Quick Answer: Damon Day and I sat down for a new episode of the Get Out of Debt Guy Podcast — “AI Is Changing Work Fast: Side Hustles, Cybercabs, and Protecting Your Financial Future” — to talk through how AI is already changing the cost of running a small business, how Damon’s gig-work experiments for The Penny Stupid Project are holding up, and why Damon, who drives gig apps in Phoenix where driverless Waymos are already on the road, is studying Tesla’s Cybercab — which he says is “not live yet” — as a possible business instead of only a threat. Nothing in this episode is a promise of what AI, gig work, or any income stream will pay you. The point is understanding what’s actually changing under your feet before you build a debt payoff plan on top of it.
Debt is math wrapped in emotion. So is a five-year plan built on an income source that might not exist in five years. Run the numbers on what’s actually stable before you count on it.
Expert Context: I’ve spent 30 years helping people get out of debt, and for the last four years I’ve watched Damon Day document real gig-work income on camera through a project I helped start with him in 2022. I’ve also watched three previous generations of “the next big disruption” — outsourcing, the 2008 crash, the gig economy itself — change what counts as reliable income. I’m not guessing about AI and automation from a headline. On the show I describe how my own articles get made: the research is done with AI, and then five different AI agents each fact-check the finished article independently.
This episode is different from Damon’s usual solo gig-work videos — it’s a conversation between the two of us, and it’s the widest-lens one yet.
If you’ve read my first write-up of Damon’s gig-work videos, the one about the offers he turns down, or the one about chasing his weekly goal, you already know Damon and I go back further than debt advice. In 2022 we started something called The Penny Stupid Project together — a public, no-BS test of side hustles where neither of us sold anything. My half was retail arbitrage and Amazon FBA. Damon’s half was gig delivery and shopping, and he’s still running it at The Penny Stupid Project on YouTube. I tell you that every time I feature his work, because you deserve to know where I stand before you take my recommendation — and because I receive no payment for featuring his videos or recommending him to you.
What We Actually Cover in This Episode
This one runs almost 51 minutes because it’s a real conversation, not a script. Here’s the honest map of where it goes:
- How we both actually use AI to run a small operation. Video editing, research, fact-checking, writing, thumbnails, and publishing — tasks that used to require hiring editors and assistants can now be done faster and cheaper. That’s not theoretical for either of us; it’s how this site and Damon’s channel get built.
- Damon’s real-world gig-work experiments — the same Penny Stupid Project math I’ve been writing up here, and what it’s showing him about where gig income is heading.
- Autonomous Cybercabs — Tesla’s driverless car with no steering wheel and no pedals, which Damon says is not live yet, and his idea of buying one as a business instead of competing against it. He drives gig apps in the Phoenix area, where driverless Waymos are already on the road.
- Why earning more can matter as much as spending less. Most debt advice fixates on cutting expenses. We talk about why building income is the other half of the equation — and why AI is changing what that income can look like.
- Protecting your retirement and your financial future ahead of your credit score — a position I’ve held since I ran a credit counseling organization and watched people wreck their retirement to protect a number that resets in a few years.
- The Payactiv data breach and the risk built into earned-wage-access apps — more on this below, because it’s a real, sourced story, not a talking point.
Most a person could get back for documented losses in the Payactiv breach settlement, preliminarily approved June 12, 2026
Damon’s one-week gig challenge goal, with no more than 20 hours and 300 miles of driving
What Damon says he pays ChatGPT for video editing he says would have cost four or five hundred dollars per video three years ago
The settlement figure is sourced below; the other two are what Damon said on the show. Not projections, not guarantees.
The Daily Money Brief — Free, at 10 AM
Money you may be owed, scams to dodge, and the fine print decoded — the consumer money news that affects your wallet, every weekday.
The Part Nobody’s Saying Out Loud: Your Gig Income Plan Has an Expiration Date
Here’s the angle I want to spell out plainly, because the episode raises it and I don’t want it to get lost in the AI-tools discussion. Damon’s entire Penny Stupid Project — the videos I’ve been writing up here for the last few weeks — exists because gig platforms pay a human being to drive a car or walk through a store. Damon tells gig drivers in online forums exactly where he thinks that’s heading: “robots are going to replace you.” Tesla’s Cybercab, as he describes it on the show, is an autonomous vehicle that “doesn’t have a steering wheel, doesn’t have pedals,” and it’s “there to compete with Uber.” It isn’t running yet. In Damon’s words, Tesla’s network is “not live yet.” I told him on the show I think it will absolutely happen. Damon lives and drives in Phoenix, the same metro he’s filming his gig runs in.
Phoenix also isn’t new to this. Damon says driverless Waymos have been “out here for a couple of years now,” and people barely notice them anymore: “It’s normal. We see them everywhere.” His prediction is that “the Cybercab is going to end up putting Waymo out of business.” That’s his read, not a fact — but it comes from someone who drives for these apps in a city where cars with no driver are already on the road.
Which Gig Work Is Actually Exposed — and Which Isn’t, Yet
This matters enough to be precise about it, because lumping “gig work” into one bucket is exactly the kind of imprecision that leads to bad decisions. Cybercab and Waymo are robotaxis — passenger rides. They’re built to compete with Uber and Lyft driving. They do not, today, shop inside a Walmart, bag groceries, or carry a Chipotle bag to your door — the tasks Damon’s Instacart, Walmart Spark, and DoorDash work actually involve. Rideshare driving is the gig category most directly in the path of this technology right now. In-store shopping and hand-to-door delivery are harder to automate and aren’t the current target — but “not the current target” isn’t the same as “safe forever.” Know which category your own gig income sits in before you assume it’s protected.
Protecting Your Retirement Comes Before Protecting Your Credit Score
This is a position I’ve held since I ran a credit counseling organization and watched it from the inside: your credit score recovers. Chapter 7 filers typically see their scores rise in the first few years after filing, according to CFPB research, and any late-payment history ages off within seven years. Your retirement account doesn’t get that grace period. Money you cash out of a 401(k) or IRA to protect your credit score today doesn’t compound for the next 20 or 30 years. That’s the actual trade people are making when they raid retirement savings to avoid a bankruptcy filing or a settlement’s credit hit — and it’s backwards.
That principle matters more, not less, when the conversation turns to AI and automation. If you’re worried that your income — gig work, a job, a small business — is exposed to faster change than it used to be, the answer isn’t to protect a three-digit number that resets on its own. It’s to protect the asset that took decades to build and can’t be rebuilt on the same timeline.
The Payactiv Breach and Why Earned-Wage-Access Apps Are a Bad Backup Plan
We also talk about Payactiv in this episode, and it’s worth being precise about what actually happened, because “data breach” gets thrown around loosely. Payactiv is an earned-wage-access provider that lets workers draw pay before payday. The official settlement website and the court-approved notice describe a targeted cyberattack on Payactiv’s computer systems in April 2025, and say the files accessed may have contained names, dates of birth, financial account numbers, and Social Security numbers. On the show I put it this way: they lost “the identity of their customers, their customers’ employers, their pay cycles, bank routing and account numbers.” A Broward County, Florida court preliminarily approved a class action settlement on June 12, 2026 (Toth v. Payactiv, Inc.), offering up to $2,500 per person for documented losses tied to the breach. Payactiv denies wrongdoing, and the deadline to file a claim was September 12, 2026.
That breach is a specific incident, not proof that every earned-wage-access app is a scam. But it’s a real example of the risk you take on with services that hold your Social Security number and bank details in exchange for early access to money you already earned. I’ve already written about why I think of these apps as payday loans wearing a different costume — the “tip” you’re nudged to leave functions like a fee, and the app’s whole business model depends on you needing money before payday becomes a habit instead of an emergency. If you’re leaning on gig income to catch up on debt, an earned-wage-access app that hands a breach-prone company your Social Security number for the privilege of borrowing against your own paycheck early is not the stabilizer it markets itself as.
