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Money Suckers
Streaming was supposed to save us money. Instead, it quietly rebuilt cable… with better branding and worse self-control. Don and Tom trace the journey from rabbit-ear TV to today’s subscription sprawl, where “it’s only $14 a month” quietly becomes hundreds per year. They break down why streaming costs have exploded faster than inflation, how duplication and inertia drain wallets, and what actually works to fix it (bundling, pruning, and strategic binge-and-cancel). From there, the show pivots to listener questions covering smart investing for an 18-year-old, retirement withdrawal sequencing, trust and estate planning pitfalls, and why complexity is often the real enemy of good financial decisions.
0:04 Life before streaming: rabbit ears, three channels, and forced family labor
0:48 Rewatching Bewitched and realizing old TV was… not great
2:27 Cable’s rise, early streaming optimism, and Netflix’s cheap beginnings
3:30 Subscription creep: listing the modern streaming pileup
4:16 Streaming prices vs inflation — why this hurts more than groceries
6:43 Average household streaming costs and the real percentage increase
8:21 Duplicate subscriptions and why households overpay without realizing it
9:37 Live TV bundles, YouTube TV vs Hulu, and paying cable prices again
12:30 Binge-and-cancel as a legitimate cost-control strategy
14:02 Value judgments: paying for services you don’t actually watch
15:20 Annual audits, forgotten subscriptions, and silent monthly leaks
18:17 Investing $9,000 for an 18-year-old with decades ahead
19:20 Why a Roth IRA plus one global ETF can be enough
20:53 Retirement withdrawals: taxable vs IRA confusion clarified
22:45 When wealth gets big enough that DIY stops making sense
24:00 Trusts, trustees, and why professional oversight is expensive
27:15 Estate planning as a team sport (advisor + attorney)
29:33 Why every TV character is suddenly a podcaster
30:49 Gratitude, rankings, and why the audience matters
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Published on 4 days, 13 hours ago