The side hustle thing is interesting. They're calling trading crypto a

side hustle. I don't know if I agree with that. They're mowing lawns, they're gurneying,

they're getting out there on a Saturday and driving Uber. If that's adding to

the final end of your paycheck, that's actually gonna make a pretty substantial

If you're the kind of bloke that's sitting there sinking too much piss, punching

darts, but still complaining about money, you need to have a good hard look at yourself, take

some accountability and go, what the do I need to do to

I was hanging out with this guy called Casey Neistat. We were in his studio

and there was a bunch of young fellas in there, photographers, creatives. They

were talking about trying to get a new apartment inside Manhattan, which

is crazy expensive. He said just one throwaway line. It

stuck with me ever since. He said, Welcome to the Better Bloke Podcast. I'm

Matty. I'm Rob. And we're just a pair of average blokes on a

We're going to speak about all things highs and lows of what it feels like to be a

bloke, plus speak to some legends along the way about what it takes to be a better

We're not like most parties when it comes to advertising, but with the events on

the horizon, we are working with the partners who share a vision and support the

better blokes to make this happen. The blokes over at Boutique Business House

believe in the cause and have been day one is helping us navigate the

business and financial side of the whole charity endeavor. They

are a full service business advisors, offer business accounting and

bookkeeping, can help you sort out your personal insurance for life,

income and personal disability, and also have you sorted for mortgages

for either residential or commercial. They can be an outsourced CFO for

your business or as fully certified as personal financial advisors.

If any of that might be of interest to you, find the link to Boutique Business

House in the description of our website to support the blokes who support

us. Costs are going up. The

dollar is not going so far and there's a whole bunch of chitchat online about

Very important thing to do. We're not getting paid anymore for how

So we're going to jump into budget saving tips and tricks from the boys over

at Bloke Supplies. And I guess we can talk about some of our own things that

we've had to do along the way. What are some of the primary things

that you've actually noticed change? Obviously, the cost of

I haven't heard anything from old mate Curtis Stone saying

that you can feed a family for 10 bucks anymore. He's gone real quiet. Really quiet.

It's one of them. It's one of those big ones that are bending everyone over and charging way

Yeah. So I think even back then, it was $10 based

on buying all the ingredients and only using a proportion of that. But

No. No. What? 500 gram? Pack of cheese is

costing you 11 bucks now, so not

I had to swap from tasty to cheddar just to save a couple bucks. Don't do

Oh, yeah. On that, I guess groceries are a big one. There's

Yeah. I mean, it depends where you go shopping, though. So

something that came up a lot in the comments was a

lot of the boys have actually shifted to Aldi. So

they're not shopping at the two majors anymore. And they're

They do. And it's still just as good. So

that's probably one thing for a little budget

saving tip that you can try and do is maybe shop around. And that's not

just with groceries, that's with literally everything that you

want to do, don't just take the one price that you find as

Yeah. A lot of the boys were talking about the ability to buy in bulk as

well, especially with meat because meat's expensive. So

not buying that from the coals and woolies, but going to like a

proper butcher or like even a wholesale meat sort of place. And

You do need the freezer space to

do so though. So you sort of, which then runs up your electricity bills

and all that sort of shit. So it's one of those things you have to sort of gauge whether or

not it's viable to do so. But

I don't know. I guess if you've got the capabilities to

do so, then yeah, definitely jump on trying to buy

bulk meat instead of just living, I guess,

There was so many dudes like swearing by it. And same with, um, like

direct from farm grocery, like veggie boxes and stuff like that, because

you do get more for less. Obviously you've got to store it. Veggies don't last.