Not the only app of its kind: Minnesota sued the Brigit cash advance app over similar concerns. Check any earned-wage-access or cash-advance app’s actual fees and data practices before you connect it to your bank account — don’t assume “early access to your own money” means “free.”
What This Means If You’re Counting on Gig Income to Dig Out of Debt
I get versions of this question constantly: should I drive or shop for these apps to catch up on bills? My answer hasn’t changed because AI entered the conversation — it depends on your specific numbers, run honestly, the same way Damon runs his on camera. But this episode adds a layer most gig-work content skips entirely: don’t just ask what an offer pays today. Ask how stable the category of work is over the length of your plan.
- Treat gig income as a bridge, not the whole plan. It’s genuinely useful for closing a short-term gap — a car payment, a medical bill, a shutoff notice. It’s a riskier foundation for a five-year Chapter 13 payment plan if the category of work you’re relying on is the one automation is actively targeting.
- Know which bucket your gig work is in. Rideshare driving is closer to disruption today than in-store shopping or hand delivery. That’s not a guarantee either stays that way — it’s today’s honest read.
- Count the real cost of driving, whatever you’re doing. The IRS’s standard mileage rate is 76 cents a mile for business driving from July 1 through December 31, 2026 — what gas, maintenance, tires, insurance, and depreciation actually cost. You owe self-employment tax on top of whatever’s left, since nobody withholds it for you.
- Diversify the income, not just the debt payoff strategy. The whole point of Damon and I building AI literacy into how we run our own small operations is that the skill of adapting matters more than any single income source staying exactly the same.
- Don’t hand a breach-prone app your Social Security number to solve a timing problem. An emergency fund, even a small one, does the same job an earned-wage-access app does — without the data risk or the fee.
More From the Archive
Damon and I have been writing about this experiment since it started in 2022. A few from the archive that pair well with this episode:
- Why Do You Recommend Damon Day as a Debt Advisor? — the full explanation of our relationship
- Side Hustles for Debt: What to Know First — the honest boundaries of what a side hustle can fix
- Side Hustles: When They Help and When They Hurt
- Quick Cash for Bills: Myth vs Reality — the honest version of “I need money fast”
- Online Arbitrage Mistakes: Myth vs Reality — my own rookie mistakes on the retail side of this experiment
- Side Hustle Success: What It Means and What to Do
- Walmart Spark Driver Settlement: $100 Million — what Walmart’s own gig drivers were owed
- Earned-Wage-Access Apps Are Payday Loans in a Costume
- Damon Day Was $76 From His Weekly Goal — his most recent solo gig-work breakdown
Key Takeaway
AI is already changing how small operations like mine and Damon’s get built, and in Damon’s own gig-work market in Phoenix, driverless Waymos are already on the road while Tesla’s Cybercab, in his words, is “not live yet.” None of that means gig work disappears overnight, and today’s technology targets rideshare driving specifically, not in-store shopping or hand delivery. It does mean a debt payoff plan built entirely on one income source, in one category of gig work, deserves a second look — and that protecting your retirement matters more than protecting a credit score that resets on its own.
The Bottom Line
If you’re relying on gig income to dig out of debt and this episode made you nervous, that’s a reasonable reaction to a real shift — not a reason to panic. The math hasn’t changed: run your own numbers, treat any single income source as a bridge rather than a foundation, and protect the accounts that take decades to rebuild before you protect the ones that reset in a few years. I’ve watched side hustles, recessions, and now AI reshape what “reliable income” means over 30 years, and the people who come through it best are the ones who stay flexible instead of betting everything on one plan staying the same forever.
This is one podcast episode, two guys talking, describing what we’re seeing right now — take it as input for your thinking, not a directive. Only you know your full financial situation, what your income sources actually depend on, and how much runway you need. Nobody gets to tell you what to do with your time or your money. Not me, not Damon, not anyone.
Common Questions
Who is Damon Day, and why does Steve feature his work?
Damon Day is a debt advisor I’ve worked with for years, my co-host on the Get Out of Debt Guy Podcast, and the person I recommend to readers most often — read the full explanation in Why Do You Recommend Damon Day as a Debt Advisor? I helped him start The Penny Stupid Project in 2022, he’s run it since, and I disclose that every time I feature his work — including this podcast episode — because I receive no payment for the referral and I want you to know where I stand before you take my recommendation.
Will Tesla’s Cybercab replace gig delivery drivers?
Not directly, not yet. Cybercab and other robotaxis are passenger vehicles built to compete with Uber and Lyft rideshare driving, and Damon says Tesla’s Cybercab network is not live yet. They don’t shop inside a store or hand-carry a delivery to your door — the work Instacart, Walmart Spark, and DoorDash actually require. Rideshare driving is the gig category most exposed to this technology today; in-store shopping and hand delivery are not the current target, though that could change as the technology develops.
Is the $40 an hour Damon mentions typical gig-work pay?
No. On the show Damon says that by using multiple apps he’s “averaging $40 an hour,” while other drivers on YouTube complain about making $15 an hour on DoorDash, and he adds, “I’m not saying I’m special and nobody else can do it.” That’s his own average, in his market, working the way he works. Gig pay varies enormously by city, time of day, platform demand, and plain luck in what offers appear on the screen. Don’t treat any single figure as your average, a promise, or a plan.
What happened in the Payactiv data breach?
Payactiv, an earned-wage-access company, was hit by a targeted cyberattack on its computer systems in April 2025. According to the court-approved settlement notice, the files accessed may have contained names, dates of birth, financial account numbers, and Social Security numbers. A Florida court preliminarily approved a class action settlement on June 12, 2026, offering up to $2,500 per person for documented losses. The claim deadline was September 12, 2026, and Payactiv denies wrongdoing.
Are earned-wage-access apps safe to use?
They’re not inherently scams, but they carry real risk: you’re handing sensitive financial data to a company, as the Payactiv breach shows, and the fee/tip structure often functions like a payday loan’s interest. I’ve written a full breakdown in Earned-Wage-Access Apps Are Payday Loans in a Costume.
Should I count on gig work as part of my debt payoff plan?
It can be a legitimate bridge for a short-term gap, but it’s a riskier foundation for a multi-year plan — especially in gig categories closer to automation, like rideshare driving. Run your own numbers on mileage, self-employment tax, and how stable your specific type of gig work actually is before you build a payoff timeline around it.
Why does Steve say to protect retirement before credit score?
Because a credit score recovers on its own — Chapter 7 filers typically see scores rise in the first few years after filing, according to CFPB research, and late-payment history ages off within seven years. Retirement savings you cash out today don’t get decades back to compound. I’ve held this position since I ran a credit counseling organization and watched people damage their retirement to protect a number that was never permanently damaged to begin with.
One more thing: if you know someone who is counting on gig work to pay down debt and wondering what AI and driverless cars mean for that income, send them this episode. A conversation like this one lands differently when it comes from someone they trust.
Dealing With Debt? Understanding your options is the first step. See how all your debt relief options compare — including ones most sites won’t tell you about. The Find Your Path quiz gives a recommendation based on your actual numbers, and the Scam-O-Meter checks any company’s complaint history before you sign. Federal Reserve Bank of New York research shows bankruptcy filers recover faster than those who don’t file.
Free Tool — Contract Decoder: Have a contract from a debt relief company? The free Contract Decoder analyzes it for red flags, hidden fees, and problematic terms — before you sign anything. Decode My Contract →
Key Takeaways
- Steve Rhode says getting out of debt comes down to three moves: "Reduce expenses, increase income, or both."
- Steve Rhode says spending down your retirement because you don't want your credit score to drop is worrying about the wrong thing: "we need to focus on the math."
