☀️ The Raw Truth — "I am so defeated right now"

THE WATER COOLER The Big Three

#1: Families Still Splurging on Mom Despite Rising Prices

Even with gas prices climbing and grocery bills squeezing household budgets, Americans are still showing up for Mother's Day brunch and flowers. Restaurants are reporting one of their biggest days of the year.

#2: Spirit Airlines Is Gone and Its Planes Are Being Sold Off

Spirit Airlines has officially shut down and stopped flying, leaving over 90 planes grounded at airports across the country. Those planes are now being returned to lenders or sold off to recover whatever cash is left.

#3: Some Companies Are Getting Rich Off the Iran War

While families around the world are dealing with the fear and fallout of the conflict involving Iran, certain defense and energy companies are posting massive profits and watching their stock prices surge. War, for some businesses, is very good for the bottom line.

TRACKING YOUR S&P 500 INDEX FUND The Ownership 10

Your 401k S&P 500 index fund — whether you know it as VOO, FXAIX, or the Vanguard Institutional 500 Index Trust — owns all 500 of these companies. When they win, you win.

The Heavy Hitters — Working Hard for You Today:

The Benchwarmers — Having a Tough Day (But Still on Your Team):

Takeaway: Five companies are winning today. Five are hurting. Your index fund holds all 500. You never have to pick the right one. You just have to stay in. That is the whole game.

YOUR MONEY The Household Dashboard

YOUR RETIREMENT The Scoreboard: Daily vs. The Long Game

The TV wants you to panic about the red dot on the left. The green numbers on the right are your real story. Stay in.

The Mailbag

"Hey Rock. I am so defeated right now. My husband and I finally got the raises we’ve been grinding for over the last two years. We were so excited to finally have some margin to throw at our debt snowball and start making real progress on the 'Money Glow Up.' But the exact same month the raises hit our paychecks, our auto insurance renewed 30% higher, our property taxes spiked, and our electric bill and grocery costs are just through the roof. We got a $600 a month increase in our income, but our monthly expenses just went up $750. We are literally poorer after getting a raise. How do we stay motivated when it feels like the cost of living in America is completely rigged against us? We are exhausted." — Becky, Alexandria, VA

Becky, I hear you. You did everything right. You ground it out for two years, you earned those raises, and then life just walked right up and slapped the celebration out of your hands. That is not weakness. That is not failure. That is just genuinely, brutally hard — and you are allowed to feel the weight of it before you pick the next thing back up.
What you are experiencing right now is the reality for 80% of Americans living on the financial treadmill. According to the data right now in 2026, a record 55% of Americans say their finances are getting worse, even with a surging stock market, entirely because the cost of living is eating every extra dime they make.
The system is built to keep you on the treadmill. But we do not use the system's unfairness as an excuse to stay broke. Here is how you fight back:
Stop Waiting for the Math to Be Easy: The biggest trap you can fall into right now is waiting for prices to "go back to normal" before you attack your goals. Inflation is the thief of margin. If you wait for the economy to give you breathing room, you will be waiting forever. You have to manufacture your own margin.
Income Alone Will Not Save You: Your story is the perfect example of why just "making more money" doesn't fix a broken financial foundation. When your income goes up, the world will always find a way to take it. The only way to win is to get absolutely ruthless with your outgo.
The Snowball is Your Only Shield: The reason you feel so squeezed by a $750 increase in living expenses is that your income is spoken for by your past decisions (your debt). If you were totally debt-free and didn't have those massive monthly payments dragging you down, an increase in property taxes or groceries would be annoying, but it wouldn't be crushing.

Here's what you need to do
Get Mad, Not Defeated: Take that exhaustion and turn it into anger at the debt that is stealing your options.
Scrutinize Everythging: Do not just accept a 30% hike in auto insurance. Shop it immediately. Fight the property tax assessment. Find another $150 in the budget to cut to make up the difference.
Attack the Debt Harder: You must eliminate a debt payment as fast as humanly possible to create the monthly cash flow the economy refuses to give you.
Do not let the cost of living shake you out of your seat. Stay the course, fam. Keep attacking. You are closer to the chainless path than you think. The snowball is not dead, it just needs a new number to roll on. 💪

Send questions to [email protected]

THE MILLIONAIRE MANUAL Cosigning — The Favor That Can Wreck Your Future

Somebody you love looked you in the eyes and asked you to cosign a loan, and you felt like saying no would make you a bad person. I get it — that guilt is real and it hits hard.

Here is what the bank already knows and is not telling you: when you cosign, that debt is yours. Not half yours. All yours. If your cousin misses three payments, your credit score takes the hit, not just his. And that loan shows up on your debt-to-income ratio, which means when you go to buy a house or finance something you actually need, the bank sees that payment as your obligation — even if you have never touched the money. One missed payment from someone else can cost you a loan approval, a better interest rate, or months of progress you worked like crazy to build.

The Move: Tonight, pull up your free credit report at annualcreditredit.com and look at whether any cosigned accounts are already sitting on your report — you might be surprised what is there. If you have already cosigned something and the other person is paying on time, have an honest conversation now about refinancing that loan into their name alone as soon as their credit allows it — set a hard deadline, like six months. If someone is asking you to cosign right now, the kindest thing you can do is say no and offer something real instead: help them build their credit with a secured card, sit with them and look at their budget, or point them toward a credit union that works with thin credit files. If the relationship cannot survive a no, that tells you something important. The one step you can take in the next 24 hours is this: text or call the person who asked and say 'I love you, I cannot cosign, but let me help you find another way' — that is a full sentence and it is enough.

Protecting your financial future is not selfish — it is the only way you stay in a position to help anyone at all.

BACKPAGE The Wacky Corner

In 1997, two giant companies — HFS Incorporated and CUC International — merged to form Cendant Corporation, a conglomerate that owned hotel brands, real estate franchises, and car rental chains all under one roof. The idea was that bigger automatically meant better, and Wall Street cheered like it was New Year's Eve. Then in April 1998, auditors discovered that CUC executives had been cooking the books for years, inflating earnings by roughly $500 million to make the company look more profitable than it ever was. Cendant's stock lost about $14 billion in value in a single day — one of the largest single-day market cap wipeouts in American history up to that point. The CEO who orchestrated the merger, Henry Silverman, had essentially bought a hollow box dressed up in a tuxedo.

Lesson: Lesson: A big flashy deal is not a business — slow, boring, and honest beats fast, loud, and fake every single time.

🇺🇸 To every lineworker climbing a 60-foot pole in the rain at 2 a.m. so your family wakes up to the lights on — we see you, and the paycheck never tells the whole story.

Love y'all. Attack that debt. Keep those contributions running. The plan does not change.

See you on the road. — Rock (Craig)