➡ The text discusses a variety of topics, including the convenience of using a mobile device for secure internet access, the impact of natural disasters on insurance costs, the closure of JC Penney and CVS stores, and the high salary of Starbucks’ new CEO. It also mentions the inability of people to access their properties after a fire, the high cost of clearing debris from burnt houses, and changes in the food court offerings at Costco.

Hey, welcome back. This is IAllegedly. I’m Dan. And, unfortunately, people are living through a mountain of debt. So, I’ve got a good one for you today covering all this, but it is terrible right now. So, please, like the video, subscribe to the channel. Today we have a sponsor, Private Internet Access, which I will cover in a bit. But, first things first, guys. The biggest problem right now is negative equity on auto loans right now. And as I investigated this, I was blown away by this, because I’ve had this happen to me in my life where you go to trade a car in, and the car is worth less than your honor.

And the biggest problem that happened during COVID was, even with used cars, people would go in and they say, I just got to get a car. I deserve something. And with that, they would go out and they would get themselves into long payment programs and, you know, whatever it’s going to take. What’s the payment? What’s the payment? And then, when it came to get rid of the car, they found out that the car was not worth anything that they thought it was. So, think about this. After the third quarter of 2024, basically 20.4% of all auto loans that were turned in had negative equity, one in five.

By the end of 2024, the fourth quarter, it had risen to over 25% of all auto loans were upside down. Now, you know, the problem with this is that, you know, you can sit there and you can take Edmund’s advice, the auto company, and Edmund says, listen, if you get yourself in a negative equity situation, the best thing to do is maintain the car and just pay it off, and eventually you’ll be, you know, you’ll be ahead of the game. Great advice, but the problem is people, you know, trick themselves into saying, I need a new car.

You know what’s wild is how often do people go out and get a new car? As fast as 2.7 years. Now, I don’t know about you, I drive a lot. I mean, a lot, a lot, a lot, you know, 40,000, 50,000 miles in a year. And I still keep the cars. I still buy used cars, guys, because that’s where the value is at. I have so many people, oh, you should drive this, you should drive that. No, man, I want to drive something that’s going to be free. And I don’t have a monthly payment on it.

You know, I had a used car that I just had to put brakes on it. I had to put new tires on it. And it was, that was the maintenance. And, you know, the other thing that I’ve taught myself and my uncle taught me, you know, give him a shout out for this. Uncle Larry used to say, listen, you’re tired of the car, why don’t you put a figure on it and how much you’re going to spend? At some point, you’re never going to spend another dollar beyond X, whether it’s $2,000, $1,000, $5,000, whatever.

And once you hit that threshold, that’s when you’re going to get rid of the car. And that’s really served me well through the years because, you know, people just don’t get it that they just keep thinking, oh, you know what, I’ll just refinance it. Everybody has a car payment. Not everybody has a car payment, guys. If you’re smart, you don’t have a car payment. And again, the never-ending mountain of debt. Remember that figure, never-ending mountain of debt. So I’m going to try to squeeze by the fake Zamboni machine and get out of the guy’s way.

I’m in Laguna Beach right now. This is the montage. It’s beautiful up here today after the rain. It is just stunning up here. So with that, think about this, guys. The negative equity has gone up so much right now that the average negative equity right now is $6,800. That’s so much money. That equates to almost $300 more a month in your car payment. And some people sit there and go, oh, who cares? I want a new car. I deserve a new car. I was walking Rosie this week, and one of the neighbors got a new car, and the neighbors were looking at it.

Oh, isn’t this great? Yeah, he deserved this. And I’m thinking, this guy just got a new car. And it couldn’t have been two years ago, three years ago, but he deserves a new car. So he also deserves the payment. So good luck with that, man. But I just think it’s crazy because when you take the negative equity and you add that $300 to it, that’s money that you could spend doing so many other things. Think about it. If you’ve saved $300 a month, you could travel. You could go out to dinner more.

You could go do different things. Go to sporting events. Go to concerts. Do fun things. But no, you’re a debt slave to that automobile sitting in your garage. So the other thing is we could talk about the increased insurance and everything like that. But one thing that has served me well, and I’ve had accountants tell me this, and I’ve done this. If I have to finance a vehicle, I finance it for 36 months. Every time I’ve done that in my life, I’ve never been upside down. In other words, 36 monthly payments, a year or two into it, I want to get rid of the car.

I have more equity in the car than what I owe on the car at that point. Now, is your payment higher? Yes, much higher. But I’m thinking about when my daughter bought a car at Carmack during COVID and the salesman, they don’t have salesmen, they tell me, but the salesman, the guy that took care of the order was telling me how many people came in with stimulus checks and said, look, this is all the money I have. Put this down in the car. I don’t care what the payment is. Put it as long as possible.

