BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 103: Budgets Really ARE Sexy! with J. Money

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

J Money wasn’t necessarily BAD with money, but his first home purchase - made because everyone else was doing it - prompted him to seek out advice about money. He stumbled upon the blogging world and was enthralled with the transparency. Here were real people talking about real issues they were facing - similar to what he was going through himself. He started his own blog called BudgetsAreSexy, and soon was approached by someone who wanted to buy an ad on the site. A new source of income generation! His blog success brought attention from national news sites, and traffic grew exponentially once they started sharing his articles. But as traffic grew, so did his time commitment.  As he became more entrenched in the blogging space, he discovered that people buy and sell blogs - so he started flipping web sites. Another source of income generation. When it came time to choose between his full time job and his side hustle, he discovered the decision was made for him when he was called into his manager’s office and let go. (The company later went out of business.) Thrust into entrepreneurship, J buckled down with his spending, and discovered that Budgets really ARE sexy, and they can be the key to your financial success. Topics: J's journey with money How he came across blogging world What his biggest financial regret is Building income on buying blogs Where he got his blog name "Budgets Are Sexy" How he handle his personal financial position The moment he created his budget The 'no spend month' challenge Talking about his net worth How important time for him is What his wife doing for work His plan for the future His advice on starting a blog The biggest help to fix his finances The reason why he was called as Miley Cyrus of finances And SO much more! Links: 70+ Ways to Make Money on The Side - Budgets are Sexy Do You Know Your Insurability? - Budgets are Sexy Reddit BiggerPockets Money Podcast 100: From Financial Disaster to Real Estate Master with Brandon Turner BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast BiggerPockets Forums Blogger.com Listen Money Matters BiggerPockets Money Podcast 45: The Truth About Entrepreneurship with Matt Giovanisci Profiles: Budgets are Sexy Rockstar Finance J. MONEY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 103, where we interview Jay Money for Budgets Are Sexy, and we get his story of financial independence. Just being conscious of what you're doing. And same with their money, right? Like, why am I spending my money? Like, am I glad this money's going to this spot? You know, it's a really simple question. Everyone knows how to save. It's not that complicated or hard. It's just hard to do it. It's hard to not spend when you want to spend. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my amazing co-host, Scott Trench. Scott and I are here to show you that wherever you are in your journey, you can begin rapidly moving towards a position of financial freedom,

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Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leaner Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parents, the Anxious Generation for parenting perspective and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth.

Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30 day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Jay Money from Budgets Are Sexy. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to have you on the show. It has been quite the ordeal lining up our schedules, but I'm so glad

it finally worked out. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Yay. Thank you. Feels good to be here. I enjoy being on the side of the podcast, first your side. So I commend you guys. Well, so we want to know where your money story begins, but I want to, I want to, I want to first start off and say, have you been blogging since 2008? Yeah, I'm an old man. It's literally almost a fourth of my life, 11 years. Isn't that crazy? Wow, you're 44? I'm 39, but I feel like I'm 40 something. So yes. I said almost. That's a big difference. Okay, so yeah, 40 is a big hurdle. Oh, spoiler alert. Hangovers after 40?

So much worse. Drink all you can right now. Okay. That's probably not the best financial advice ever. I thought I was hangars after 28. 28. Yeah. Also, Scott, wait until you hit 30.

Jay, where does your story with money begin? Well, the part that's the biggest change and what kind of snapping into reality was, buying a home at the peak of the market in 2007, actually, which prompted the blog. You know, I didn't put no money down. I didn't have a budget. I've never been good with money. I was never bad. I was kind of even road.

I was just like breaking even all the time. And I bought a house because all my friends were doing it, which is the wrong reason to buy a house. And I realized I needed to learn. And I just Googled how to budget or something like that. And I came across the blogging world, which was so transparent and people showing, hey, here's my net worth, here's my savings, here's my debt, like regular people talking about regular stuff.

I loved it. I just connected. I said, I'm going to start my own blog. It's going to be fun. And I try to be funny and share my story. And really, from documenting it every day for almost 11 years straight, really forced me to be better with money and enjoy money. And that's where it kind of all began.

Awesome. So what was the kind of circumstances leading up to your home purchase? What were you doing? We kind of got a very high-level picture from it. But could you be more specific and tell us what you were earning, what you were saving? Yeah. So I was probably earning at that time around 45 or 50.

$50,000. I was a customer service director. I just met a girl who I proposed to. We were engaged. We're looking to get married. And we actually went to look for a one or two bedroom apartment to rent. I'm a big fan of renting. I really enjoy it. And we actually was looking for a certain place and got lost and turned down the wrong street and found this like amazing, like dream home for us at that age. It was on a lake. It was beautiful. And of course, there was the sign. I call me up if you're interested in this house. So we totally did just for fun just to see what happened. And, you know, 48 hours later, we signed away our, you know, the biggest purchase of our lives, kind of just on a whim, really. And again, you know, because all of our friends at that time were doing it. And so that's really

kind of what led us there. It was totally accidental, really. What impact did this have on your financial position in the months or years following it? Yeah. So interestingly, like our salaries combined. I forget what my wife's was at the time. It was probably around 30 or 40. Like, we could afford the payments, we weren't going to be going into debt with it, but I had no idea of the upkeep or the maintenance or the psychological effect it would have. I didn't really know anything, but because I got into money and stumbled across the financial blog scene, like, I was really focused in and I started paying attention to everything, like super fast. So it actually, even though for me, it's kind of like my biggest financial regret, it really opened up my

eyes to what's possible and the reasons why you do stuff and don't. But I ended up selling that house about seven or eight years later. We rented out for a few years and then we sold it. And I think we ended up even having to come to the table with like 15 or 20 grand. So it was a big loss financially for us. But it also catapulted our wealth because we started paying attention, if that makes sense. Wow. But yeah, I know I think this is an awesome starting point on the money journey here. So what were your expenses for living prior to buying the house and what were they following the purchase? Do you have, do you have an issue of that? Oh, yeah, that's a good question. I have it on my blog somewhere.

