with Yogi Berra.
And Barbara?
You know, success doesn't happen overnight.
Like you said, we've been here 55 years now, and it didn't start out as a big success.
Success is something that you work at every day by helping people one customer at a time.
one home at a time, one situation at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one street at a time.
And over the years, that all builds up into, yeah, success and really happy residents.
You have tremendously happy residents.
All you folks need to do is go to the HamesHomes.com website.
and see these sterling testimonials about how the Hamas family has made these neighborhoods so wonderful.
Folks, as spring comes up, I urge you to get down there.
You'll see beautiful green lawns, you'll see landscaping, you'll see trees, shrubberies, you'll see street systems and lights and safe neighborhoods, literally five minutes away from retail, but in a beautiful rural setting.
Barbara,
I've looked at the pricing too.
These are so affordable.
We're in a tough economy right now, but literally, as I'll never forget, during the derecho, the infamous derecho of about five years ago, your homes were the ones that held up during the winds, Barbara.
It was absolutely remarkable.
It was a testimonial to our homes.
We always knew that they were installed really sturdily with
you know tie downs and anchors and you know a nationally approved installation system but the roof was in the pudding.
I mean in this case the wind we had 140 mile an hour winds for 45 minutes here in southwest Cedar Rapids and none of our homes tipped over.
A couple of them flipped slightly on their base.
We certainly had some shingles and siding blow off
But no, no structure in Cedar Rapids of any kind was unharmed, but our homes held up so great.
And it's incredible because there were so many what we would call other homes that were damaged so severely.
My mom and Mary in the condo, she lost the lid, the roof kind of.
collapsed in on her and just a tremendous bevy of water.
She was out of her house for months.
Barbara, I think what's so impressive too is I think it's the ethic of the family.
There's an advantage to a multi-generational family that has a Christian worldview.
Your father and mother were true patriots.
They were good to the veterans.
They honored their service to
this nation by being very important cogs in World War Two, your father working for General Patton and Chief Master Sergeant, your mom, with what she did in the medical field there while she was in service, met your father there.
And they took that ethic of fighting for the veterans to a new plane.
They fought like that for all the citizens.
of the SeaWrapers area, all their clients, but also continuing to this day.
If you go to Hames Homes, you see those salutes to our veterans.
Barbara, you've been very active in public service in Iowa with some of your positions and with your public policy work that you've done, the veterans have always been an important cog in that.
I'm so proud to be the child of two Army veterans.
My mom and dad, as you said, both served in the Army.
And during their time, they saw a lot of changes from the time my dad was drafted into World War II to my mom serving in Korea to my dad serving during the Vietnam War, coming home and being spit on and being ridiculed.
for being an American soldier and fortunately the country has come full circle
and now
we're back to honoring our veterans again
and that's where
we should be.
Amen.
It was a real point of pride in working right now as I am with some of Bobby Kennedy's folks.
on helping the veterans.
And when I was in the legislature, Barbara, one of the first votes I took in 2018 was HBOT therapy for our veterans, hyperbaric air, which is reducing suicidal ideation.
And now we've seen where the HBOT therapy is also reversing dementia, reversing stroke, injuries, where I'm a visiting professor at Ottawa U. We may incorporate it as concussion protocol therapy because of hyperbaric air.
totally reduces concussion injuries.
There's some incredible miracles going on.
And Barbara, the thing that is so nice about what you guys doing there in Cedar Rapids is it is affordable today for a family to come in and get one of these beautiful homes.
The price is right for the square footage.
Again, they're safe.
They're lovely.
Barbara, people have yards.
They've got driveways.
talk about the safety of the neighborhoods too.
There's a whole process of making this absolutely a family-friendly neighborhood.
There is no place on earth that's perfectly safe.
People need to take responsibility for their own safety, but let me tell you some of the things that we do as landowners to help our residents.
We have managers on call 24-7.
So, if a resident has a problem after hours or on weekends, there's a water leak, there's an amazing neighbor, there's a suspicious person, they can call one of the Hames managers.
We also have video cameras, and those are recorded.
We have 50 of those.
We also have street lights that we're installing.
Um, every home site has a street light, but we're also now installing overhead street lights.
Awesome.
We also had two emergency storm shelters in each community.
And those sure came in handy during the derecho.
Magnificent.
No
one was injured in our communities during the derecho.
And we credit that to our storm shelters.
Absolutely.
Barbara Hames, you guys, they will vet, uh, uh, folks that do apply in the neighborhoods.