- Damon Day says gig work is fine for side money but keep it part-time and have a plan to transition out of full-time gig work: "Don't rely on it to pay your mortgage or anything like that."
- Damon Day's $500 week challenge caps him at 20 hours and 300 miles, to test whether someone with a job, a business or a family can fit gig apps around their schedule and make an extra $2,000 a month.
- Steve Rhode says the Payactiv data breach exposed customers' identities, their employers, pay cycles, and bank routing and account numbers; if you have ever used Payactiv, he points you to the August 5th edition of his Substack at yourmoneysteve.substack.com.
- Damon Day says video editing he would have paid four or five hundred bucks per video for three years ago, about $10,000 a month for daily videos, is now done by ChatGPT for a hundred bucks a month.
- Damon Day says the best preparation for AI changing jobs is to get out of debt and save, because whatever happens "is going to be easier to handle if you have money in the bank, you don't have any debt, you don't owe anybody anything, and you got a plan."
Full Transcript
Click to expand transcript
Too Much Financial News, and Debt as Math Wrapped in Emotion
Steve Rhode: Hey, welcome back to the Get Out of Debt Guy podcast. I’m Steve Rhode, and with me, as always, is Damon Day. One of us is the new and old Get Out of Debt Guy. You figure it out. It’s a challenge.
And the other one is known as the Guy. The Guy. You are the Get Out of Debt Guy. The Guy and the other guy.
Steve Rhode: All right, so, man, there has just been so much. You know, every day I just, because I’m constantly monitoring and researching all this stuff, and it’s like a monsoon of financial stuff, and it’s hard to know where to start. I’ll tell you, the most difficult thing is just people knowing where to even begin or how to deal with their money or how to deal with all the news that’s coming out. You just get brain numb to it.
Damon Day: Yeah, I think you’re feeling overwhelmed because, you know, we didn’t have a chance to break anything down last week because, for a very important reason, we did not have a podcast.
Oh, that’s right. Yeah, we missed it. No, I missed it. Somebody overslept. Somebody three hours behind the other person. Yeah, yeah. We’ll blame that on AI. Mr. I stroll into the podcast at noon versus I actually have to wake up for this thing. Yep. Yeah, you’re eating breakfast, I’m eating lunch. No, I’m wiping eye crusties. Steve’s like, I had to swing by for a hot dog. Yeah. Well, I get a cup of coffee, stumble into the office, be like, All right, Cosmo, go. Yeah.
Steve Rhode: My big disappointment so far of today was, yeah, I swung by for a hot dog at Sheetz, and I actually ordered an Italian sausage and— They sent a manager out to break the news to me that all they had were bratwurst. I was like, Ah, all right.
Damon Day: I think that’s what’s known as a real first-world problem.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, that’s the way I felt when they were telling me, Well, my day’s gonna suck. Yeah, that was my big disappointment for the day.
Damon Day: So, did you pull any nuggets out of that financial tsunami that you got hit with?
Steve Rhode: Well, it made me realize two things. One, that, you know, because you and I both have that frame of remembering what it was like to go through this stuff. And it’s really hard to open your brain to what you should do when, you know, you’re getting hit with more and more news all the time. At least back in 1989 when I was dealing with it, you know, we didn’t have 24-hour news everything bombarding you. And there was a little bit of peace in there. But now, you know, it’s bad news all the time about everything. And so it’s hard to wrap your brain around, like, trying to dig into something and figure out what’s true instead of doing what people just normally do, which is react to something, hope for good news, and then leap at that even though it’s the worst thing they could do.
Damon Day: Yeah. No, it happens a lot. I mean, obviously, with the amount of people I talk to every day, you know, I see it, and it’s just like, you see your famous quote. It’s math wrapped in emotion. That’s the definition of debt. Yeah. And if we could just get rid of the emotion, it would be so much easier. If we could take the emotion out of you, just get you to look at numbers.
Steve Rhode: Well, I, you know, we think about all the times we’ve talked to people over the years who are, like, desperately digging the hole deep as fast as they can because they’re worried about something that doesn’t really matter. You know, like, I’m going to spend down my retirement because I don’t want my credit score to drop. Like, these things don’t match up, and you’re worried about the wrong thing, and you’re worried about the emotion, but we need to focus on the math.
Damon Day: So when I was a lot younger, and I was, you know, a little wet behind the ears and this stuff, and people would, you know, say, you know, we’d have a conversation and they’d email me back. I’m like, Yeah, I really appreciated that conversation, and what you said made a lot of sense, but I’m thinking, you know, I’m going to first try… I used to go, you know, I’d respond back and be like, No, no, no, don’t do that. It’s going to be bad. And now I’ve got to the point where when I get the, you know, emails like that, respond back, I go, Okay, yeah, so just circle back with me whenever. I’ll be around. I’ll be here, you know. And inevitably, a year later, two years later, Hey, I’m not sure if you remember me, but— Yeah. Oh yeah, I remember you. Oh yeah, I do. But it’s like I’ve learned that once somebody gets their mind set on something, it’s not my job to try to, like, talk them out of it or convince them. Now, I’ll make some suggestions. I’ll be like, Yeah, you could go that way, but have you considered this? But I, you know, I don’t, I just, maybe I’m just, you know, I’m almost 50 now, and I’m just getting like, Well, if they want to do it that way, it’s their life, it’s their money, you know, it’s their credit score. They can try it and see how it goes, and I can just be supportive and let them know I’ll still be here for them when they, you know, if they need to come back or… Make a course correction. But I also have to, you know, remember that, you know, I’ve been immersed in this stuff for over 20 years, 25 years now. So, you know, a lot of the stuff that I see, it’s kind of like The Matrix, you know, when it’s like all those codes and everything, and then when Neo finally can wake up and see, and he sees exactly what it is. It’s not just jumbled numbers running through a screen. Well, I’ve had 25 years to look at those jumbled numbers, so when someone comes to me with a situation, yeah, I clearly see what’s going on and what needs to happen, but they’re coming at it for the first time. It just looks like a whole bunch of numbers, right? So, you know, you got to let people—
You Do You, Boo: When Someone Has Already Made Up Their Mind
Steve Rhode: One of the best phrases that helps people and helps you and I is, so in my days as a search and rescue pilot for the fire department, one of the things that I had to do was I had to take an emergency vehicle driver class because, you know, I would respond lights and sirens in the Tahoe. But in order to take the class, you actually had to drive a fire truck on an obstacle course, dude.
I remember that Tahoe. It was a fun truck. It was. Talk about clearing traffic. Oh my God. And it was fun. I have the power. I do. Woo! Yeah, just go right up between the lanes. It was great.
Steve Rhode: But anyway, I had to drive a fire truck on an obstacle course. I had never driven a fire truck. Never.
Damon Day: Well, most of us have not, Steve. No, that’s not uncommon.
Steve Rhode: So the highlight of the test was I’m driving through the course and I hear this, thump, thump, thump. I’m like, what the hell is that? I turned to one of the other guys in the truck. He goes, Yeah, you got a cone stuck between the back tires.
So you’re supposed to go around those. Yeah.
Steve Rhode: So anyway, I finish the test and I look at the instructor, and she says to me, You passed. You do you, boo. Yeah.
Damon Day: And so stick to the planes, flyboy.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. I told her, I am never driving another fire truck again.
There’s no cones in the air. No, we have other things. Damn birds. But, you know, it’s like— Our cones move. I’ve had to avoid more than one giant bird.
Steve Rhode: It’s like when you’re helping somebody and you realize that you’ve come up against an immovable object, which is someone else’s emotional opinion. The only thing that you can really say is, Hey, you do you, boo. Or you can just get hung up on, like I did a couple months ago.
Damon Day: Well, the problem was at that point you applied logic.
Steve Rhode: Oh yeah, my bad. I should not have done that.