But yeah, it was probably, I mean, we were probably spending around $2,000 a month at the time. And we were in our late 20s. We were going to bars and stuff and didn't have kids or anything at that point. And then probably, I remember our mortgage starting out at around like $2,200. and this was right outside the Washington, D.C. area. And then it kind of dropped, I think, because like everything was based on interest rates and they were going lower. And I think we were paying like $16 to $1,700 a month just on the house. So I would say it probably upped our expenses by maybe $1,000 a month,

which at the time, because of our lower salaries, was a huge impact lifestyle-wise. And then whenever stuff would break and all that good stuff, which your crowd knows about. I think this is fascinating. This is a concept that I think a lot of people, people don't understand when they purchase a home for the first time is, I mean, I imagine that since you were saying you're basically break-even at the time that you purchased the home,

when you incur an extra thousand dollars in effective monthly expenses to upkeep your house, that's got to have a major impact on your social life, right? I think the term is house poor for many people. Were you experiencing some of that? Yeah, you're starting to bring back a little memories now. Yeah, I'm kind of stored them on the side. Yeah, I mean, I told her, remember not going out partying as much or trying to convince people to come to my house now and have drinks there and stuff. And again, because it was in our journey of opening up our eyes to finances, I started reading blogs. And once I started my blog and even that, I didn't realize would turn into my career and change my life. That started bringing in some income and I started

side hustling with other things. And so I think that kind of quickly rebalanced me. And then we started earning more because we started making all these changes in our life. But yeah, those first few months, I was, I was pretty shocked. I didn't really think that went through all the way. Awesome. So maybe could you kind of walk us through that journey of the next couple of months of how you were able to earn more money and start building things back up? Yeah. So mainly I started the blog and after a few months it started to really take off. I started getting readers. I didn't really know you could make money online or anything and then, you know, advertisers or email, hey, can we put an ad, you know, in your sidebar.

And sidebars were really, you know, important back then. I thought, oh, this is cool. Yeah, I'm doing this for free. I mean, I quickly found out that the more traffic you get, you know, the more money you can make. And I've never over monetized it to the point of, I guess, that I personally don't like, that kind of kills the community. But I did enough to bring home extra money.

And then I kind of accidentally stumbled. Once I realized you can make money online, I found out that other blogs, you know, obviously made money. and people would be done with blogging after a certain time. So they're like, hey, like, would you want to buy my blog? And I thought, man, you can buy a blog. Like, I've never been heard of that. It's just so crazy, you know.

And one thing led to another, I started buying blogs and expanding my advertising network footprint online. I mean, that kind of really snowballed stuff. And, you know, then from there you can do freelance writing, you know, all that kind of good stuff. So could you walk us through the first one of these, you know, How does someone begin going after that concept of buying blogs or building income in that manner? Yeah. So back then, I don't think there was really a place. Like, I don't, like, Flipa wasn't around or if it was, I didn't know about it.

There's some websites that you can buy sites and blogs for sale. But really, it was really about knowing, like knowing people and tapping your network. Once people found out that I was buying blogs, I got emailed all the time. And I just kind of let it know, like, hey, if you ever want to sell your blog, you know, I'd be interested kind of thing. And with everything is who you knew, how long you were doing it for. And so over the years, I've kind of built up my own email list. Like right now, if anyone wanted, I don't buy blogs anymore, but I help people broker them. Or I show them how, you know, what to watch for, what kind of value stuff.

And so people even now could email and I shoot out a message to everyone, hey, here's a blog for sale, here's some stats on it. And it runs similar to other businesses out there, the general stuff. You know, but it was all about networking, to be honest with you. Oh, okay. Got it. So about buying a blog, I guess how do you value a blog? Let's say I want to buy, budgets are sexy. And I know you just sold it so I can't.

I did. That's a good example. I want to buy your blog. Do I reach out to you personally? Do I look at, like, how do I value that? It's just a website. Yeah. So it's like other businesses.

They're valued on a number of things, you know, number one being how much the site is making. And usually there's like a general rule of thumb, at least from everything that I've seen. That's about two to three times your yearly profit of your blog or your site is what they could generally sell for. If the content's crappier, you got lucky, or there's like a big ad deal that kind of skewed it,

you know, you lower it if the content is high. Like my blog, like I said, I've always monetized just to have a nice lifestyle business out of it, but the potential is huge to do more if you wanted to. So potential factors in, community factors in, whether the person's going to stay on. Like, I still blog there every day. It'll change if I were to leave the blog. What happens is the community go away?

Do they stay on? Does that affect negatively, positively, the blog? So all these kind of factors in. But, you know, the valuation of what a site brings home every year is important. And their sites that will sell for $1,000. I think I used to buy and sell some for $3,000 or $400, up to $20,000, $25,000. And then mine, I'm not allowed to say how much technically I got for it because it's in my NDA or whatever legal stuff. But it was in the low to mid six figures. And then there's some

other bloggers in our space that, you know, people have seen that sold for one to three million dollars. So really ranges. And it depends on how it's set up and, you know, traffic and all that good stuff. Okay. So let's say a general basic rule of thumb is two to three times what they're bringing in initially to get the... Yeah, as a starting base. Yep, yep, exactly. Yeah, and you would just email, I mean, honestly, the best ways if you find a site that you love or like, oh, I love that site, I think I could take it over or improve it. Yeah, just there's a wild wild west with this stuff online.