So if there's some real bad actors out there, they get.
pre-screened out of the process.
And again, it's very affordable.
There's financing opportunities for folks too.
I know we've been in a bit of an interest rate glitch system here, but Barbara, the advantage is with time that manufactured home financing today is almost mirroring the rate structures that traditional banks are giving for mortgage financing.
Can you talk about coming full circle?
Exactly.
Well-manufactured home loans are awesomely chic again.
Frankly, for the banks, they are profitable.
So there's a number of local institutions that are starting to make manufactured home loans, plus we have our own in-house financial institution.
So rates are very competitive.
It's a good time to buy a manufactured home.
It is indeed.
And again, I direct your attention to this great Hames Homes website.
One thing that I think is wonderful is the blog that Barbara and Curtis and the rest of the gang work on.
There's a great article that's just been published, how to trade in your manufactured home in a Hames community.
Guys, it's so seamless here that you can upgrade your manufactured home, whether you need more space or additional features or a fresh start, a new location.
Trading in your home is a seamless process at Hames, isn't it, Barbara?
We absolutely love to upgrade our residents to the next best home.
We have some folks that have been with us who are on their third upgrade of their home, and we just love it.
And they love living here.
They know they need more space, but they don't want to leave brand view or summit view.
So they'll come and talk to Curtis or Clint, our sales representative, about trading in their current home and getting it.
even nicer newer, better, more spacious home.
This is where I wish I had television could paint this pastoral setting, but these are these two wonderful community summit view and grand view.
They're nestled beautifully in against the backdrop of a traditional Iowa rural landscape.
And yet Barbara, five minutes from all sorts of major retail and restaurants and just a little over 10 minutes from the airport, how can you be in a better location than Southwest Cedar Rapids there?
It's booming and we're at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Road Southwest Wilson Avenue and West Post Road if you can picture that we are just a few minutes from Westdale Town Center We are close to CRST.
We are close to Whirlpool of Manor We are just by the way 12 minutes door-to-door to the Eastern Iowa Airport.
I happen to know that I'm doing it myself
It's, it's an amazing place to live and people are so surprised.
It's a hidden gem in Cedar Rapids.
It is.
We're so delighted to tell that story today on KXEL with these ratings that are popping through the, through the roof.
Guys.
Cedar Rapids is a growing, expanding market in Iowa.
It's a wonderful place to live.
I will tell you, I grew up there by the Hames family.
They are rock solid people with a Christian worldview and an absolute respect for our veterans and a duty, the noblesse oblige, as we would say,
to be good community partners.
They've been recognized as such with many community awards.
Again, think of this, tornado shelters, pre-screening to make sure that you don't have bad actors coming in the neighborhood, well-lit streets.
beautiful landscape yards, garages, driveways.
These are just manicured, almost to perfection.
I can't wait till everything greens up because pretty soon you can see for yourselves.
But I encourage you to get out there.
But if not, get to that tremendous website, chock full of data at hams, H-A-M-E-S, homes, H-O-M-E-S dot com.
And Barbara, I'm going to let you tell us
how to get to you guys by phone or any other way.
And I'll just sideline and say, you're hearing Cracklin Rosie by Neil Diamond in the background.
That's my homage to the original days of the first advertising on media that the Hames family did circa 1970 and Barbara as the
current president of the Iowa Broadcast News Association, we are incorporating those commercials into the archives for Iowa television history.
Once again, Hames makes an impact.
Thank you, John.
If anybody would like to go watch some of those old gems from the 70s, 80s and 90s, just go to HamesHomes.com, H-A-M-E-S H-O-M-E-S dot com about us and we have
all of our old commercials on there.
So if you want a good laugh at some of those old corny commercials, please get some popcorn and watch them.
As far as reaching us by phone, the best way to reach us is at our old Marion phone number.
We brought it with us to Cedar Rapids, 319-377-4863.
That's 319-377-4863.
Barbara Hames Bryant Barbara thanks for all you do I know you've been very active in all 99 counties with some of the.
Public policy groups for some of our professional business women I know your father is very very proud of you and your mother as well and I wish you continued success in this multifamily generation there's now another generation that is.
there at the desk.
It's easy to find a member of the Hamas family if you want to do business with the Hamas.
We're truly a family business.
Indeed.
Well, Barbara, I look forward to visiting with you again soon.
Thank you for taking extended time with us today.
And let's keep rolling for our Hawkeyes.
It's great to be a Hawkeye, Barbara.
It's a pleasure, Johnny.
Go Hawks!