The Payactiv Data Breach
Steve Rhode: So I wanted to talk about—not only do I write posts every day on getoutofdebt.org and research all this stuff and read through the court cases and, oh my God, all this stuff, but—
Boring. Yeah, well, somebody’s got to do it. Steve is the guy to do the boring stuff. That’s why I’m the Get Out of Debt guy. That’s why he’s the old Get Out of Debt guy. I still read. I should start making TikTok videos about debt. But anyway— With Don Phonics, worked for me.
Steve Rhode: On GetOutOfDebt.org, every day I send out a kind of a deep dive weekday email. And then I was thinking about the modern generation, you know, the kind of TikTok generation where maybe it shouldn’t be as deep, but something that you can read during a bathroom break. So I actually have a Substack newsletter that’s free, and if you go to yourmoneysteve.substack.com, you can follow along. It’s like the Cliff Notes of what you need to know today.
Damon Day: But I was going to say the Reader’s Digest, because you mentioned the fine toilet reading.
That’s right. I don’t think there is any more toilet reading because it’s just your phone. Half our audience has no idea what a Reader’s Digest is.
Steve Rhode: But anyway, in the Substack that came out yesterday, yeah, the lead story is a good one because, you know, I’ve been seeing more and more commercials for these apps that say, You earned it. You deserve it today, like it’s a payday advance thing. But they don’t sell it as a payday loan. It’s just like a card that you use. And one of those things is Payactiv. Have you ever heard of Payactiv?
Damon Day: No, no one for me.
Steve Rhode: Anyway, it’s another one of those things where you can get your, you know, your paycheck three days early and then pay an exorbitant fee for doing it.
Damon Day: Another one, special program. Sounds great.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, it does sound great. It’s one of those, you know, get paid when you want. But Payactiv had a giant data breach. And it’s unlike every other data breach that we’ve heard about recently because they didn’t get just, like, part of a Social Security number or part of a password, but not your username or something like that. No, they lost everything. So they lost the identity of their customers, their customers’ employers, their pay cycles, bank routing and account numbers, everything that a true scammer needs in order to not only impersonate you, but make you an ongoing target for a long time. So if you’ve ever used Payactiv, I would suggest that you go to yourmoneysteve.substack.com and look at the August 5th edition. It’s got all the details in there and exactly what happened and what you should do. And it also has a little notice in here about something that this guy that I know—I got a guy.
Damon Day: You got a guy.
Steve Rhode: Damon Day turned down six gig offers before taking one. There’s a link to Damon’s videos. He’s now—are you doing them daily now? Is that it?
Daily Videos for Five Bucks: The Penny Stupid Project
Damon Day: Man, with, hey, this AI stuff, man. Yeah. Yeah, I’m getting a daily video out there on the Penny Stupid channel. Started last week, and it’s been fun, actually.
Steve Rhode: Well, so, you know, AI has been really doing the work for you, and we’ve talked a lot about AI over the last year about how it’s going to change the way people work and jobs and everything else. But one of the things that you and I were chatting about was, you know, it wasn’t but just within the last two years where you needed to hire a video editor. Or do all the work yourself to edit a daily video, and you were going to pay between, for a good one, between two and five hundred bucks to get a video fully finished from raw footage. And now, Damon, you’re doing it for what, five bucks a day?
Damon Day: Like five bucks or less. I mean, it’s, you know, for those of you that don’t know, Steve and I started a YouTube channel website called Penny Stupid Project. Yeah. Find us on YouTube. Hell, just hit 2,000 subscribers this morning.
Steve Rhode: Yay!
Damon Day: So that was a nice milestone for us. It’s starting to grow. But no, we started this YouTube channel back in what, 2022, I think?
Steve Rhode: It’s been, what, 2003, I think?
Damon Day: No, no, no. I’m talking about Penny Stupid Project.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, I thought it was 2000— oh, 23. 2023. Yeah. Sorry, I lost 20 years.
Damon Day: Yeah, I was like, no, Steve, I haven’t been doing Uber for 20 years. No, I think it was ’22 because that’s when I— the year I bought the Tesla, and we bought— okay, I bought a Tesla for the YouTube channel. It’s been working out great, actually. I love that car.
Steve Rhode: There was some emotion wrapped in math right there.
Damon Day: Hey, hey, hey, I can wrap emotion around math with the best of them, Steve. I’m a reverse engineer, that shit. I’m like, I want a Tesla. I know. Hey, babe, I got this experiment Steve and I are doing on YouTube, and I got to drive for these gig apps, but I don’t want to use your Cadillac, so I need to get this Tesla.
Well, but it made total financial sense.
Damon Day: It really did. Yeah. You know, even buying it in the pandemic, when it was way marked up, it still worked. I mean, the car’s paid for itself. But anyway, yeah, part of that, part of what we do on the Penny Stupid channel is we try different side hustles, and I do a lot of gig driving and things like that. Just, it started from the idea of— How can I help my clients figure out ways to make extra money? Because obviously, when you’re trying to get out of debt, cutting expenses is one thing, but sometimes, and oftentimes, you can’t just save your way out of the debt. You know, sometimes you get to a point where you can’t just, you know, Dave Ramsey, I’ve already got five roommates. What else am I supposed to do? Right? You get to that point.
Steve Rhode: Well, getting out of debt is a combination of one of three things, right? Reduce expenses, increase income, or both.
Damon Day: Yeah. Yeah, so that was kind of the idea behind that. And remember, Steve, that first month I went out, I signed up on Lyft. I tried to figure out all this stuff so I could be a better advisor for my clients. Because, you know, it’s one thing to say, Hey, you need to make some more money. Have you tried driving for Lyft or driving Uber? And then, well, I don’t know anything about that. Yeah. And so one day I was like, Well, can you make any extra money doing this stuff? I don’t know. I’ve heard about it. It’s kind of like, you know, me recommending bankruptcy before I actually filed bankruptcy, right? It’s like, or recommending acorns. Yeah. But, you know, back in the day, my younger self was very much so like, Oh, bankruptcy is the last resort. You shouldn’t do that. You should try to do this.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, you didn’t know better.
Damon Day: Why did I say that? Well, because that’s what everybody else said. And I was young and coming up in the industry, and, Oh, everybody says bankruptcy is bad. Bankruptcy must be bad. I don’t know. I don’t have any personal experience with it. I filed bankruptcy myself back in 2011, and all of a sudden it’s like, that was fairly decent. I actually wiped out a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt, got a fresh start. Things took off since then. That was a pretty okay-ish result.
Steve Rhode: It’s quite great, if you ask me. That my bankruptcy in 1990 and yours, afterwards, it led to new and better things. You know, happier life, everything. It just opened opportunity, and yet people are so resistant. But anyway, I digress.
Damon’s First Month of Gig Driving and the $500 Week Challenge
Damon Day: Yeah. So, but my whole point of all that was, once I went through it, I went, hey, what most people think about this one thing is not actually true. Kind of the same with, you know, gig driving and stuff like that, right? So I went out there, and my first month, Steve, you remember, I just drove. I had no idea what I was doing.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, it was like $6,500.
Damon Day: Not gonna—that’s gross. I had to cover gas and things like that.
Steve Rhode: Well, and you’re burning the candle at nine different ends.
Damon Day: Oh, because, you know, I’m that squirrel personality. I was like, hey, this is new. This is exciting. Yeah, oh yeah, it’s go big or go home, bro. That’s how we do it over here. So, but yeah, I made over $6,000 that first month, knowing absolutely nothing about any of these gig apps. Just signed up and, you know, followed the app and started pointing the car. $6,000. And I went, okay, people can make some money with this stuff to actually get out of debt, use the money to invest, go on a vacation, whatever it is. And it’s not just, it’s not just like, oh, if you’re broke, you, you know, go drive for Uber. It’s, you know, professional people too. Like, you make good money, but you’re still broke, and you just, you got to get over that hump, and, you know, you’ve got a little bit of extra.