There's no rules or anything. You just email them right up or email 10 different ones and just start talking. And I'll tell you, everyone loves thinking about the idea of selling their site. So even if they didn't do it, they will respond to your email, you know, because it's exciting as a creator to have someone that wants to, you know, buy or say that's an exciting thing. It's flattering. I think that if you have a blog and somebody offers to buy it, that's a nice thing to hear. But you don't always have to sell it. Yeah, no. Yeah. So your blog is called Budgets are Sexy. I want to know where you got that name. Did you create it all by yourself or did you buy it into this blog?

No, no, no, no. Okay. And I'm someone so, like I like building and communities. always first for me versus the, again, the money and everything was kind of secondary and accidental. So I built it from scratch. I wanted to be more productive with my time. I had a couple hours at work that I was found myself on like I am in my space before Facebook was really, you know, Facebook. And I thought it's got to be a better way to be productive. I'm reading all these blogs. Let's just start one. Just in Timberlakes, I'm bringing sexy back was hot on the radio. And I thought, oh, yeah, I'm going to bring sexy into like this space, right? Because at the time, There's a lot of good informational finance bloggers,

but there wasn't many like feisty, fun, young. I mean, I want to talk about beer and partying and saving money and just stuff more like a normal person, right? And I don't have any background, by the way, in finance or in online publishing, like none of that stuff. I just, you know, went to blogger.com at the time, found a name, budgets are sexy that I wanted. I like the contrast of it.

Budgets to me gives you confidence and sexy's confidence. so that's kind of how they're connected. I just did my best. Like I didn't spell check. I didn't really think things through. I would write on a topic and I'd end on a totally different topic. You can go through my old archives. They're all there and they're really, you know, they're pretty crappy, you know, to be

honest with you. But it was like a real person talking about real money, you know? And I had, and I think the turning point of when it really launched is I'd have places like MSN money for some of these bigger sites that were like, we like your stuff, but you don't capitalize, you create. curse all the time. Like, we want to reshare it and send you traffic, but we can't, you know? And I remember like, you know, F that, I'm doing it my way. Like, I don't care, right? Because again, it was just purely for me and for fun. And I wanted to better my own money, you know, but something clicked. I was like,

well, can you still have your quote voice? Can you still do what you want to do? But if you change one or two things, you stop cursing and you actually like pay attention to grammar, like, that can catapult your business or your site, right? And so I made that change. was a conscious one. And as soon as I did that, they started taking it and sharing it. And that really kind of jump started, like my traffic multiplied by three or four, like overnight, you know, and that really. So I got more people coming to read it just because I agreed to tweak it a little bit, right? You know, but with all small businesses, you have to decide, like, what is the main reason for this? Is it personal? Is it business? Because they're two

different things at times, you know. What did the kind of profile of income look like over the first couple of months and years while you were doing this? Like was it, was it a linear growth? It grew consistently or was it kind of exponential where it grew later on? Yeah, I wouldn't say the first few months. I say it took me about six months to make anything. Then I started making like $50 to $100 a month probably for maybe half a year. Then I think it went, I think by the end of the first year of actually making money,

so through the first 18 months, I think I was making about $1,500 a month extra. And then when I started buying sites, that was, you know, because I can get one advertiser in and then use that one and advertise across three or four at the same time. And I'd give them a discount. Hey, advertise across my whole empire. You know, you get a break. I get, you know, more more money. And so then it would, I think at the peak of bringing home money after about three or four years, I want to say it was around $5,000 or $6,000 in profit a month, which at that stage of my life, my late 20s, early 30s, you know, was a big chunk of money. And then I would reinvested, and that's a whole other how I built, you know, to be over a million dollars,

was investing it. And even monetization then versus now, like display ads, ads, cents, all this stuff was big. That's not as big now. You know, so over the years, the money have come from different spots. And there's certain things that I had to decide to, like back then, like, paid links, sponsored links was super popular, which Google hated. And if they saw you selling links on your site, like they would ban you from Google, which is obviously big. And so there's, There's times where you had to decide whether you're going to accept that or not and how that affects your community and your income. And so, you know, you do that as times change over the years. Okay. So you buy this house in 2007, right? And shortly thereafter, you start this blog.

And it doesn't make any money in a meaningful sense until six months to a year later, where you start making a couple hundred to a thousand bucks a month. How are you handling your personal financial position overall through that time? Are you working the full-time job? Are you starting to apply principles? Like what are those changes look like? So, yeah, the first year and a half to two years, basically once the blog started taking off, I started spending from a half an hour a day to four or five hours a day, because it was email or comments or content, whatever it was, monetization, advertising. So I basically had my full-time job.

And then on top of that, I had another four or five hours a day, including weekends. And so at one point, you know, my wife looked at me about a year in, you're going to have to do blogging. You have to make a decision. Like, you're just like hustling. You don't really have a social life. You know, which one are you going to choose? And I was like, well, there's no way in hell I can stop the blogging.

I mean, that's so exciting, right? And I've never been an entrepreneur. I didn't know what that felt like. And I thought, well, if I had to choose one right now, it would be, you know, blogging. And she said, well, you have to, you know, at some point, quit your job and go for it. And I decide, all right, I'm going to do it. The day I went to do it was right before Christmas.

I actually got called into the office and I got fired on that same. on that same day. Before, I actually went in and said, hey, can I talk to you guys? And they said, we need to talk to you first. And they fired me. And I said, all right, I'm a full-time blogger. Kind of made the decision right then and there. That's great. Did they give you severance? Yeah, no. So the company I came to found out was losing money. They'd ever even paid me my last months of salary. No severance. It was a big, it was a big hoopla. And I blogged about on and off. But that was really a jumpstart. And then, and so. What year is that? Yeah. So that's the end of 2010, I want to say.