Go Hawks!
God bless you, Barbara.
Enjoy the extra
hour of sunlight every evening now tonight we spring forward we lose an hour of sleep but now it's not gonna set on the sun till 7 30 at night and we're gonna have six months before we revert back to a pre 6 p.m sunset so I think spring is officially here at least in my book Barbara.
I hope you're right John.
The great Barbara Hames Bryant here on the Jacobson Group KXEL
Economics is the study of human choice in the world we live.
Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
By investigating faith in economics, we can learn how they lead to human flourishing.
This is the Faith in Economics podcast, a presentation of the Gortney Institute at Ottawa University.
Welcome to our show today.
I'm Cole McCrae, producer and undergraduate scholar for the Gordney Institute.
With us we have Dr. Russ McCola, founder of the Gordney Institute in Lane Angel chair of economics, Dr. Justin Clark, the Menard family professor of philosophy and ethics, and Dr. Peter Jacobson, the Gordney professor of economic education and research.
Okay so
Dr. Clark brought up we should think about what low-hanging fruit is and so now you know it's an expression that we use often like oh that's low-hanging fruit you know something that's I don't know easy or you know why do we do it so he wanted to press us on coming up with some examples and really think you know he's the philosopher so he's making us think more deeply about something even though we just came off that episode that might be a misunderstanding
So what are you thinking, Dr. Clark?
Yeah, so if philosophy is supposed to be the art of living well, then maybe there are things that we recognize help us live well that we don't see a lot of people doing, and we think like, oh, your life would actually be better if you did some of these things that I think are easy to do.
So I have a couple examples.
My first one, and I think both of mine are kind of geared towards men in particular, but they also work.
for women.
I just think that usually there's more like this is more low hanging fruit for men because I don't think men do this as much.
So my first one is like learning how to cook.
I think learning how to cook is something that really improves your life for a couple of reasons.
First of all, it's way cheaper usually and easier.
You can make better food from better ingredients if you just learn how to cook.
And it's something that's
like well within the reach of almost everybody and I don't think a lot of people do it.
I also think it can, especially if you're a man, it's like a huge plus in terms of like finding a partner.
It's easier, like it's a good thing to kind of show off a skill that you know how to do.
I think it helps you dating.
It's very, very easy to learn and it's something that you have to do anyway, like in the sense that you have to eat anyway.
You know, I love, you know, on Saturdays or, you know, Sunday afternoons, spending the afternoon in the kitchen, chopping stuff up.
So I think learning how to cook is like a big one for me.
I think that there's an enormous amount to benefit there, not only for like you and your personally, but how you appear to others too.
Saves time makes you look better and you like develop a palette, can make better food cheaper.
Food is awesome.
Everybody loves good food.
Knowing, like, just even the basics, like, but fat, acid, salt, and heat, too.
Yeah, I think that's a good one.
He made me think of a friend that I hadn't thought of for a long time.
He's a doctor, actually.
He's an anesthesiologist.
But we went over to his house one time.
Yeah, I'll make my chicken, Chinese chicken, chicken and broccoli or something like that.
And so he makes it.
It's really good.
And he's like, yep, this is how I got her.
And, you know, so it's kind of along the lines of that.
But he's like, it's the only thing I know how to make.
So he was a one trick pony and he made this kind of really good Chinese dish.
But he claimed anyway that that's all he knows how to make.
He does not make anything else.
So he kind of abused the system.
But yeah, in reflecting on getting getting the girl, so to speak, it worked for him.
So this is similar to one of my low hanging fruit as well, which is not eating out.
And that was my kind of negative version of this, which is that you should
intentionally try to limit your eating out.
I think budgetarily it
is
the easiest way to save money.
It's not going to save you the most money.
It's not going to save you more money than like if you sold your house and moved into like a single-wide trailer.
Like you could save more money that way.
But it's the easiest adjustment to make in my view.
It does take time, obviously, but going to restaurants takes time to gas and prep and all this stuff.
And so
you know, I don't think on net you lose that much time, especially if you get good at it, which I'm not saying I am, but like you can prep stuff ahead of time, you get a crock pot, like that makes life a lot easier depending on what you're cooking.
So, but I guess on, so I think you can save a ton of money that way.
I would bet my wife and I spend less than $10,000 a year on food.
I could be wrong, but that would be my guess based on what our budget is and how much I know we go over.
And that's with, you know, pre-kits.
So it's, we do pretty decently.
That's cause we don't eat out.
Like, very rarely are we going to restaurants.