Oh, I told you about the corporate executive that he would have to drive into town every day for work, but he would just turn on his Uber app and pick somebody up and get paid to drive to work.
Damon Day: Yeah, and that was kind of the thinking behind it. Like, if I can do it, like if my clients can see me doing it, they could be like, well, if Damon can do it, you know, maybe it’s not beneath me. You know what I mean?
Steve Rhode: That was a good plan.
Damon Day: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, like, this guy is crazy. But no, so this week I’m actually, I’m doing a challenge. I’m not gonna spoil it, but if you go to getoutofdebt.org, Steve has actually started picking up some of the YouTube videos and putting them on the recent articles section, so you can, if you don’t go directly to Penny Stupid Project on YouTube, you can see some of those.
Steve Rhode: And I write about them too.
Damon Day: Videos. Yeah, he does. Videos on the getoutofdebt.org. But this week I am doing a challenge: can I make $500 this week? And before you say, well, yeah, that’s not that big a deal. Yes, I can make $500, but I have some parameters. I can’t drive more than 20 hours, and I should be able to do it in about 15. And I can’t drive more than 300 miles, because the point is not to just go out there and see how much money you can make. There’s a lot of YouTube channels about that. The point is to say, can you utilize these gig apps in such a way that if you have a job, you have a business, you have a family, you can work these things around your schedule and your availability to make an extra $2,000 a month? And can you do it, and how difficult would it be to do that? And for a lot of people listening to this, $2,000 a month would make a big difference for them, right?
Steve Rhode: So, yeah, well, the objection that people have is like, I don’t want to drive people. I don’t want to have people in my car, and I’m not going to spoil anything here by—
Damon doesn’t. I used to.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, but we talked about making this money. It’s not putting strangers in your car anymore.
Damon Day: Yeah, and I don’t mind doing it. I mean, I can’t—if the money was there, I would do it. I go where the money is, right? That’s my—the whole point of the channel is trying to reverse engineer this stuff and figure out, okay, you go on YouTube and you see all these guys bitching about, I am only making $15 an hour on DoorDash, and blah, blah, blah. And then I go out there and I’m using multiple apps and I’m averaging $40 an hour. So it’s like, what am I doing to average $40 an hour where all these—and I’m not saying I’m special and nobody else can do it.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, but some guys just sit at the airport.
Damon Day: Well, but that’s the reason why we started that Penny Stupid channel. So when I’m telling my clients something, I can speak from experience. And so anyway, go to Penny Stupid, subscribe, be my subscriber 2001. That would make me very happy. And, you know, I try to make the videos as entertaining as possible, but at the end of the day, I’m not pushing you to go sign up for Gig Work or anything like that.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, there’s no affiliate links or anything.
Damon Day: No, I’m just saying, hey, look, this—even if you think that might be, you know, beneath you, I actually strangely enjoy it. I don’t know. I think I enjoy the challenge of it. Like, can I take these things and turn this into money, right? Because at the end of the day, that’s what it is. I got an app on my phone, and I’m figuring out ways to turn it into money, maximize my return on that.
Gig Apps vs. Starting a Business From Scratch
Steve Rhode: Well, and if you can make an extra 500 bucks a week. Yeah. Here’s why I love that, is because, so I have never talked about it on the podcast, but I started a 3D printing business, and if you go to GetRedStuff.com, Get Red Stuff, you’ll see—
You know what I’m doing.
Steve Rhode: But as part of that, I started a new newsletter, The Red Thread on Substack, that’s all about starting your own business. And what I find fascinating is you get all the people that bitch about gig apps. You know, like, they’re taking advantage of me. They’re not. If you compare getting started with a gig app and being able to earn money today versus starting your own side hustle or business from scratch, there’s no comparison. You can start making money today with a side hustle, and you can get paid out today and, you know, put money in your pocket daily, as opposed to all the crap that I have to deal with starting a brand new business. It’s unbelievable.
Why Full-Time Gig Work Needs an Exit Plan, and the Cybercab Idea
Damon Day: Well, and I see that a lot, you know, because I get into those forums, you know, DoorDash forums and Uber Eats forums and Instacart, all that kind of stuff. And it’s just a barrage of bitching and complaining is all it is. And, you know, I’ll say something like, Well, you know, you got to do this stuff part-time, because a lot of these guys, you know, trying to make a full-time income as a gig worker or whatever. And I get the allure of the, you know, it’s flexible and all that kind of stuff. But, man, times they are a-changin’. We’re talking about AI, and we’re going to get deeper into that in a second. But, you know, sometimes I’ll go into these forums and I’ll just try to be like the voice of reason. I’ll say, Hey, guys, you got to have a plan. You got to have a strategy. Gig work is great, and you can make some side money, but you got to transition out of gig work, at least out of full-time gig work. Like, keep it part-time. Don’t rely on it to pay your mortgage or anything like that. Because I’ll say, like, you know, robots are going to replace you. You know, we already have automated taxis out here in Phoenix, and, you know, it’s only a matter of time before— Automated video editors. Yeah, you’re going to get squeezed out, and I just get, like, maliciously attacked when I don’t toe the line. And it’s like, no, we have to get together, and we have to petition Congress, and we have to get laws, and we have to do this. And it’s just like, guys, you are going to get replaced. And one of the things that’s fascinating—oh, I’m starting a new series too. Even if you have no interest in gig driving, the next series I’m doing on the Penny Stupid channel is going to be all about how to start a business, or can you start—is it a viable business? I’m getting fascinated with, as you know, Steve, with this Cybercab idea. And for those of you that don’t know, this is my buddy Elon—not my real buddy, I don’t know him, but I drive his car every day. They came out with a Cybercab, which is an autonomous vehicle, doesn’t have a steering wheel, doesn’t have pedals, and essentially it’s there to compete with Uber. And so I’m sitting here, you know, driving these gig apps, and all these drivers are worried about, oh, these vehicles are going to potentially replace us, and da-da-da-da. But Elon is building a network where he’s—it’s not live yet for investors, but talking about a business opportunity where you can purchase, as an individual rather than a fleet owner, a Cybercab. I think they’re going to be 30 grand.
He says they’re 30 grand. He also said the Cybertrucks were going to be under 40 grand too, so you never—well, right. He said the cost of goods for the Cybercab was 20, so they sell them for 30, they’re making 10. That’s good.
Damon Day: Yeah. So I’m having a whole series on, you know, we’re going to be running numbers, we’re going to be looking at what you could actually make, what the costs are going to be, and we’re going to do a whole series on, is this a potential viable business? And think about this. So instead of driving the car for Uber and worrying about the robots, get the robot yourself. Yeah, buy the Cybercab. And so, I mean, imagine a scenario like this. You wake up, you get your coffee, you need to go to work, you’ve got a Cybercab. In your garage, right? You get into your car, you got to catch up on some things, you got some meetings. You’re not driving to work. You got the car driving you to work. So you’re studying up on, Oh, I got this meeting, setting my agenda, getting productive. The car pulls up to the front of your office, drops you off, you get out, you push a button on your phone, and instead of this Cybercab parking in the parking lot for eight hours while you work, it drives to work for you and makes you a side hustle income while you’re working. Then you let it know what time you need to be picked up. It’ll stop working. It’ll come get you, take you home, and then, if you want, you can send it back out for the evening shift, make some extra money while you’re having dinner and sleeping. The idea behind that is so fascinating to me, to actually—and it takes this idea of the car as always a depreciating asset to the car is an investment opportunity now. Right. The car can pay for itself and then some.
