Bob Invests- Turning confusing money stuff into simple animated explainers
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The Shrinkflation Scam Nobody's Talking About
In this video, I break down what I call the Shrinkflation Tax—a systematic corporate strategy to extract more money from you by exploiting your brain's inability to accurately judge volume and weight. I will show you the documented cognitive bias called "attribute neglect" that makes you five times more likely to notice a price increase than an equivalent quantity decrease. I will walk you through specific examples: Gatorade dropping from thirty-two to twenty-eight ounces, Folgers coffee shrinking fifteen percent, Cottonelle toilet paper losing twenty-one percent of its sheets, Tillamook ice cream going from fifty-six to forty-eight ounces—all while prices stayed flat or increased.I will expose the five techniques corporations use beyond simple size reduction: dimensional manipulation with pinched waists and concave bottoms, air injection in chip bags, count reduction in packaged goods, dilution of liquid products, and serving size manipulation. I will show you why the official inflation numbers systematically understate what you are actually experiencing, why corporate profit margins expanded during the same period companies blamed "input costs" for their shrinkage, and what the true cost of shrinkflation is for an average family over a lifetime.Most importantly, I will give you the specific actions to become a harder target: how to use unit pricing as your default, why buying by weight beats buying by package, and how to see the grocery store for what it really is—a designed extraction environment built by behavioral scientists to exploit your cognitive blind spots.You are not a customer being served. You are a resource being harvested. Time to start noticing.
Your Savings Account Is Robbing You (The Inflation Math
Illusion—the dangerous confusion between nominal safety and real safety. Your savings account balance never goes down, which feels safe. But purchasing power erodes constantly through inflation, and the average savings account paying zero point four percent cannot even come close to keeping pace with three to seven percent annual inflation. You are not earning zero point four percent. You are losing two to six percent per year in real value while feeling responsible.I will show you the specific math: how one hundred thousand dollars in a savings account becomes fifty thousand in purchasing power over twenty years while the number on the screen grows to one hundred eight thousand. I will explain how banks profit from your caution—earning three percent net interest margins on your deposits while paying you essentially nothing. I will walk you through why high-yield savings accounts are better but still not a wealth-building solution, why your brain is wired to fear visible stock market losses more than invisible inflation losses, and why the "safe" choice is actually the one that guarantees you will lose money over time.Most importantly, I will give you the framework for how much cash you actually need, where to put it to minimize inflation damage, and what to do with every dollar beyond that so it grows in real purchasing power instead of slowly dying in a savings account.Your savings account balance is a comfortable lie. Time to see the truth.
not me....
Beyond the Paycheck: Calculating Your "Lifestyle Inflation" Hourly Rate
In this video, I break down a calculation that most people never do—a way to measure exactly how much of your life you are trading to maintain lifestyle upgrades you barely notice anymore. I call it your Lifestyle Inflation Hourly Rate. Here is the formula: take every lifestyle upgrade you have made, add up the total monthly cost, multiply by twelve, then divide by your actual after-tax hourly wage. The result is the number of hours per year you work exclusively to fund upgrades beyond your baseline needs. For Derek, that number is four hundred eighty-six hours per year—twelve full work weeks—going exclusively toward maintaining upgrades that felt small when he made them but now own a significant portion of his working life.I will show you the Lifestyle Creep Multiplier—why every dollar of lifestyle inflation requires about a dollar fifty of gross income to support after taxes. I will walk you through the forty-year career math where lifestyle inflation costs someone two point nine million dollars compared to holding their baseline constant. I will explain hedonic adaptation—why the pleasure of every upgrade is temporary but the cost is permanent—and how you end up paying hundreds of hours per year to maintain a neutral emotional state you already had before the upgrade.Most importantly, I will give you the framework to calculate your own Lifestyle Inflation Hourly Rate, the reverse calculation that reveals whether you would actually trade those specific hours for each specific upgrade, and the selective downgrading strategy that can reclaim weeks of your life every single year.You are not earning your lifestyle. You are trading your life for your lifestyle, hour by hour. Time to see the exchange rate.
Why Who You Marry Matters More Than Your Stock Portfolio
In this video, I break down what I call the Partner Problem—why marriage is the most important financial decision most people never treat like a financial decision. I'll show you why divorce reduces wealth by an average of seventy-seven percent (not fifty), why money fights are the number one predictor of divorce, and how two couples with identical incomes can end up two point one million dollars apart after thirty years based purely on financial compatibility.I'll walk you through the four patterns that silently destroy wealth in relationships: income asymmetry without expense alignment, hidden spending, the "we deserve it" spiral, and conflicting financial identities. And I'll give you the exact questions you need to ask before you merge your financial life with anyone.A high-income spender will make you poorer than a moderate-income saver. That's not opinion. That's math.Your partner will matter more to your net worth than your investment returns, your salary, or any financial decision you'll ever make.
Why Black Borrowers Pay More — Even With Perfect Credit
Black Americans with perfect credit scores still pay higher interest rates than white Americans with worse credit. This isn't opinion—it's documented in government studies, federal settlements, and exposed bank communications. I break down the exact math: how the "racism tax" costs Black homeowners $67,320 in lifetime wealth, why algorithms are the new redlining, and what $150+ million in DOJ settlements revealed about how banks really operate. Studies from the GAO, Federal Reserve, UC Berkeley, and MIT quantify the disparity. This is the credit discrimination video banks don't want you to see.
This video explains how mortgage rates, auto loans, personal loans, and credit cards can differ dramatically between borrowers with the same FICO score — and why Black borrowers are often hit hardest by the system.
If you care about financial equality, fair lending laws, credit scores, APR, mortgages, personal finance, and building wealth in America, this breakdown will change how you see the banking system.
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