Once a month at a sit-down restaurant, maybe once a month at fast food.
I'm sure there are some months that are worse, but there's probably some that are better too.
But I was gonna ask Justin.
So you said, learn how to cook.
You see, this is low-hanging fruit.
How do people pick the low-hanging fruit?
In other words, like, what would be your resource if you were directing someone somewhere or just something to learn how to cook?
Are you talking about just, like, learn how to bake a chicken breast?
Or are you talking about cooking well?
Like, what's your...
I think cooking well is the goal.
I would say...
I think the best resource is the America's Test Kitchen.
They make a bunch of really accessible cookbooks.
I think the best cookbook to learn how to cook is it's called cooking for two.
So a lot of cookbooks, the recipes are for a meal that will serve four to six people.
And it's very hard to learn to cook if you're making gigantic like.
That's a huge investment to buy enough beef to make a beef roast to serve eight people if you're trying to learn how to make a beef roast.
I think that's the wedding gift that I give people like that book.
You're learning how to cook good meals for two people.
Even just having like a cooking show on in the background will give you like you'll observe via osmosis or you'll absorb via osmosis.
Some ideas about like, you know, how to zest up a dish or whatever.
But that would be like
My go-to would be get the American, yes, America's Test Kitchen, cooking for two cookbook.
And there's a bunch of different ways you can get in.
People do like the Julia Childs cookbook, but again, that's huge portions.
Yeah, that's a little fancy.
My wife just went to something with her mom with that.
So I laughed when he said watch the cooking shows because my wife.
Watches those and I don't like them anymore.
She watches them too much.
I'm kind of a... I
don't
like her cooking.
No, no, no.
My cooking is awesome.
In fact, it was her birthday last night and we were considering whether we go out or not.
We always know that we cook better at home anyway.
We made an outstanding meal.
I mean,
it was
great.
And, you know, instead of spending 50 bucks, almost minimum, going out for the two of us,
We'll put it together for 10 or whatever roughly 10 15 and with leftovers still so yeah I totally get from a budget standpoint if that's your goal that's kind of low hanging fruit from saving money in a sense right also if I was understanding you right just a little bit more low hanging food on just life improvement like you'll you'll like yourself better and life will be better if you don't rely on
these places to make your stuff and
spend
your money.
Yours was less budgetary as
well.
I think for people who know this skill, that aspect of their lives is remarkably better than very
rich people who don't know this skill.
Yeah and so as a person who grew up with my family, three boys, my dad was a mechanic, stay-at-home mom, we went out to McDonald's once a year and that was on Christmas Eve because mom didn't want, before church, we'd go to the, we'd go to the Burger King.
It was the biggest deal for my brothers and I to get to go out to eat.
You know, we maybe went out once in a while but literally three times a year probably at most growing up because we were pretty tight on
on the budget uh at that point again me not knowing their exact budget but that's just the way it was my mom was a farm girl and so she knew how to cook and mostly meat and potatoes type of stuff but it was good it worked so one little pushback and i don't even know if it's pushback just more of a comment having a nice kitchen and maybe nice nice url when i say nice not like super nice but just
some of a dishwasher, some of the other things.
I see that holding my friend back.
He wants to cook more.
He's single and he's got just this tiny little kitchen with no, you know, counter space and no dishwasher.
So you kind of cook for yourself and then you got a lot.
My wife and I have a nice dishwasher and we both kind of chip in on that.
And I think to some degree, I find some of that therapeutic almost too of, you know, putting, getting the dishes, you know, kind of just part of the process, right?
Same thing with cleaning fish for me.
So I go,
I enjoy fishing, I enjoy fishing, but I actually kind of enjoy carving them up and putting them away and giving them away.
So there's more to it than just cooking the food and eating the food.
There's these other aspects that I think sometimes hold people back if they don't have the proper equipment or the proper things to make it a little easier.
think it's going to be impossible for your friend to live well.
Could be, could be.
Yeah, going out and then he faces the budget thing.
Yeah, he says that what we do.
I think you're 100% right that there are going to be some people for whom they have considerations that limit their ability to do this.
But I'm always shocked by the amount of people that have all these appliances and don't do them,
right?
And
they go out, yeah, seven times a week at least, if not whatever.
Another comment that we found that we've given as a gift is things like HelloFresh.
where they bring the food to you, you still assemble it.
But even my wife and I, when we did that years ago, you find kind of different tips.
Like you learn how things go together, you're following a thing, and of course all the ingredients are there so you don't have the trip to the market.