Two Teslas for $7.42 a Month, and Driverless Cars in Phoenix
Steve Rhode: Well, and in your series, you’ll talk, I’m sure you’ll talk about, you know, the downsides that people initially see, like you and I talked about back in the day, which was, how does it get clean? How does it get charged? And all those things. But here’s a real-world example. So I have two Teslas. Oh, and by the way, so drove the two Teslas, you know, all last month. I just saw that the cost of fueling those two cars for all of last month was $7.42. That’s why I love them. I love them. But so I can go to Sam’s Club, park my car in the back—
Damon Day: Hey, Steve, hold on real quick before you do that story. Say that again for those in the back, because you kind of glossed over that. Make sure that point is driven home. The two Teslas and two—what was your fueling expense for the month?
Steve Rhode: Seven dollars and 42 cents. For the month, for two cars. When I went to Sheetz, the gas station, to go get my non-Italian sausage, I looked at all the pumps and everybody’s standing there, and I just felt sorry.
Damon Day: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t even track mine because mine’s like a rounding error on my electric bill. Yeah. I didn’t know—I mean, I’m out here in Arizona, so my electric bill fluctuates in the summertime.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, and your solar pays for it.
Damon Day: Yeah. Well, I do have solar, yeah, but I didn’t even, like—but I had the solar before I got the Tesla. So I was just—when I first got the Tesla a couple years ago and we got this house, you know, I paid attention, and I couldn’t really notice a difference in my bill. I mean, because my bill does fluctuate a little bit every month, but it wasn’t like I plugged the car in. And keep in mind, because there’s a difference. Steve drives like a normal person, right? I live in Phoenix, and the Tesla—we have three vehicles at the house. The Tesla is always the one that gets picked first. Everybody loves the Tesla, right? We put anywhere from three to five thousand miles a month. I’m not exaggerating. My family puts three to five thousand miles a month on that Tesla. And some of that is gig work that I go out and do, but most of it is driving kids around to baseball and softball and school because the valley is big. So we drive a hell of a lot more than the average person would drive their car, and it’s still essentially a rounding error on my electric bill, and it’s full every morning, and it’s just—you know, you see people making fun of this stuff online. But you don’t know what you don’t know until you have one. And then it’s so hard to go back to another. Like my diesel truck, almost never—I drive it once a week just because I don’t want it sitting there. But I’m always like, Oh man, that’s like 20 miles away, and diesel’s like $5.50 a gallon. That’s going to cost me 20 bucks to take the truck. The Tesla’s 50 cents or whatever.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, when I go buy a gas station and it has the prices out there, I’m like, Wow, that sucks.
Damon Day: Yeah. Doesn’t matter. I’m getting ready to do another series on the Penny Stupid channel too.
Steve Rhode: Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish my thought, which was—I’m sorry. So will it happen? Will the Cybercab happen? The answer to that is absolutely, because, like for example, today when I go to Sam’s Club, I can park my car on the back, and when I come out, I can just use the smart summons, and it just brings the car right to me. Nobody’s in it. It just drives to me.
Damon Day: Yeah, and for those of you that don’t know, I live in Phoenix. So if you don’t live in like a Phoenix or Houston or one of these major cities that have been testing these autonomous vehicles, we’ve had what’s called Waymos out here for a couple of years now. And when they first came out, it was like this, Oh my gosh, what is that? And now it’s like people don’t even take a second look. It’s normal. We see them everywhere. And these are vehicles with no driver. Now these aren’t like the Cybercab. The Cybercab is—I think the Cybercab is going to end up putting Waymo out of business.
Steve Rhode: Well, you’ve got something else that’s close to the Cybercab. You got Amazon’s Zoox. Have you seen those?
Damon Day: Yeah, but—
Steve Rhode: Okay, but there’s no steering wheel in them. There’s no steering wheel in them, and they were just approved to start charging customers. So they’re done with their testing phase.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I 100%, you can save this podcast. I’d say 10 years to be safe, but five years from now, but even if it’s 10, it will be weird to have a driver. You know, I mean, my grandkids may never have a driver’s license. Right. Why do I need one of those, Dad?
Damon Day: I mean, I’m even thinking about my 19-year-old, like doing, like using the Cybercab to even do the gig work that does need a person right now, right? You don’t have to drive. I do a lot of my deliveries, I just use the full self-drive on the Tesla because I’m multi-apping, right? I’m looking at Uber, I’m looking at DoorDash, I’m looking at Lyft, I’m evaluating all these things to try to see what the next order I’m going to take is. That’s hard to do when you’re driving and then the phone’s going bling, bling.
Oh yeah, so I’ve put on full self-drive. It’s blinging all the time.
Damon Day: Yeah, you put it on full self-drive and it’s like, okay, I got 10 minutes till I get to this stop. Now I can look at my phone and make these decisions on what’s going to be next. It’s like having an employee with you all the time, and then the Cybercab is just going to be the next level over the Tesla full self-driving.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, and the full self-driving on the Teslas has become so good now with the Model 4 hardware that, like when I’m driving someplace now, I actually have a chance to look around and look out the window, and I’m amazed all the stuff that’s around me that I never knew.
How AI Took Over the Busywork in Three Years
Damon Day: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is not the Tesla fanboy channel or anything like that, but this actually came up as a topic for today because we were talking about just how rapidly things are changing because of AI. And Steve brought this up a little bit earlier. If you look at the Penny Stupid channel and you actually look at the history of the videos, you’ll see large swaths of time. You know, where I’ll have, like, a frenzy for a month or two where I’m doing, like, one or two videos a week, and it’s pretty consistent and things are going good. Because the Penny Stupid channel itself is also a side hustle I’m testing. Can you build a YouTube channel? And so the, you know, the driving is actually content for the YouTube channel. And so the driving extra money is fine, but the real goal there is to get that passive money from the driving, right, by turning that into future revenue from YouTube and Facebook and things like that. So the driving is just content for that other side hustle. So there’s multiple side hustles going on at the same time.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, and look at the one I started at the same time, right? You did the driving, and I tested starting your own Amazon business.
Steve Rhode: Yeah. And today, my Amazon business is going well, and it’s totally managed by my AI agents.
Damon Day: Oh, yeah.
Steve Rhode: And here’s the thing, I’m not doing a video, and I’m not telling anybody about how I achieved this success, because I’m not going to be one of those guys that can’t do it but sells a course. Yeah. No, I’m just doing it.
Damon Day: And I was along for that ride for Steve, and it was complicated as hell. You have to have a specific personality, and most people that try to start—don’t go see a guru on, you know, TikTok about how it’s easy. Remember that guy riding a skateboard and just ditches the coffee? It, you know, Amazon FBA is not easy. It’s hard. Ninety-five, ninety-eight percent of people that try to do that business will lose money and fail and get pissed off. That is not an easy business to do. But I had a front row seat to watch the evolution of Steve doing this, because we’re talking about AI now, where when he started, this is how fast this freaking AI is moving. We weren’t using AI when you started, really.
No. There was a little bit kind of here and there. There was no Claude. There was no ChatGPT.
Damon Day: This was three years ago. I mean, we’re not talking, you know, back in my day. We’re talking about three years ago. And so I watched that evolution of Steve, how much time, effort, and energy he had to pour into some extremely boring crap. And when he’s talking about spreadsheets, yeah, lots of spreadsheets. Yeah. And to where now, AI runs most of it.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, almost all of it.
Damon Day: Three years later. I mean, it’s just AI doing all of this stuff in just the span of three years. And we were talking about, so that Penny Stupid project, you see, oh yeah, he’s got videos, he’s doing really good, I’m trying to get monetized, and then bam, six months, not a single video. You know, and then you’ll see a cluster again a month or two, lots of videos, I get motivated again, and then bam, no videos. And that’s because editing video is a time-consuming, tedious task that I just, I wouldn’t have time for and I’d lose the motivation because there’s no money coming in right away. It’s a tough side hustle, right?