Well, I can finance this for seven years. That’s what they were doing to themselves. So I’m telling you guys, you got to pay up someday. And that’s the thing that people just don’t want to deal with. They don’t want to deal with paying up someday. So it’s a very beautiful resort. You know what I got to do? I got to get Jack here again. The time I think of this place, I think of getting Jack from Patriot Gold out here because he’s, you know, I’ve done a bunch of videos up here. So plus he’ll buy me lunch too.

It’s nice. Anyways, this is a never ending cycle, guys. And the problem with it is it’s coming up and everybody thinks they’re always going to make the same amount of money, but they’re always going to have a job. They’re always going to have this, you know, everything’s going to be as is and it’s not as is anymore. But these interest rates are not going down anytime soon. They may drop things here and there, but it’s not going to be the thing that’s going to make it so that your car is going to be more affordable.

Price of cars have gone through the roof right now and you’re seeing all-time highs for the price of cars. And the negative equity, you know, think about this. 25% of the cars that are turned in have negative equity. During the last financial downturn, 2008, is when we saw one-third of the cars have negative equity. And again, I’m desperate. I lost my job. I need a car. I need a payment. You know, bury me in debt. So I’m telling you guys, it’s a terrible way to live and you don’t want to do that.

One of the things that I found was a great, you know, I love all these auto sites. Auto Biscuit is a very cool one. Auto Biscuit has the top five cars that maintain their value. And things to look at, again, guys, you need to maintain these cars. My mechanic, you know, talking to him is that people push things to the bitter end. Hey, you may want to change the spark plugs. You may want to change the oil more often. You may want to do this. You may want to do that. And people are just putting them off left and right.

And with that, they have nothing but problems. And they can’t figure out why, okay, now it’s $1,500 instead of $300. Look at that. But there’s a great list of the five cars that retain their value. Hey, let’s talk about our sponsor, Private Internet Access VPN. A VPN is a virtual private network. And what it does is it gives you a tunnel of encryption from your device to any website that you go to. It makes it so your keystrokes cannot be seen, password, it completely encrypts you. And the thing about this is that I’ve used this product for several years now.

It is fantastic. It’s pennies a day. You get 83% off with our discount. You need to check it out today. But I want to show you guys, every device in your house is covered under one account. You don’t have to install any hardware. There’s no modems. There’s nothing like that. Basically, all you do is you take, like my cell phone right here, click one button and I’m protected. When it turns green like that, I can surf the web and know that I am protected right now and not have to worry about the bad guys seeing what I’m doing.

Think about this. When you log into your bank, when you log into your pension, brokerage account, you don’t want people to know what’s going on. Plus, you don’t want the government to know what’s going on. How about your search history? What are you searching for right now? Share that with the whole group. You know what I mean? Come on. This is great because you can change locations. If you like sports, if you like to do things out of the country, there’s TV channels or anything like that that you want to see, you can watch us now.

Check out Private Internet Access Today, save 83%. Again, fantastic product, very inexpensive, but get it today before they raise the price. I just found $6 on the ground. That’s very cool. It doesn’t happen every day. All right. Susie Orman, the financial analyst, great article below talking about how she says, listen, every single person in the United States is going to be affected by the natural disasters in Los Angeles. These LA wildfires are going to make everything more expensive, and you’re going to see a lot of problems when it comes to insurance from every type of insurance company, from auto, your business, and especially your home insurance.

I don’t live anywhere near LA. Why would that affect me? Because this is going to cost an absolute fortune to fix right now. With that being said, you’re seeing all these different businesses that are affected by this. Plus, think about this. It rained for two days. Nobody’s been able to start tearing down or doing anything. It’s just basically a standstill right now of dirt and debris. Hopefully, all the fires are out right now watching this. There’s still some that made it through the rain, which blew me away. But the thing about this is that people are desperate.

People that want to rebuild need to rebuild and get to it right away. But more store closings, you’re going to see JC Penney’s announce that they’re going to have more store closings. Again, I’m telling you, I talked about this a little over a year ago, and I said, how is that company still in business? And I had one guy that absolutely wrote me, scathing, just, you know, you’re an idiot. This is the greatest store ever. And then, come to find out, I looked up at the company. I was an executive for the company.

It made it sound like it was just some concerned citizen, some concerned shopper. And JC Penney executive was up there complaining that Dan was unfair. So, the other one, CVS. CVS, and this start, Laura in Connecticut sent me a great story about how you’re having two more CVS stores close in Connecticut, and so many people are being affected by this. I’m telling you, when a drugstore can’t make it, guys, you’ve got real problems on your hands. You really do. And, you know, everybody used to sit there, oh, there’s a drugstore in every corner.

You don’t need this. No, the convenience, the idea with the, you know, getting your prescriptions, again, the poorest people in the community and the elderly are the people that are affected by this the most. You know, the head of the IRS stepped down a week ago, right before Donald Trump’s inauguration. And I thought, ah, that’s kind of BS. You know what I mean? Why are you leaving now? The guy has a contract through 2027. Why wouldn’t he do this? Well, clearly he was against what was going to happen. But Trump over the weekend had talked about the 87,000 IRS agents that have been hired.

