This one-hour checkup can prevent financial headaches
Plus: record car payments, my Today Show appearance, and a favor I need to ask you.
Hi there, my friend.
I’m taking a little bit of a different approach this week. Most weeks, I tend to focus Ask, Save, Earn on one major topic, but this week is much more of a grab bag.
However, what hasn’t changed (and won’t change) is the promise behind Ask, Save, Earn: Every edition of this newsletter will have some takeaway that you can use and apply to your own financial life.
Let’s get started.
I got a shoutout from The Purse
My friends, Lindsey Stanberry and Alicia Adamczyk, run The Purse, one of the smartest, best money sites on the planet. A week ago today, they posted a mid-year financial check-in roundup, and I was honored to be included.
Mine was about culling subscriptions, something I’ve written about here before after I found $432 in charges I’d forgotten I was even paying for.
There are nine other smart suggestions, too. One of my favorites came from Heather Boneparth, author of The Joint Account newsletter…
“Make sure your autopays are processing correctly; credit cards linked to recurring bills haven’t expired; your logins for all important accounts are still active (many have switched to 2FA); and your beneficiaries and trusted contacts are up to date. All of this will probably take you less than an hour, and it’s one of the easiest ways to prevent headaches down the road.”
Important stuff, but stuff that can be pretty easy to let fall through the cracks.
It’s also a good reminder of something that we talk a lot about here at Ask, Save, Earn: You can often do an awful lot of good in a very short time if you’re willing to put in the work.
I appeared on The Today Show!
Late last month, I did an interview with NBC News’ Emilie Ikeda that aired on The Today Show. I talked about “funflation,” or the fact that the cost of summer fun — think concerts, amusement parks, vacations, and pretty much everything else — keeps climbing faster and faster.
Here’s the segment, which includes some helpful tips for how to manage these higher prices:
I’m only in it briefly, and I’ve been on the show before, but it is always a big deal to me whenever it happens. (And maybe one day I’ll get to do an actual live segment in-studio. I can dream, right?)
Car payments just hit a record high
Holy moley! According to Experian data cited by LendingTree, the average new car payment in the first quarter of 2026 was a record $770 a month, up from $748 in Q1 2025. For used vehicles, the average is $531 a month. That’s a whole lot better than what new-car buyers face, but it is still a huge amount of money.
Before you go shopping for a new or used vehicle, I urge you to crunch the numbers to make sure you understand what you can really afford. I know that it is so easy to fall in love with that new car, truck or SUV and tell yourself, “I’m going to treat myself! I can afford it.” The person at the dealership's financing desk will probably tell you that you can afford it, too. However, unless you take the time to look at the numbers with an affordability calculator like this one from LendingTree, you just don’t know.
Buying a car is one of the most expensive things we do. It is important not to be done lightly or carelessly. If you do, you may end up regretting it for years.
Want to be the first to see some new features?
I’ve been building a couple of new features behind the scenes. I’m not going to say much about them yet because I’m just not quite ready.
However, what I will say is I need real people to test them, break them, and tell me what’s confusing or what’s missing. I’d love for you to be part of this — and maybe other tests in the future.
If you want in, reply to this email. Once the tools are ready to be looked at in the next few weeks, I’ll make sure to get you access before anyone else sees it.
Until next time!
Matt