Yeah. Anybody wants to start a YouTube channel because they need to get out of debt, no, don’t do that. It’s going to take you a long time before you ever see money. Most fail. Most fail.
Damon Day: And that’s what Steve was talking about. About like the gig driving, it’s money. You can go out, do something, and have money in your bank account tonight, right, if you need money right now. But my whole point is now all of a sudden with the ChatGPT and Claude, it’s gotten to the point now where I can go out and drive, I turn on my phone camera, put it mounted up, and I just talk to the camera when I’m driving and teach people what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. I get home, I get onto ChatGPT, and I have prompts already all done, and I basically just tell ChatGPT, Hey, utilize the template that we developed for the Penny Stupid Project. Here’s the raw footage in this folder. Make a great video out of it and have it available for me to preview and a thumbnail, and have it ready for me to approve and preview when I wake up. And then I go to bed. I wake up and my video’s done. And I’m like, or I might have some corrections. I tell it, Do this, do this. I don’t like that. Change that. Changes all that, and then I go, Great, make a thumbnail for it so it’s engaging. Create a couple of shorts out of that, and then go post it to the YouTube and the Facebook channel. And it does it all. Views and clicks and subscribers. And it does it all. But like Steve was talking about, if I had to hire somebody just three years ago and said, Hey, look, I’m going to give you every night an hour or two of raw footage, maybe three hours, and I need you to go through that, come up with a story arc based on that raw footage, figure something out, something interesting based on my personality and what I’m— and narrow it down to 20 minutes and make the thumbnail and upload this, I would have had to pay for a halfway decent editor. It would have been four or five hundred bucks per video. And now we’re talking about I’m getting one of these videos every single day, and I could do more actually, but—
Steve Rhode: Twenty videos a month.
Damon Day: We’re talking $10,000 for that service, if I was just going to pay an editor for that. $10,000. I pay ChatGPT a hundred bucks a month, and it handles all of that plus a whole bunch of other stuff, because every day I get more and more. I’m still fighting that. Like, I go to Google and I Google something, but now even Google’s got their own Gemini AI built in, so I’m still getting the AI. But now I’m finally coming around to the point where I, you know, old habits are hard to break, right? Because that’s what I’ve always done, just go to Google and find the answer. Now I just go to Chat. It’s on my phone, and I just ask Chat, and I get the exact answer I’m looking for immediately. And that’s all included in the $100 a month. That’s in addition to the editor I get. And Steve, you use AI even way more than I do. I don’t know if you ever thought about this, but if you had to ballpark how much it would cost you to have assistants and employees to handle all of the tasks right now, because Steve’s got multiple projects going. He had to get a new subscription to AI because he was maxing out his stuff, so he’d be a good— But Steve, when you talk about the one-person business, ten grand a month?
No, you’d be paying more than that. I’d be paying ten grand a month just for my videos. Oh, okay. Five.
Damon Day: If you had to have, like, everything that these things—even the research, because how much research do they do for you on the sites and all that stuff, and your podcast and everything? So I said, I put you on the spot because I know you haven’t really thought about it. But if all that stuff was done for you by a human, by a qualified human mind, not just some guy that’s—
Five AI Fact-Checkers and What a One-Person Business Can Do Now
Steve Rhode: Yeah, let me give you an example. So when I do—when I finish one article, okay, all the research has been done for me to begin with, and then I put the article together, and then when it’s done— I have five different AI agents that each go out and independently fact-check the article to make sure everything is 100% accurate. So, I mean, I couldn’t hire five fact-checkers to go out and do it in, you know. The reason I use five is because they can operate simultaneously, and so within 20 minutes, I can have all the fact-checking done. And these articles just would never get written, you know. Like, for example, let me give you a good example. Somebody, what do you do if you have multiple wage garnishments? Got it. Debt collector calling your family? Got it. I got the full Bible on how to deal with those things, and that’s thanks to AI.
Damon Day: Yeah, and we’re talking tens of thousands a month a couple of years ago. A, you wouldn’t be able to pay it because the return wouldn’t be there to do all this stuff. So you have that aspect of it. And then you look at he wouldn’t be able to be as productive without—even if he was hiring people. You know, Steve and five people helping him out that he hired would not be able to do, you know, 75% of the stuff he’s able to put out now between all the different podcasts and the videos and the articles and the research and the different projects. He just kind of flippantly threw out, I started the Get Red Stuff business a couple months ago. We were talking one day and he told me, and I was like, Wait, what? He’s like, Oh yeah, just got an idea, and all of a sudden he’s, you know, up and running with it, got a website up, just cranking it, making sales. And I was like, like he went from idea to sale in like, what, a couple of weeks?
Steve Rhode: Yeah, and now sells on Walmart and Amazon and my site and—
Damon Day: Yeah. So that would have taken just so much time before. And most people would probably have started a business and then just diverted along the way because it’s just so many decisions and things you have to research. Yeah. But the point is, AI is coming. It’s coming—well, it’s not coming, it’s here, and it’s fast. And it’s going to rapidly change everything. And, you know, you hear that a lot, right? And I was saying, yeah, okay, whatever. And now that I’m seeing what I’m just—just what I’m doing with these videos and stuff, it’s blowing my mind every day. And that’s why that cybercab idea is so fascinating to me, because people are worried about losing their jobs and things like that. It’s like, yeah, but, you know, industries have changed, technology has changed throughout human history, right? And that just happens. So you just got to kind of get out—just get out ahead of it and be like, okay, yeah, there’s going to be some people that AI is going to take over, but AI is also creating a lot of opportunity. A lot of opportunity. So you just got to say, okay, where is that opportunity? And that’s why the cybercab business. Okay, instead of me going out and driving for Uber, I can buy a cybercab potentially for $30,000 and have that car pay for itself in a year, two years, three years. I don’t know, I haven’t run the numbers on that. And then why am I out there wasting my time driving Uber? My AI car can replace that income for me, while I can then go do something else. And then you can start, well, wait a minute, if one car can do that, what can three cars do? Or whatever. So, but these are opportunities that that opportunity didn’t exist yesterday, still doesn’t exist today, but it’s going to exist tomorrow.
Exactly. So AI is changing things, but it’s not all doom and gloom. You know, Steve, you want to mention that—
Free Tool — Wage Garnishment Calculator: Worried about your paycheck being seized? The free Wage Garnishment Calculator shows exactly how much creditors can legally take in your state — and some states prohibit garnishment entirely. Calculate My Risk →
Universal Basic Income, and Why Everyone Needs a Side Hustle
Steve Rhode: That podcast we saw with Elon, where we both kind of went like, Huh. Well, he’s not the only one that has mentioned it, but, you know, people laugh and joke about universal basic income, and it sounds like, you know, so socialist and everything else. But it’s going to become a reality because if we’re going to keep being consumers and live in a capitalist society, people need to consume. And if everything is getting cheaper and cheaper, you know, we’re entering an age of abundance. The only one lacking thing is how do people have money in order to do all the things? And the answer is the government’s just going to print it. And so there will be universal basic income for people, and things are getting cheaper and cheaper.
Yeah, it’s going to be interesting, but I’m convinced that people need to definitely have a side hustle right now. You can’t count on your employer. I don’t care what industry you’re in. No.
Damon Day: It’s, you know, if you’re, say you’re, you know, you’re an employer like you’re Steve, right, and you’re doing whatever, and all of a sudden you see this opportunity where you can get these AI agents that can replace 50 of your employees and do a better job. Yeah. What are you going to do? You know, you’re a nice guy, you’re loyal to your employees, but you know what your competitors are going to do also.
Steve Rhode: Yeah, I mean, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen because I’ve lived it myself, is you’re going to feel bad. Your employer is going to feel bad and not want to do that because they really care about you, and they’re going to really care about you until they go out of business because everybody else embraced it.