Meat, yeah, you can chuck in the freezer. But some of these guys, like

one dude was commenting, he's got five kids. I'm like, can

you imagine how many bloody lamb chops they

I think if you've got five kids, you probably need a TV, not a deep chest

Yeah. So yeah, buying in bulk and that probably

goes across for everything too. Like there's a few Costco's. There's

Yeah, there's Costco's. I actually get most of our meat if

we're trying to cook up some good feeds from Costco, I find

that, I know they're just better cuts and your dollar

goes a little bit further just because you are buying it in bulk. So

yeah, shout out Costco for actually trying to

I'm in this situation where like, it probably hasn't been

like crazy, crazy pressing on me, not having kids and all that sort of stuff. So

I've just continued my spending habits at the Coles

and Woolies. And I could probably switch,

Well, I think, and that's the thing that made us think about it wasn't, it

wasn't that we weren't struggling, like, you

know, our family. but it became just

easy because an Aldi popped up, so we went, oh yeah, let's just try

that and we'll go shopping there. The moment

you realize how much money you're saving, you go, shit, I don't

really feel like going back there unless it's obviously for those

essential things that you can't get from Aldi. Yeah, it's a little bit

frustrating you need to pack your own bags, I won't even get started on that, but

Yeah, I'm going to have to have a look at it because yeah, I probably should do it.

And that's probably where a lot of guys are is not

realizing exactly the financial position they're in. I remember when

me and my best mate, we both sort of graduated uni and whatnot and

we're We first got our jobs, I think I was

on 70 grand and he was on like 60. And we're like, cool,

we're in the money now boys. But then like,

as time goes on, yeah, we earn more and more and more money, but all

the other costs sort of go up as well. And it's hard to realize exactly

where you're at. And there's a lot of guys, they might be on

80 grand and it might sound like that's good because it

was when they first thought about it. but realistically maybe

they got a big family and you know the wife's at home looking after kids and

over the spread of a whole family that actually puts them at not

a lot of money but they don't have uh I don't

want to say poor because it's like a negative implication but

if they don't have a lot of money at the end of the day you know they're kind of poor

and they need that mindset of you

know spending their money wisely to make the most out

of it. And if the mindset doesn't line up with the spending, that's where problems

Definitely. And I think we spoke about that previously as having

a champagne taste on a goon budget, essentially. Yeah.

You can't do that. Not in this day and age with the price of rent, the price

of, you know, everyone's mortgages with the rates going up. Like

you said, 80 grand even two years ago. That's a

pretty good wicket. not now 80 grand doesn't go

real far now and like there's there's plenty of boys that are on less but

Your wage is only as good as your spendings as well. Because there's

guys out there, you know, miners and all that sort of

stuff making 180 grand. But, you know, if their expenses

are blown out because they can, they can have the same

amount left at the end of the day too. So, you're

almost going to be more economically well off

by improving your spending habits and

Yeah, definitely. Definitely agree with that. And it's, I think one of the things is as

well, I myself know that I'm pretty shit

with money. So I've taken a step back

and I put that onus on my wife. And I go, hey, obviously

we work on it together because part of being in a partnership, you work on shit together. But

I know she is much better with the budgeting. So she

does her spreadsheets and all the fancy stuff that I

don't like doing. And because

of that, We're in a good position to do so.

We wouldn't have gotten our house if she hadn't have been so good

with money because I would have just gone and blown it on cars

and dumb shit. Not that cars are dumb shit. Cars are dumb

shit. Yeah, they are. They are. But a house is a much better

Yeah. The spreadsheet thing's interesting because it's so

boring. And especially if it's something that you have to keep updating

to stay on top of what you're doing. But the visibility overseeing where

all those dollars are going, if you started tracking every dollar

that's going in and out of that bank account, you will see

a pretty clear picture of these categories. And you'll be

I think that's something we spoke about previously is that

with how easy it is just to tap and go. Everyone's just, yep,

tap, yep, tap, yep, tap. You're not actually seeing the

physical money in your hand disappear, so it's just at

the back of your mind. I think one of the things that

I've started doing recently is, like,

I literally just keep cash, and the whole thing, cash is

king. Yeah, it's...

Oh no, it's textile. You can feel it. You physically know how

much you have to spend. And it plays some

sort of psychological role that if you know you've got 50 bucks in

your wallet and something's 45 bucks, you're

a bit more hesitant to go, oh, do I need that?