Okay, Grace, you started the blog in 2007. This is two and a half years later. Yeah, maybe it's 2009. Somewhere around there. Yeah, it wasn't that far much farther when I started the blog. But two things. One, when I started bringing the income from the blog, I realized that I had extra.

And everything I read was like, max out your 401K, max out your 401K. And the company I was working with at the time had this ridiculous matching, 100% matching of 100% you put in up to the legal limit and it invests right away and you can put it in whenever you wanted to so literally the first like once i caught on the first three or four months of the year i would just max output my my contribution to four one k was 90 percent and like my take-home paycheck was like two hundred dollars or something

small and i just wanted the 16 000 or whatever 15 000 at the time in there because then i got the match and so that even so when i was working i was funneling all it into four-and-k getting double the money, investing it. And this is when the market had crashed, right? So everything was like on sale in the investing world. I was buying it super cheap. I got fired. I was a full-time blogger. And that's when it really hit me what an entrepreneur is like, because A, I lost the whole income. It was all extra. And now I had to rely on that money and I wasn't saving anymore. And I had to pay extra taxes and all this stuff. And so that I kind of started back again to like saving and stuff because I had to, I didn't have all the extra money coming in and it felt like starting over with my

financial growth, if that makes sense. Oh my God. You got a 100% match of what you're putting in. And what was the limit? Like you said 15,000. So you could put in 15,000 and they put in, they matched another 15,000 that vested instantly. Instantly, yes. Well, first of all, no wonder they were going out of business or bankrupt or whatever. Yeah, that was the cause of it. They were bad managing money. Correct. Yeah. Awesome for you that you read it and figured it out. Yeah. And I was only one of maybe two or three people. Like literally everyone's like, it's not worth it. I have this. I have that. I'm like, you're getting, you can double your money, cash out, take the taxes and still come up with like 50% more money. But everyone was like, nope, nope, can't afford it. Paycheck to paycheck. Oh my God. That's so obviously you were married at this time and you're

you lived off of your wife's salary. I did a similar thing, although I didn't have that sweet 100% match. I think I had an exact opposite match, 0%. So, but I still would max it out at the beginning of the year just to, you know, grow it the whole time. And I remember my HR person was very confused by that. I have a question. In the period, I'm trying to get this conceptually figured out, because there's a point in time at which you kind of aggressively began pursuing basic money management. And it sounds like it's in the conjunction with starting this blog. Prior to buying your house, were you doing this full-on matching? No, I had, I think, 5%, whatever. My dad always said, you know, the one thing you do, put money in your 401k. And so I just had like 3% or 5, whatever the average

people put in. And then once I kind of caught on and read over and over again from the financial world, it's really when I started ramping it up. So perfect. So you have your basically break even on your household spending going into buying this house. You buy the house, you assume these extra expenses $1,000-ish a month, and you start blogging, but you're not earning really that much income for that blog in the first year or so. What changes about your lifestyle or your situation? How do you cash flow that situation from that point? Yeah, that's a great question. So a couple of things. One, I started spending less because I started getting afraid. And I might have had a few thousand in savings. I can't remember. It was never more than a few thousand. So I remember feeling somewhat

safe, but I was on the border of safe. And so I started, especially once I started reading blogs, I started doing things like one of the first things I did to cut expenses. Like, I needed to figure out where all my money was going because they didn't know. I didn't even have a budget. I didn't, I didn't really know. So A, I started literally tracking every single dollar and penny that I spent in a spreadsheet. I just created a budget. Yeah, I created a budget. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I failed in month two of budgeting. My first got it. And then what really kind of like psychologically changed me,

someone, some blogger was talking about a no spend month. Like, oh, go a month. You're not allowed to spend any money except for like food and like, you know, the bills. So I did it. And I remember I think, oh, this is going to be so easy. And like it was the first week was like the hardest of my financial life. Because you don't realize how, like, all the habits. You don't realize how you spend your money until you stop and like consciously think about it.

and I found out I was driving to like the mall when I got bored and just to go shopping. Like I would spend two or three hundred a month. I'm just like clothes and whatever. I just did it. Like that was my way to have fun during the day like before like the bars open. Right. And then the bars is a whole other story, right? No, I'm laughing because I've met you in real life.

And you better be nice. I'm, it comes from a place of love, but your clothes do not look. brand new. That's right. But I got into minimalism and so yeah, now I don't have the same number of outfits that I've worn for six years straight. You had a post or a tweet or something where you were so proud of the fact that you sewed up this huge hole in your jeans. My ripped jeans. Yes. And then I saw you at FinCun not too long ago and I'm like, oh, still got those jeans. Yeah, probably with like five more patches on it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the no spend month and then reading Minutes. Animalism blogs really like change my shopping habits and just what I thought was important.

I stopped spending on stupid stuff and I started to save it or spend it on stuff that I cared about, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And when did that occur relative to this time period? So the No Shopping Band started right around when I started my blog in 2008. So I started like doing what everyone else was talking about in the blogging. Like I was kind of like the guinea pig for what the bloggers were talking about. So if someone said do a no spend month, I would do it. If like, oh, track your spending, I would do it. I just started doing all these things I kept reading about.

And then it would snowball into another challenge or another, you know. So basically I started spending less because I started paying attention, which alleviated that difference from renting to owning a home. You know, and then by the time the blog started making money, it helped, you know, top us over the other way, the good way. Awesome. What was the monthly kind of outflow before? and after these exercises, give or take?