Why don’t we send them to the border, since we don’t need them to harass small business owners and the common folk. So, what do you think about that? Let me know what you think about that. Should these people be transferred to other places? Now, one thing that we’ve talked about that’s been great is some of the financial aid that FEMA had has been sent to North Carolina. These four people that are living in tents, freezing, freezing. Guys, I mean, this is what’s funny. This is cold to me out here. It’s 54 degrees.

I don’t know how I can do it. You know what I mean? This is incredibly cold for us here. But it’s nothing, nothing at all compared to these people that have to sleep in a tent with their children by a fire. So, let me know what you think about this. And isn’t this place just beautiful? It’s just so stunning to come out here. Always so nice. But let me know what you think about this. Do you see store closings? Share news with us also at HelloWhatIAllegedly.com. These next two stories, we’re going to file under this is obscene.

And the first thing is that on Sunday night, they had a town hall meeting for people that were victims of the Palisades fire. And they had the mayor, they had different contractors there and different state officials. And people were like, hey, we want to get back into our property, start working on this. We’re working on it. We’re working on it. And one man, think about this, has a car that didn’t get burnt down. And they don’t have keys because the house burnt down, but the car was okay, car survived. They’re not allowed to get a tow truck driver into the burn area to get the car out to get a new key made for the car.

Don’t go to work. Don’t live your life. Don’t do anything. That’s ridiculous. Here’s the worst part. Here’s the obscenity to this. During the last fire in Southern California, how much did it cost from the average insurance company to clear the debris for a burnt down house? You know, there’s a lot of toxic things and there are, I’m not trying to make light of that, but this is obscene. $170,000 to clear the path for your burnt down house. Talking about getting rich off, you know, others bad life, bad, bad, you know, just victimization.

Oh my God, $170,000. Isn’t that just unbelievable? I can’t even believe it. It’s such a high figure. Now, the most obscene thing is there’s a new CEO over at Starbucks. His pay, by the way, he’s been there a couple months, like six weeks, $96 million, $61,000 in salary, $5 million signing bonus, and $90,000 in stock options make him truly one of the highest paid executives in the United States. Again, obscene, $96 million. Oh my God. Come on, man. Isn’t that unbelievable? You know, for selling coffee. Okay, so Jamie Diamond, man of the people, looks like we’re getting a bargain.

Three Jamie Diamonds for that, you know, so it’s crazy. Absolutely crazy. Let me know what you think about this, but here’s the worst part is that these people cannot even enter their own property. They cannot go back. There are people that were complaining also that their house survived the fire, but they’re not allowed to go back to the property right now. How about that? Yeah, stay out. We need to assess what’s around us and what’s still available and what we can, you know, get out of the house. No, stay away. Well, you run the risk of looters, you run the risk of everything else that could go wrong with that.

So let me know what you think about this, because I think it’s terrible, and I was just appalled by all this. And again, it was obscene. All right. I want to remind you guys that we just sent out the email with the winners of the Christmas and New Year’s gifts. My beautiful dog Rosie had to have surgery last week, and that postponed things a week. So for those of you waiting, I appreciate this. What we’re doing in the email is, you know, check your email because it was sent out. That’s how the winners are going to find out initially.

And the list was in that email. So check your email, check your spam filter, and make sure you’re getting the email list. And last two stories, what is the best company to work for? It’s called Bain & Company. They do a employee survey that’s anonymous every year, all these different companies. And, you know, Bain & Company, which is a consulting firm, I had to look that up, has the highest rating for 17 years in a row. So it’s the best company, best pay, best employee perks, best everything. And In-N-Out Hamburger here in California is number three.

And a lot of cool articles sent to me about how people are trying to sneak In-N-Out to different areas of the country. And, you know, a cold cheeseburger is a cold cheeseburger, guys. I don’t care how good it is. And the final story is Costco. Costco just agreed to get rid of Pepsi Cola in their food courts. You can sit there and say, that’s no big deal. Guys, it’s been 17 years that they’ve had Pepsi products in there, and they’re getting ditched for Coca-Cola products. Now, I want to know, well, why did they switch in the first place? Well, there was a dispute between Coke and Costco.

They’re coming back. So, 400 U.S. locations between now and summer will be converted to Coke products, and that is a huge windfall. Now, they had to agree to certain pricing and certain things to make it so that, you know, they can maintain that $1.50 hot dog, and they’re going to do it. So, I think diet Coke is so much better than Diet Pepsi. So, that’s my opinion. Anyways, let me know what you guys think about this. Don’t forget to check your spam filter. And if you want to email me, it’s Hello at iAllegedly.com.

Congratulations to the winners, and I will see you guys very soon. [tr:trw].

See more of I Allegedly on their Public Channel and the MPN I Allegedly channel.