As opposed to not physically seeing it, just tapping your phone or

It's good for budget allocation. If you give yourself

play money or spending money as well. I know a lot of people do that. They'll

allocate himself 150 bucks. This is my spend

it on whatever you want sort of situation. If that's cash in your

wallet and you know, it's got to last till next Thursday. Like

it's a visual reminder of how much you got left. And

And I think, I think that's a, that's a pretty good thing that if you're not

doing that, Maybe give it a go. Like, trial

it. And obviously, I'm a big advocate of keeping

cash alive. Cash makes the money, or cash

makes the world go round. You

Yeah, help your brother out. Don't pay the banks. I

mean, banks are OK. Yeah, right. But they love a good transaction fee.

They do love a good transaction fee. And at the moment, everything

in this world is trying to take money off the Aussie battler. Fuck

Keep cash. We spoke about groceries, but I

guess there's a whole bunch of other costs that are sort of fixed

costs in people's lives. So things that you kind of

don't have any two ways around. You're going to have to pay it. Electricity, phone

bill, obviously rent or mortgage. Some

of these things you don't have so much control on

cutting back on. Yeah. So are

there anything, any ways that you've looked at those core expenses

and being able to find some savings or is any of the boys in the group sort of mentioned

So something that we do, and this is

probably more so something that I do

every now and then is whenever it's coming up to renewal time for all

those core expenses, you know, like I wouldn't say health

insurance is like a definite core expense, but it is once you get a

family, it makes you start reconsidering these things. Phone around.

Like, phone up, keep these guys on their toes. So if

they say, this is what I'm going to do for you, make a couple of phone calls to

their competitors and go, hey, they're offering me this. I want

to stay loyal. What are you going to do? And majority of

the time, they're going to go, OK, yeah, we want to keep your business. We'll

look after you. It's kind of shit that they don't try and do that in the first place. But

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. And it's interesting from a marketing perspective,

a lot of these companies, the electricity companies, phone companies, they

put a lot of money into acquiring customers and not a lot

of money into retaining them. So once you've been on that Optus plan

two or three years, you know, Vodafone is losing

money to acquire customers. which

is where you're going to get savings. They might give you a 12-month deal

if you sign up and go for them. Don't go with Vodafone. They're not very good unless

Do they? It's great. But in saying that, like you've got Like

you've got all these big telcos like Vodafone and like Telstra, Optus

and all that sort of stuff. You've got these other telcos that

have been around for a little while. They're starting to come to fruition, like Boost, like Pete

Adderton, he's doing some, some pretty gnarly stuff. And he's, he's

shaking the tree to, it sort of feels

like we've got a

corporate company that's trying to somewhat look after, I

don't know, like you and I? And that

sort of goes back to LD, where they're trying to keep an even playing field, but it

just makes it hard. And that's why we need to be on our toes as customers to...

Well, the consumer dictates the market, right? So if

all of us are sitting pretty just renewing that plan every year, that's

a good thing for the companies. But if we are shopping around, it forces

competition in the marketplace. And like you said, new people popping

up in the phone scene. If you look for energy companies nowadays, there's

like 1,000 of them. and they're all offering different deals and

stuff like that. Having a

good view on what you're paying and what else is out there is super important

to saving a couple bucks because you might save a fair bit

Or even if you've got a two-year plan, that obviously then stretches out

significantly more. A dollar in your pocket is better than a

I refinanced my house last year. And that was an interesting

one because interest rates were going up. They weren't the highest out

there. But I was at the period of my loan where I could do

that. And I just asked my mortgage broker, I'm like, hey, what's the

go with this? And he's like, yeah, sure.