Well, I know the no spend one is I calculated that I was saving about 250 a month. Like, I realized that's what I was spending. And so every month forward, I would save, quote, $250. I started selling stuff around, like, I'd go around my house looking for things to sell. Like, I did this thing a few years later, but I started then to something called Challenge Everything, where I went through all my bills, everything I was doing and trying to cut back on stuff. So, example, like I had an iPhone. I was spending $150 a month from mine and wife.

I switched to Android on public wireless and got down to like $40 or $50 a month. So I started going through like, what can I do to like have my best lifestyle, but like just do it cheaper, right? And surprise, there's a lot of alternatives to everything out there that pretty much gets you 80% of what you want, you know, for half the cost or less. Okay, I read that article and that was eye opening. And I feel kind of stupid saying that because like I'm in this space. I've been in this space only since 2013, not since 2008, so I'm a relative movie.

I remember when you guys came on. Yeah. I've been in this space and, you know, when I read that blog, I'm like, oh my God, I can question my auto insurance. That was the big one. And like, I think literally the next day I was listening to Clark Howard on the way home from work and somebody had called in and they said, yes, I've been with, you know, X insurance company forever. And I noticed that they upped my rates and it was really high. I called another insurance company and they were like a quarter of what X was charging me. So I called X to cancel.

And they're like, oh, well, we'll match it. He's like, why didn't you match it in the first place? So they don't value loyalty. So you should not give them loyalty. Shop all of these things. But the insurance was such a big chunk of money that you can just renegotiate every year by going to another company. Yeah. And literally just calling and asking.

I remember learning that when I forgot when I first credit cards. I don't know what the interest rate was, but I remember being high. And someone saying, just call them and ask them to lower it. I was like, what? You can't do that. I just try it. And I remember calling, I didn't get the first time I'd ask for a manager. And then the manager lowered it for me.

It was like three or four points. But I remember thinking like, that's just crazy. I was like a 10-minute phone call, you know? And you can do that with everything in theory and try it. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But yeah, yeah. And the thing with loyalty, too, is most of us are loyal, but we don't really know why or it's just habit because like the iPhone,

I was spending 150 for probably 10 years or eight years or something. It was just normal. And I remember saying I've written it on my blog when I first started. Like there's no way in hell you'll ever pry this phone from my hands. You know, like it was like everything to me. But then I'm like, well, what does that mean? Like what about it do you care about? I was like, I needed to call text.

I need pictures. I need internet. And then you know, need in quotes here, right? But I need pictures, internet. Like, are there other phones that do this? Like, yeah, like every phone. now, like, does that, you know? And so it's just like, it's like, now, and that was probably the hardest one to do because it's just so annoying to switch phones, transfer all your

contacts, it's just annoying. And so a lot of people don't do it. But that kind of spark, like, what else do I do in my life that like, I just do out of habit and I don't really care? And maybe at the time, like when I got the iPhone, it was important to me, which is fine. I have nothing against iPhones. But over time, we change as people and our values change. And so we have to change our spending and the way we live with it. Or else we're like two different versions of each other merged and they don't really go, you know? Absolutely. So you have all this extra housing expense and you're losing $1,500 a month, not losing.

You're putting that into your 401A to get the match, obviously, as you need to. And so you've got a $2,500 hole to make up. And it sounds like a big portion of it's made up through this. Was there any other income coming in from you or, or, or, you're, your fiance's work? I'd get bonuses from work. My fiancee went, it started going to grad school shortly after, so we lost that income. The blog started taking off, which is a lot more. I would do side things. Like I had a friend that did like events in places and, you know, you can help set up tables and stuff for, you know, 20 bucks an hour or whatever, $15. So I would do like random side jobs like

that. But really, my main one was the blog and then really trying to figure out, thing. Oh, I started, I did freelance writing for fintech companies. Like when mint.com, like they had a blog back in the day, they would hire me to do articles, stuff like that. So there's always ways to make money once I caught on that like the world doesn't operate out of nine to fives all the time. Like that was mind-blown to me. Because again, like I was never an entrepreneur. Like it feels so weird, right? And so it was all accidental. But when you look around everything, like someone built everything around us, you know? And everyone has all these different kinds of jobs and it takes all of us to have this world. But it's really, when you figure that out,

it's really, it changes your mindset and you can start thinking about other ways to make money. This is awesome. I mean, you incur these extra expenses. You get smart about money. You start saving a ton. And then you get super creative and you just hustle it sounds like for a long period of time as an entrepreneur because you love it and this new stuff. That's what I'm picking up. Yeah. And I'll say too, so going back to the different versions of us and, my friend Kate Flanders, who had a book, like the no spend year or something like that, she calls them seasons of your life, which I love. But I know for me, like, I was a proud hustler.

I'd work 20 hours a day for, you know, three or four years. And like, you know, and I'm like, yes, I'm the man. Like, I'm a hustler. You can't beat me. I'm, you know, whatever. And then it dawned on me when I started making it enough, like, there's always that point where, like, more doesn't really affect your life as much. And for me, when my net worth got around $300,000, I'm like, wow, like nothing.