It's still a decent chunk of change relative to buying your own ingredients and doing it on your own.
But in terms of learning how to cook, I think that
That has been a good thing and we gave that as a gift to my son and daughter-in-law and other people too.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think that's a great gift for people who...
maybe wouldn't pick up the cookbook and work through it on their own.
You can get people a cookbook, but you can't make them open it.
But
if
they have those dishes being delivered and you get to choose, and you're right, it is kind of in the middle in terms of price, but it's, man, it's a great gateway drug.
Yeah, it's a
gateway.
Yeah, I think it's a good gateway.
So, all right, Russ, do you want to go?
Let's see, I was trying to think how we're doing on time.
Yeah, all right, I'll give one of mine.
So, I think I like to tell my students in class that there's some low-hanging fruit from learning economics.
Like,
here's some basics of what I call gimme points in class that are basically if you want to do well in this class you got to start with I don't say low hanging fruit at the time I kind of say gimme points and these are things that might be a little bit easier to just do you just have to do them and so so much of college unfortunately is just getting some of the students who aren't performing well by the way you know the A students like Cole here and and other people you don't have to worry about but having the motivation is to teach them to do something
of these basics and not think that you have to master the whole thing if that's overwhelming to you, but just to grab on to some of the basics of the chapter and some homework assignments that are easy points to just dip your toe, get that low-hanging fruit first, and then move forward.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And I think a lot of things in life have that sort of give me a point aspect to it.
Whether it's just showing up on time is a huge one.
That's
huge.
Right, yeah, coming class would be probably some other low-hanging fruit.
Wait, is your low-hanging fruit getting low-hanging fruit?
You know, I mean, there's a meta-wisdom there, though.
There is, yeah.
I think Russ is absolutely right that sometimes just picking up on that stuff is something we don't do.
Yeah, and they don't process it, right?
Yeah.
They're not organizing their thoughts to take the easy steps first and then
build up.
Yeah, it's like doing doggies in an ER.
Okay.
Instead of focus, like I'm going to look at the most difficult thing first.
Like, right.
We do some of these stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I have one that I definitely want to get to, but I think it's going to, it could potentially be a longer conversation.
So I'm going to move to one that you want.
I'm going to move to a little lesser one, which is more straight forward.
So I don't
know if there's much depth talk here.
I would say a low hanging fruit is keep track of every dollar that you spend.
And I mean that literally, and it sounds really hard, but it's actually not.
It's pretty simple.
You just have to have a budget for yourself.
You have different categories.
food, you know, a date budget.
If you're, you know, in a relationship, toiletries, utilities, you itemize out, you can have another category, usually keep it pretty small.
But then every couple of weeks, this is what my wife and I do, go through your bank statement and assign, I just go on Google Sheets and I make it a negative value, you know, that purchase to that column.
And I have literally every purchase we've made for the last
I don't know, seven, eight years is in a Google Sheets document that I just keep off hand.
You don't have to do it exactly like me, but this is valuable for a lot of reasons.
A, it helps you identify your issues in terms of like financial responsibility.
B, it would be very helpful if you were ever like audited or anything like that, or if you ever had to account for anything from a legal perspective.
And then lastly, it also helps you plan.
And so like, if you're thinking like, oh, well, they recommend three to six months or six to nine or whatever expenses to be in your savings account.
How do you know what that is if you don't keep track of what your mandatory spending is?
Like if you're including like, we were talking about this earlier, eating out 10 times in your six month expenses, that doesn't seem like that's the right thing to keep track of.
It should be like, you know, the normal amount it is to eat at your house or something like that.
So.
There's all sorts of value that comes from this.
And I think it has really helped me organize my thoughts financially.
It has really helped me not overspend in certain ways.
And it's also helped me identify what my priorities are.
Kind of you get a look in the mirror when you keep track of every dollar that you spend.
You know, we both have fun budgets.
And whenever I have a lot of like taking out of my fun budget, relative to everything else I'm thinking, maybe I'm just spending too much money personally.
So yeah.
Well, I got something to add onto that, but I think you can
Do what you're doing and even maybe make it a little easier.
That sounds a little accounting intensive for me, but because I just can probably think of a hundred more things I want to do than categorize my spending into those things.
But I'm with you.
I just, I think they can make a comment to make it a little
easier for the record.
I would argue, I would say just off a estimation, I think it's four hours a month this how much I spend, which maybe is more than some people want to give.
I don't think we just pick like a Friday night or Saturday
night
every couple of weeks.
And that's a high end.