There's no problems because there's enough equity there

and you can do this and you can do this. So

I switched over. I saved enough

on my repayments that pretty much offset my repayments going

up because of the interest rate rise. They were offering a $4,000 cashback. because

they wanted to acquire new mortgages. So then I got 4,000 just

straight off the principle of my loan, which is big in the course of

a 30-year loan. But I could have easily sat on that for another

10 years. So I'm going to wait another three or five years. I'm going to do it

again. And then the compounding effect of doing that

over the course of 15 years is actually a

lot bigger than that $4,000. And it's a lot bigger than the

$5,000 a year or the $2,000 a year even that you're saving in repayments. But

it does take effort and you got to do it. But I think it's super

powerful to be aware of

how you can get those fixed costs down because a

decrease there just means an increase in the other money for play

Well, even with those fixed costs, obviously,

they're the costs that we're talking about that are something that

But what about the amount of subscriptions

that are out there now? You've got the likes of Netflix, Stan,

Foxtel, all these other stuff that, you

know, it's a monthly pay. Do you see

just from obviously the stuff that you read online, do you see that those

are dropping down with the cost of living getting higher or is that becoming something

that sort of offsets the need to want to go out

in public and spend money in other ways because they can stay at home and

That's an interesting perspective because yes, maybe having

a Netflix subscription will stop you going out partying. I

don't know. That's an individual preference. Someone

can think about that. They're definitely not a fixed cost. they're

a nice to have, not a need to have. So, and

the subscription thing is what everyone's changed to because they can fleece more

money out of the consumer in the long run. Like, yeah,

you might have binge and Hulu and Disney and Netflix and it's 15 bucks

here, 18 bucks here. Okay, now that's 90 bucks a month. That's

over a grand a year. And you just see it

coming in dribs and drabs. So until you go back to that spreadsheet and you

can look at it, That's a big one

And I think it's important to what you said, add

up what you're spending on those subscriptions every year, because you

may not think it's a big deal, but that thousand bucks, all

you got to do is think, what could I buy with that thousand bucks? And I'm sure there

is so much more that you can buy instead of just sitting down watching TV

Yeah, even for the people saying like, holy shit, groceries are

so expensive. I'm, I'm coming up short like most weeks. It's

like, yeah, but bro, you have 40 bucks a

month going out on this. It's like, you

know, you need to have the perspective that what's more important, the

stuff you're short on or this shit that you're spending for a bit of entertainment. There's

other ways to get it. Like free to air TV apparently

I mean, is it any good? Probably not. No. But in

saying that, YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. You can get everything on YouTube. I mean,

you could be watching Better Bloke on YouTube right now. Bravo if you are.

Yeah, Smart TV, they all have YouTube. So you

pretty much got free entertainment. If you are in a position

I think that that's an important thing too. You don't have to go

out and spend those subscription services if you don't

have the money to do so. And you need to figure that out yourself. So you need

a way up. Is it worth it? Is it not worth it? If you're just floating

by, maybe something so insignificant

as losing that subscription service is enough to get

you ahead then. Once you find that front footstep, you're going

So that's like a footstep into the nice

to haves. Yes. But this was a thread in Bloke's advice. So

as you can imagine, there's a lot of guys spending money on

dumb shit. Yep. A lot of it was consumables. Obviously, the

grog and the smokes, which that

adds up, especially for these boys that are buying a cardinal or two

a week, which is probably too much. But

you need to assess the money going out on that sort of shit.

And you don't have to go cold turkey, but is there a way to do a

I think you see, I'm seeing a lot more boys try homebrewing as well, which

obviously we're not condoning like drinking that, but if boys want to have a drink, they

can have a drink. If that activity of actually homebrewing

themselves, it gives them something else to do in their spare time

also. Plus then they're getting a few

beers out of the end of it. I think that's not

a bad way to look at it either, but obviously, I haven't looked

I think it's a scale thing because there's so much outlay at the start. You

have to build this whole situation, so then you have to drink a

substantial amount before it starts making economic sense. I'm

not a homebrewer. I know it's a very tight-knit community,

don't hold me on that. But again, cheaper way

to do things. That could be one of those things. We see

a lot of blokes in the group that are complaining about money, but then

they're kind of doing all that shit we just spoke about and don't have a

good view or they're just wasting money. What would you say to those kind of dudes?