extra, like it doesn't change. It's the same, you know. And so I started re-evaluing again my time, like, why am I spending 20 hours a day? Is that make me happy? Does it make me sad? And then I started having kids. And that changed, you know? And so now I'm at the point where it's more fun to me to work less or work more productively and actually live a life offline. So I'm in this other stage, like the complete opposite now. But money was, I was because of being good with money for 10 years and hustling for so long, now I can make those choices in life, right? Yeah, that's awesome. So when was that inflection point for you, for where you kind of thought, hey, I'm at 300? What year was that? Oh, man, I should have my blog open. So on my blog, I blog every month what my net worth is,

and I just stopped last month when I sold it. So it's 11 years of blog reports. I want to say this was about five years ago, because I was having my second kid. I was really like, wow. And there was a time for two, three years where my network kind of just got flat because my wife was in grad school. I kept pumping out kids. And then I'm like, you know what? I don't want to make a lot of money off my sites, you know, because the ways to do it, I didn't want to do. I thought it made my sites worse. And so I started losing money again. And we had like a savings of around $50,000 or $60,000, maybe even $70,000. And I dwindle it all the way down until like $2,000 until it finally started going up again. My wife got a new job. I started selling off some of my

properties. And so, yeah, I would say properties, are you saying online blogs? Yeah, okay. Yeah, blogs. Yeah. So at one point I owned about eight or nine sites at the same time. Budgets has always been the only one I've created from scratch. And I write and market. The others were kind of just side blogs, I guess. And I didn't write. I hired people to write for it. They're like a little separate mini businesses. And so I sold off all the sites. I condensed my time. And then just two years ago, I decided, like, I'm not allowed to work on nights and weekends.

Like, I'm not allowed to open my laptop because I realized it was just flooding into my life and spending time with kids and stuff. So it was like all these little changes I made over the years that got me to now where I can work four or five hours for fun, you know, and it makes money versus back then 20 hours a day. That's no longer, like making more to make more isn't as important as when I thought I wanted to be a millionaire because it's cool.

When you got to that, this is awesome. I have a million questions popped into my mind. I'll try and talk. Yeah, respond faster for you. In general terms, when you got to that inflection point, where you're starting to feel like, okay, I'm over the hump, and now I want to begin decreasing the rate of acceleration that I'm generating wealth and the amount of work I'm doing in parallel.

Where was most of your net worth? Was that in these blogs, these online properties as you describe it, or was it in other assets? So a majority has always been. in investments, stock market, and mainly for the last half of decade index funds through Vanguard, which I learned from the fire community. It took me five years to catch onto that. And so I would say my assets that were offline or that were, yeah, my assets were the blogs. I sold them off and then I poured the money I didn't need for living back into investments.

And particularly 401K, IRAs, that kind of stuff. That's where a majority of the money is. and then even a few months ago when I sold Budgets Are Sexy, a big chunk of that, currently in sales will probably end up going right back into the stock market. So for me, like, you know, everyone has their way. And I know you guys are obviously big in homeownership or at least rental property stuff. I found for me that wasn't my, you know, that I didn't, I couldn't do it. I didn't like it. It hurt my head.

And the stock market felt better for me where I know it's flipped for other people. So that's the majority of where all my wealth has been from day one until now. That makes sense. What I find interesting is that the number was so low, relatively speaking, to many other fire guests that we've had in that $300,000, $400,000 range where you felt like it was time to begin decelerating. You know, we often hear that that expense is $750,000 to a million. Oh, wow.

You know, and, you know, it's interesting parallel I'm drawing here is we had Brandon Turner, host to the Bigger Pockets real estate podcast on a show 100. And he kind of had a similar net worth level when he felt comfortable to begin to kind of decelerate and decline his stuff. And I wonder if that's an entrepreneurial thing where you just feel like you have lots of opportunities to go after and make more money.

And I'm wondering if that's, you know, if you could walk us through that mentality for you. Yeah. Well, for me, like once I got to the 300,000, thousand range. Like I've never been motivated by money, which is the worst thing as an entrepreneur, right? Because that's like the whole point, right? So when I first, I had to make sure that I was like solid financially, right? You're not going into debt. Okay, good, got that step down. Now you need to save more. Okay, good, got that step down. Now you're on track, right? Like if I didn't invest,

most of us, if we don't invest again, but we have a chunk in the next couple decades, just compounding a loan is going to get us what we need down the road. So once I hit that, I was like, well, what drives me every day, you know? And at first, it was building, you know, sites and flipping sites and stuff. And what I realized, because I started reading minimals and blogs and fire blogs, is like time. Like, time to me is important to be able to do what I want to do that day, like in a nutshell. You know, there are days where I do work way more than others. But having my kids and seeing them play and what they do for fun, like, reopen my eyes on like what life used to be before being an entrepreneur, you know, and I kind of missed that. And so for me,

the motivation is like if I don't, like the least amount of work I can put in, but still have the desired lifestyle is like my dream. But, you know, us, because we're always building, creating, we're not going to stop that. But I just want the opportunity to do what I want that day, basically. This is awesome. I could just keep going with all these types of things. Yeah, far away. Sure. Well, I have, oh, go ahead, Mindy. I have a question really quick. You said the budgets are sexy is the only site that you've built from scratch.

On a blog, yeah. Or blog. Okay, I was going to say, what about why you're poor.com is also, did you hire that one out? Oh, that was pretty complicated. Right. The one page here. www. W-H-Y-Y-U-R-E-P-O-O-O-R dot com. Go check it out. It's pretty mind-blowing and eye-opening. budgets are not sexy.com is also another one you can go to. Oh, oh, I didn't know that one. And didn't you start Rockstar Finance? Did you- Yes. So, yeah, so I should clarify.

So budgets are sexy. I just looked at these two sites. Sorry, you should definitely go look up Budgets are sexy.com and then while you're poor. Yeah, so I've started stuff. Budgets is the only blog that I started. So Rockstar Finance a few years ago. And this is also actually the kind of like, well, where do I see myself down the road? Because blogging full time is, you know, it's a lot of work.

It doesn't look like a lot of work. But it does. You know, I could, you know, spend 15 hours a day and not be done every day blogging and building. But Rockstar Finance was like, look, I'm reading all these, you know, articles on money. I really enjoy it. Why don't I share like my favorite two or three a day and just put it on this one site, like a curation site, before curation kind of started or starting to explode? And I did.