Damon Day: Yeah. So either you’re going to get let go or they’re going to go out of business, in which case you’re not going to have a job either. Right. So. You know, so you got to be able to be prepared for that. And so the best way to prepare for that, I know we keep harping on it, is, A, get the hell out of debt and start making the dollars that you are making now stretch farther so you can invest them and save them, because we don’t know what the future is going to look like. But I can tell you, whatever happens in the future is going to be easier to handle if you have money in the bank, you don’t have any debt, you don’t owe anybody anything, and you got a plan. So, based on math, work on that right now, because, you know, the more money you save now, the better. The easier it’s going to be to make that transition. You don’t know. You could get let go next month and go, Oh my gosh, I’m unemployed. I got a severance for two months, and then then what am I going to do? Start thinking about that now.
Steve Rhode: All right, Damon, on that note, let’s end this week, and we’ll make a point to do one next week.
Damon Day: We’re going to end on the doom and gloom?
Steve Rhode: Well, no, we’re going to end on some witty repartee that you’re going to riff on for three minutes, and then we’re going to leave people in a good mood.
How to Get Started With AI
Damon Day: Actually, you know, we talked about all this stuff, and I’m actually in a good mood because if you learn to embrace it, you see the opportunity. And here’s the thing: if you’re saying to yourself, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get started, get a Claude or a GPT account and go into the desktop agent and just say, Start asking questions. Tell the agent who you are and, you know, what skills you have and what you want to do. It’s not mysterious to learn how to take advantage of AI. You just have to start using it.
Steve Rhode: Yeah. And Chat still has a free account, right?
I don’t know about that. They may have gotten rid of it. I think they did up until recently. Twenty bucks or something.
Damon Day: Yeah, $20 a month. Trust me, you’ll get $20 a month worth of information out of it. My wife discovered it like six months ago, and—oh, here’s a funny story. Yeah, here’s a funny story. So my wife just discovered this thing six months ago. She, like, because she uses one of my computers, and I had the ChatGPT on there, and she just started using it. Now she uses it for everything. But I was out doing my day three of my $500-a-week challenge last night, which crushed it, by the way. I’m not going to give away the ending, but I crushed it last night. 80 bucks in two hours, but hey, whatever.
But don’t give away the ending. No, well, the ending is after 15 days. Don’t give away the ending.
Damon Day: Can I make that $500? I haven’t done it yet. Today’s day number four. Tomorrow’s day number five.
Steve Rhode: So Kathy started with decorating, didn’t she?
Damon Day: Oh yeah, the whole house is ChatGPT now. It’s all—I feel like I live in a Martha Stewart, you know.
Steve Rhode: And you did it with your wardrobe.
Damon Day: Oh yeah. In fact, if you watch Penny Stupid, it’s kind of funny, I was noticing this. If you watch our channel from like a year ago, I was always wearing the same hat, you know, one of two shirts, same sunglasses. And now you start watching my videos, every day I got a different hat on. My glasses match my hat. My Apple Watch band matches my shirt. It’s kind of funny, actually. And that was all because I was finally like, you know what? I should, like, you know, look presentable. I should not Adam Sandler myself every time I go out, you know, basketball shorts and stuff. And so, yeah, I had ChatGPT, like, redo my whole, like, wardrobe and everything. But anyway, so I’m out. I get to the Walmart, and I get this phone call. My son’s car won’t start, and we’ve been having an issue with it. I thought it was the battery last week and took it to O’Reilly, tested the battery. Battery’s good, and the alternator’s good, and so that was fine. And now it won’t start again. This is yesterday. So I finish what I was doing. I come home. And it’s doing some funky stuff. I’m not going to get into all of it, but at first I think it might be the starter now, but then the electrical thing is. And so my wife’s in the garage, and the car’s in the driveway, and I hear her talk, and I don’t understand what she’s saying because I’m in the car. And then I’m looking at it, and then I realize what’s happening is I’m telling her what I’m thinking and what I’m seeing here and, you know, what I think the problem is probably, and I’m going over the stuff, it’s doing this. And she’s repeating everything I’m saying into the ChatGPT chat and then telling me, Oh, this is the problem. I’m like, What are you talking about? And then I finally realize she’s just, you know, putting all this information into ChatGPT to tell me. She goes, Oh, it’s probably a starter solenoid—or not a solenoid, a starter relay. She goes, Yeah, I think it’s a starter relay. And that’s when I clicked in my brain. I’m like, What’d you say? Like, my wife is not a mechanic. I’m like, What do you mean you think it’s a starter relay? And then I see her on her phone. Well, ChatGPT, I told her everything you said was going on, and it’s probably a starter relay. And it probably is. Yeah. So it’s my wife with her phone and my ChatGPT account telling me what’s wrong with my car.
Steve Rhode: Pretty soon Optimus can just come show up and fix it as soon as we say starter relay.
Yeah. God, that Cybercab is fascinating, man. It is fascinating. Follow the channel just for that, because— Penny Stupid Project on YouTube. There is a better-than-outside chance yours truly ends up with a Cybercab when they come out, so we’ll see. That just fascinates me. On that note, I will see ya. Peace.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the only ways to get out of debt?
Steve Rhode puts it as a combination of three things: "Reduce expenses, increase income, or both." Damon Day adds that cutting expenses only goes so far, because sometimes you can't just save your way out of the debt, which is why he tests side hustles on the Penny Stupid Project.
Can you make an extra $2,000 a month with gig apps part-time?
That is what Damon Day is testing. His $500 week challenge limits him to no more than 20 hours and 300 miles, because the point is to see whether someone with a job, a business or a family can work gig apps around their schedule to make an extra $2,000 a month. He says he made over $6,000 his first month knowing nothing about the apps, which he notes was gross, before covering gas, and that by using multiple apps he averages $40 an hour. He says he is not pushing anyone to sign up for gig work.
Should I rely on full-time gig work to pay my bills?
Damon Day says no. He tells gig workers they need a plan and a strategy: gig work is great for side money, but transition out of full-time gig work, keep it part-time, and "Don't rely on it to pay your mortgage or anything like that." He points to the automated taxis already driving in Phoenix as a sign that drivers will get squeezed out.
Is starting a YouTube channel a good way to pay off debt?
Not if you need money now. Damon Day calls his YouTube channel a tough side hustle, and on the show the hosts say it is going to take you a long time before you ever see money and most fail. Damon says gig driving is different: you can go out, do something, and have money in your bank account tonight.
Is selling on Amazon FBA an easy side hustle?
Damon Day says no. He watched Steve Rhode start an Amazon business and calls it complicated: "Amazon FBA is not easy. It's hard." He says ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of people who try that business lose money and fail. Steve says his Amazon business is going well today and is managed by his AI agents, and that he will not sell a course about it.
How much can AI save a small business or side hustle?
Damon Day says editing a daily video would have cost four or five hundred bucks per video three years ago, about $10,000 a month, and that he now pays ChatGPT a hundred bucks a month to edit the videos, make thumbnails and shorts, and post them. Steve Rhode says five different AI agents independently fact-check each of his articles at the same time, so the fact-checking is done within 20 minutes.
Should I buy a Tesla Cybercab as a side business?
Damon Day finds the idea fascinating but has not run the numbers yet. He says Tesla's network for individual owners is not live yet, that he thinks the Cybercab is going to be about 30 grand, and that he plans a Penny Stupid Project series on what it might cost and earn. He says a $30,000 Cybercab could potentially pay for itself in a year, two years or three years, but adds, "I don't know, I haven't run the numbers on that."
How do I start using AI if I don't know where to begin?
Damon Day says to get a Claude or a GPT account, go into the desktop agent, tell it who you are, what skills you have and what you want to do, and start asking questions. "It's not mysterious to learn how to take advantage of AI. You just have to start using it." He says a paid ChatGPT plan is about $20 a month and that you will get $20 a month worth of information out of it.