I think if you're the kind of bloke that's sitting there sinking too

much piss, punching darts, but still complaining

about money, You need to have a good hard look at yourself, take

some fucking accountability, and go, what the fuck do

I need to do to actually fix my situation? You

need to take a step back. Take a step back and go, OK, if

I cut out drinking, if I cut out smokes, how much money am

I going to be left over with? And it all comes back to that whole physically seeing

how much money you're spending. Maybe you just need to do that. Spend

Yeah, a bit of fucking sacrifice does wonders. We've

spoken a lot about costs going out,

right? Limiting that, like how you can save a

dollar, but then there's a flip side of it as well. How can you get

more money coming in? So there's heaps of discussion on side hustles

or ways to like make more cash. So

the side hustle thing is interesting because that can come

about in so many different forms. They're calling

trading crypto a side hustle. I don't know if I agree with that. They're

mowing lawns. They're gurneying. They're getting out there on a Saturday and driving

Uber. If that's adding to like the final end

of your paycheck, yeah, you might make $1,200 a week.

But if you add another $200 and that's like pure in the green, that's

That'll make a massive impact. So that extra $200 for

your time, and this is something that you need to figure out, you need to go, Is it worth

my time to essentially go, oh, I

need this extra money, or am I going to just maintain the current situation?

Weigh it up. If you're getting that extra money and it's maybe

taking six months to get you out of that hole, long

term, I see that as a massive benefit. So yeah, I'm

Yes, side hustles, different jobs or longer hours

as well because you could pick up a little more by doing extra hours.

Then it goes back to the same thing as cutting stuff out is there's a

You definitely need sacrifice. I think it all comes down to you can work longer hours, but you

still don't want to lose that life-work balance.

I say that intentionally that way because you put life before

work. Part of that is making sacrifices, whether

it be for life or for work, but the long-term goal

I was hanging out with this guy called Casey Neistat. He's like a massive YouTuber.

I was over in New York and we were in his studio and there was

a bunch of young fellas in there, photographers, creatives in

the creative space. And they were

talking about trying to get a new apartment inside

Manhattan, which is crazy expensive. They wanted a studio and

all that and they're complaining about the money. trying to figure this

out. Casey's a multi-millionaire. He's one of the OG YouTubers

and he's figured it all out. And he said just

one throwaway line and it just, it stuck with me

ever since. This is about a year ago. And he said,

And I'm like, Ooh, okay. Because they

were talking on the flip side. They're like, Oh, I could, I

could live with my parents for three months and I could like

do this and I could do this and then I could get the money. He's like, nah, like,

this is how you're gonna make more money. This is how you can do things more efficiently.

And a lot easier said than to actually do

it. Like I'm not saying every bloke out there, oh, oh,

just double my income, then all my problems will be solved. It'd be,

you know, if it was easy, we would all do it. But it

might not happen overnight, but that's a thing that we need to strive

towards. If the lifestyle goals we have

for ourselves does require money. I don't just

That's made me think of it actually. That's actually

a really good saying. What are you thinking about it? Just

about what I can do to maybe tighten up

my purse strings or is my lifestyle matching my

budget and vice versa. I think

that's the whole message that we're trying to get across

is these little things that you can do you

have to actually think about it and like put that thought in your head before doing

so. So no, I appreciate you actually saying that quote

because it's made, it's made me, I haven't reassessed anything because I'm

sitting here in front of a camera and you, but I probably

Yeah, I hope it sits with you because it's sat with me, like literally,

since you said it, I think about it all the time. And, um,

I think there's a, I don't

want to say negative correlation when people talk about, I want to earn more

money as being this vain sort of metric,

but it doesn't have to be that way. Like for me, I do put a lot

of value in money because it represents freedom. I

do want to figure out ways to earn more money and do that sort of stuff, but

I don't want to buy a Lamborghini. I don't want a

Rolex. I don't want the top line

thing of what money can buy you. I

want freedom and autonomy over my own time. I

want the ability to invest in relationships, again,

back on time. All those things money buys. That's why

I want it. Saying

you want more doesn't mean that, you know, you're greedy. It

just means you want to get yourself to a better position. And for some people,

they don't need that. Like there's so many guys I know out

there whose biggest highlight of their whole day is

coming home to their kids, all that sort of stuff. And maybe

exactly the position they're at, financially anyway, is

enough for them. So the maintaining that

I think a lot of guys highlights will be coming home to their kids because there's so many boys