And I put it out there. Again, it was a total hobby project. with the potential down the road to do that full time. Like maybe that's where I'd see my career later. And it was good and we did it for a few years and I ended up selling that one too to someone in the community. And it's since been resold and shut down basically. But I have, I have started things and then either shut them down myself or they failed.

Half of them have failed and you never heard of, right? And the silly ones like those domains you're mentioned, just for fun. Yeah, those are great. Budgets are not sexy.com and why you're poured. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more importantly where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact.

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slash money free. Okay, Scott, I jumped right on top of your question. Sorry. No, absolutely. That was great. So this seven, eight year period before you kind of cross the hump and are working these crazy hours, once you start crossing that hump about, hey, I'm starting to feel comfortable, want to start decelerating with this, getting my time back.

What was your wife doing for work? Was she contributing income that made the decision easier? No, so she went to grad school. for about six or seven years, we started having kids and that kept prolonging it. So she'd have a stipend of maybe a couple thousand, maybe like $1,000 a month. There were some years where nothing came in. And then kind of at the bottom, when I were draining our savings, I refused to work more because I started enjoying my life.

And I didn't want to monetize more is when she finally jumped back into the workforce, which is about three and a half years ago. And so once she started getting a salary and then we had health insurance again, you know, I said, all right, like now it's time to full throttle, change the lifestyle of how I'm working more. And that's when I cut out nights and weekends and started selling off a lot of stuff that wasn't important to me. Awesome. It makes perfect sense there. Yeah.

So what's next then? That's an excellent question. The company that bought my site is a division of the Motley Fool, and I consult with them and they kind of want to build a new financial network that I'll probably be a part of and that could be possibly something big. Right now, I mean, to be honest with you, I just, I love the freedom. It's one of the first times of my life where I don't own anything like a business, at least the first time in the last 10 years. And I like it. You know, I think, again, something I realized is I could still do the stuff I love, but I don't necessarily have to own it. Stuff, same with stuff, right? Like things we're so used to consuming, but you can use stuff and not

own it and still get happiness out of it. And so part of the sale for me was, like you don't want to stop being a part of the financial community. So how can you kind of get both? Right? And I started not like making decisions. As you know, when you run a company, you got to do everything, right? Accounting, marketing, everything. And I was like, I'm just tired of making decisions. All I want to do is talk about money and that's it, you know? Like, how can I set that up, right? And selling a site for me worked out for that. You know, so I consult a little bit. I blog a little bit. And I'm kind of just in limbo until we see what's next, really. Awesome. So it sounds like working for somebody else hasn't been a huge, I don't want to say disappointment, but like there's a lot of people who are, you know, I'm I'm freelancer, I'm self-employed and now I'm going to go work for somebody else. What a let down. I'm such a failure and that's, I'm like totally springing this up. But I mean, I don't look at you as a failure. Hey, you are living the life that you want to live. I'm not saying you, Jay, money is a failure. But how is that transition?

Like it sounds like it's working out for you. Yeah, I mean, because, yeah, I think as long as you figure out what makes you happy, like there's so many ways to get there, you know. And like I've told this people, like, when I first quit and I was a full-time blogger, like, I was like annoyingly proud. Oh, I'm full-time. I work for myself. Screw the man, right?

All this stuff. But then as I got older, I realized there's so many ways to be happy. You can do whatever you want. And so I told people like, as long as I am enjoying what I'm doing, I'll work for someone else or work for myself, it doesn't really matter to me personally. But again, I'm not in that, like, need to grow in. Like, there's some people in our space. I mean, they are insane, right? They work insane hours. They're making millions a year. Like, they're killing it. Right. And like, and I ask them, I'm like, oh, you got, you're doing so good. Like, what, like, what are you

going for? Right? Like, what's the point of all this, you know? And like, oh, I'm going to get more money and double my traffic and I'm going to take over the one. I'm like, great. Let's say you're there tomorrow, right? Let's say you're making $10 million a month. Like, you're doing it. Like, like, what then? And literally every time I ask that, the answer is always more. Like they can do something bigger. And I'm like, damn, like, when do you stop? You know, and I'm into like, you know, I'm turning 40, right?

So I'm like, oh, like, death, like legacy. Like, what is the purpose of life? You know? And I'm like, you can die tomorrow. And then, like, you just build this empire great. But like now you're dead and you didn't do any, you know, I don't know. So I'm in this, you know, again, like this life thinking stuff. And so like I'm trying to whatever, you know, I'm,

kind of guiding or doing all of my actions based on what makes sense for me and my family, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. I think it makes perfect sense. And just like from the perspective of my seat, right, at 29 years old. Okay. Oh, you're 29. Nice, man.

Oh, good. Well, I looked out and I started a couple years ago aggressively going after this, right? And the question is, you know, like there's a big grind for me, right? I'm probably almost still in that component with those types of hours you were describing right now with my work, right? Yes. And the point of it is so that I can have that discussion with myself later in life that you're having right now, right? So question, would you do it again to get back into that position, be able to have that discussion?

Yes. Or, okay, that's kind of an interesting philosophical one for me and maybe a lot of people in their 20s. Yeah, I will say, I will say as long as there's a point to it and a goal you're trying to reach, And, you know, because it's easy when you start making money to like always want more and desire more and the greed factor. And I'll say, especially if you're young, like if you want to have a family later, like having kids can totally change things, right? So if you don't have kids and you're and you're hustling and you have this like burning desire to like go build something, a hundred percent go build. I wouldn't change what I've done before because it helped me get here. I'm just like, I thank God that, like, I had that epiphany that you don't need to amass millions of dollars to be happy.