That's conservative.
My fee is lowest.
an hour a month depending on the month.
All right, we'll be back with some more low-hanging fruit
here in just a bit.
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All right, so we're back.
And I wanted to comment on something called the envelope system from the Dave Ramsey stuff.
So I've said before we've had a few personal finance type of podcasts.
Cole is currently in the room here and he's in my personal finance class and so the envelope system can be a way to do what Peter was doing with giving every dollar a name so for budgeting that that is important and come up with the categories I agree with all that.
If you actually put cash into an envelope you can do this digitally with the kind of online or you know digital envelope on an app or something but if you actually put physical cash into your
food envelope and your fun money envelope, going out to eat envelope or whatever you've got of your categories.
And then you live your life moving forward through the next two weeks until the next paycheck or whatever it is.
You just are, should we go out to eat?
Oh well, there's only $20 in the food envelope.
I guess we can't, right?
And so you don't have to do the backwards accounting of putting what you actually spent back into these categories
if you're really committed proactively moving forward to only live out of those categories with the envelopes.
It also highlights opportunity costs because if you only have $20 in the food envelope, but you've got $300 in the house envelope for that, this is a true envelope I use for house spending, miscellaneous toilet paper, mulch for the yard, whatever, Walmart type related stuff, then I can take
$30 out of the house envelope and put it into the food envelope and then still go buy some food or go out to eat or whatever.
But you're never overspending and you're purposefully knowing that you're sacrificing one category by a certain amount and moving it to the other.
So it really highlights the opportunity cost principle, whereas most people are just swiping your card.
Hopefully, and if it's a credit card, they're just like, well, whatever the bill is at the end of the month, that's bad news for budgeting.
And Justin, what did you have?
Well, my
second one might come out of left field, but it's also I think geared toward men and it's learning how to dress well.
And by dress well, I don't mean dress expensively.
I mean, having a kind of style parameter that you stick to within like a little range and buying clothes that fit.
Again, these are things that I see like just like cooking.
I see very rich people.
Make really bad decisions here very poor people who know what they're doing just easily outclassing people with a bunch of extra money like specific brands fit specific ways I know like they're like Wrangler jeans do not fit me.
I know Levi's fit me I can when Levi's are on sale.
I know like okay.
I'll
just buy a pair of these It's very cheap to actually dress
Well and within your kind of style which an adult maybe you should be circling one or settled on one and like this is not that difficult to do but it seems like most people don't do it and it even seems like people who have money tend to do it even worse because they mistake things being expensive for things being.
good or like well well fit
appropriate
yeah
yeah so you immediately brought to mind something that i learned from mostly from other cultures honestly not america we have some mexican friends and people in guatemala but it was one time our mexican friend came up and he just made the comment like oh she always looked you know sharp and we know he didn't have a lot of money right
he's
like yep my mom always taught me if one thing make sure you got
a decent shirt and you keep it clean
and
and you just you know you wear it right so even though you're poor kind of help with the spirit and just looking better and maybe open up other doors whatever you know I don't know how much was implicit in what he was saying but it was just important to dress well even if you don't have a lot of money and he always did he always looked good and he was clean you know maybe a little cologne whatever just kind of sharp looking you know
I think it's definitely something I can work on.
I think I generally know when things look bad, but I still make kind of the mistakes.
Jess was talking about like brands and stuff.
And so like, we went to Coles probably a year and a half ago to buy me just like a bunch of new work shirts and stuff.
Cause over the years, you know, kids draw, mark the time and all that.
And like two out of the three work shirts, the sleeves ended up being too short.
And like I tried them on the store and they were fine then.
And I thought, oh, it's kind of borderline, but they should be okay.
And the, you know, the dryer got to them and it's like, okay.
Yeah, like I was over optimistic.
And part of the reason I was over optimistic is we've been like five stores, not got long arms.
So it's hard to find it.
But it is like a long term investment thing.
So I think waiting and kind of like noticing when something is there, buying it when it's there, waiting until things are available.
That's something I can definitely work on.
Now, to fix that, I just roll up my sleeves all the time.
And so it's harder to tell.
And so like knowing how to cover mistakes like that is also pretty valuable, I think.
But yeah, Justin's right.
Absolutely.
It's better to have, like, three or four outfits that you wear well rather than, you know, 100 really expensive shirts that you're, like, mismatching with, like, jeans or, you know, you've got, like, levels of formality that aren't matching across your outfits, stuff like that.
Alright, well, this has been a production of the Gordon Institute here at Otto University.
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