that can't do that. That

there refers back to that whole life-work balance, which I

think is so important that you need to do that. I

think it's just important that blokes realize what they

put first. Money is not everything,

but obviously, it makes shit a lot easier. One of the topics

that arose actually similar timing as the

side hustles and making a dollar go further was some

It went very big, very quick. And obviously, a lot

of boys decide to crack out their tinfoil hats over this. Very,

very amusing chat. Do you remember any off the top of

your head that maybe you want to talk

conspiracies. It's not our point of view. No. What did Brock chime in with?

Um, so Brock chimed in with Bush did 9-11. Bush

did 9-11. Heavy off the rip. Yep. Um,

What's your thoughts on that? I reckon someone did 9-11. And

I don't know if it was the planes. Like, there seems to be a lot of

compelling evidence, but I'm probably not educated enough

to get into it. But if you do go down that conspiracy loophole,

you start hearing all these stories, beams melting, the timing of

it. It was all like, there's things that happened when

people left the building when they wouldn't have, you know, they were

I don't know why they did it, but there's a

lot of compelling evidence that the narrative isn't

Yeah, okay. No, that's fair. One of

the other ones, which I actually, this shook me. This

shook me a lot. So a bloke mentioned that

the sea level rising isn't because of the ice caps. It's

just that we keep putting bigger boats in the ocean. Water

No, I reckon that one holds up. Yeah. What about, now this

is something that we see all

the time rear its little head in different ways

and it's the vaccine, right? There's

so many people on either side of this thing. And I think over

time, now it's kind of over, the people that were super invested have

been like even more vocal about it. So there'll be

people saying like, oh, like, I don't know, my

back hurts. I got this problem with my spine. And the question is,

Yeah. And I think the people that are crying about

vaccines are the same ones that are

like anti-vaxxers overall. And the

only thing that I have to say to them about that is, how's

The polio argument. Yeah. But on the flip side, are you up to your fifth

vaccine or not? No comment. I

I did what I needed to do to work. Yeah, exactly the same. But

I mean, you got to make a living. You need that

money coming in. And the government bent me over

and made me do what I didn't want to do. But like the good boy I

Props to the guys that kind of stood up as well. Like whether or not people

agree with, you know, your stance on not taking it.

I know people that threw in like really high up jobs, like doctors, because

they said, if you don't get the vaccine, you can't be a doctor anymore. And

people who went, I'll give that up. It's like

Like, I mean, super heavy. I'm like, yeah, that's a lot

of respect for me for holding that strong in their beliefs. I don't

I know. I folded immediately. As soon as they're like, you can travel overseas.

Although I heard a lot of people that were, uh, there may have been

an app that you could have gotten that gave you the

And overseas didn't care at all. It was just a piece of paper they'd never

seen before because Australians hadn't been. Anyway, that's

going to do us guys on this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Budget

saving tips. What are you actually doing to save some cash? I'm sure there's

a million different ways to do it for everyone. Let us know your perspective

I want to see as many comments down in the

thread as possible, because I think everyone's going to be able to get something out of that. And

what you do, someone else may not do. So have a read through, go

through, react to all the comments, and be sure to follow

Cool. And while you're at it, make sure you give us a share as

well, because this is a new project. We feel like we got some

pretty decent messages to share with the world. So every time you sort

of interact and give it a bit of love, it's more blokes that are going to

So remember, be better. Thanks for tuning

into today's episode of Better Bloke. If you got anything out of it, show us some love

If you want to learn more about everything we're doing, head to the description, hit

the links and follow us on the socials. If you want to learn more about the project,