And so, which is ironic because we're in the financial space and all we do is want to grow money. But no, no, yeah, if you're in that stage, and I'll say, too, something that's also helping me is doing what excites me, whether it is building a site, whether it's going for a walk. I was at a cemetery today for an hour, like, just hanging out, like, looking around. Like, it made me happy, you know? And so I'd say if what excites you is building or buying or growing, like totally do it because five years from now, something else might excite you. And it'll suck to always say, oh, I'll do this later. And then your values change and you never do it. Like, it's good to do it. You know what I'm saying? There's a lot of grave considerations to... I love it. I love it. I quit.

No, I think that's important to say. You know, like you said, there's, you know, these people that always want more and more and more and more. Yeah. What is your number? What is, you know, I don't, of course, if somebody wants to send me a check for $10 million, please feel free. You can send that to Mindy, courtesy of biggerpockets.com. But, you know, I don't need $10 million. Yeah.

That is not going to change my life. I mean, I'm a frugal person. It's not going to change my life. It's just going to sit in the bank. and I'll look at it for a while. Right. Or said an investment's not in the bank. But I don't want $10 million.

I'm not going to aggressively pursue $10 million. There are other people who are like, $10 million. I don't even want $10 million. I don't get out of bed for less than $10 million. Like that's not even close to enough for them. So I think just knowing what you're enough is and then living, the life that you live is like, it's enviable. I made a comment in the beginning, you know, oh, it's been a while to connect our schedule.

you could get on the show. And that's because I said you a note and you're like, you know what? This is my month. I'm not even working at all. I'm like, good for you. Take that month. I hope you enjoy every minute of that month.

Yeah, sabbaticals actually. Someone turned me on to that a few years ago. And I'm like, I could never leave the blog empty. Like, that's your whole life. That's your business. What's going to happen? You know, life doesn't evolve around us as much as it seems like it. Like nothing happened when I left for a month, right?

Like a dip in traffic and then I came back and people were excited. So yeah, like having a month off. and doing that is a good way to kind of test the waters too to see if it's even something you want to do, you know? Yeah. And I will caveat that with saying that Budgets or Sexy has been around a while. So you can take that off. If you start a blog today and then in a week, you're like, I'm going to take a month off.

That's a bad idea. Yeah. And to that point, if anyone does start a blog or I guess anything, like though I only had one rule when I started the blog and it was to blog every day or to blog on my schedule, which for the most time was Monday through Friday once a day. And so no matter what, I had to write an article and get it out that day to stay consistent. And it's literally the only job I've had for this long, like my whole life. Like it's, you know, and so it was always a consistency. And to your point, it was only in the last few years when I said, I'm going to break the consistency and see what

happens. It's a lot harder to go back to it after you take off. But that consistency got to the site to where it was, you know, when I took that first break. Yeah. And, you know, a blog post every day doesn't have to be this like 7,000 word long post. Sometimes Carl will just put up, like, we're on vacation. So here's seven pictures that we took this week. And that works too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. No, yeah.

It's totally an internal motivator to keep going. Because once you start breaking, like for me at least, if I write every day, it's easy. If I start taking off, it's harder to write. You know, so if you're that type of creative person, it's just good to keep the chain going. I love this concept. I love this. There's this cycle that's forming in my head as this pattern that I've seen amongst a lot of entrepreneurs who have stories that are similar to years, right? It's this I'm going to grind out. I'm going to begin optimizing basically on every front. I'm going to keep that up for years. And then I'm going to at some point reach this inflection point where I begin, you know, decelerating. And it seems like that's just kind of like a cycle that a lot of a lot of people in this entrepreneurial thing go through. And the question is, it sounds like you got to do it.

but you don't want to do it too long. The consequence of going too long can be just as bad as not putting in that initial up front effort. It sounds like you have a really good balance to that. I mean, yeah, I read a lot and I practice change in my life and habits. Like I move a lot, I move around a lot. I'm always seeing other people do challenges, and then I'm like, oh, can I do that challenge?

You know, and I think, again, like consciously seeing what you're doing and how you're spending your time every day, really, you know, forces you to do better, at least ask yourself, like, am I, is this, like, important to me right now? You know, and a lot of the stuff we do, even myself, a lot of stuff I do, like, I shouldn't be doing it. I don't know why I'm doing it. It's out of habit or I can't help myself, you know, but just getting into the rhythm of,

is this, like, am I doing the best I can for my life and what I want out of it? It's a really good question to ask, and it's not always easy, and sometimes it is, but just being conscious of what you're doing. And same with their money, right? Like, why am I spending my money? Like, am I glad this money's going to this spot? You know, it's a really simple question. Everyone knows how to save.

It's not that complicated or hard. It's just hard to do it. It's hard to not spend when you want to spend. I cannot agree more with that. Everybody knows how to save. You spend less. What was that? Why you're poor?

Let's go back over there. Whyyerpoor. Yeah, whyyerpoor.com. Because you spend more than you save. Everybody knows how to save. They just don't. It's like, oh, I know I should be doing this. I know I shouldn't eat this 17th cookie today.

I know I should get up and exercise today. But you don't. Is that for sale? Yeah. Wireport.com. I'll sell it to you if you do something cool with it. No, don't do anything with it. Leave it as is.

I love it. Maybe change the color. Yeah, but and I'll tell you this too. Everyone has their epiphanies at different times. you know, I don't know how to get your epiphany sooner other than reading and stuff like that. I had someone that was in their 70s the other month email me. It was like, oh, I just, you know, I don't know. I just woke up to that. I thought, you know, I think I need to start saving. And I'm like, you're 70 years old, right? And then I've had people that are like, I'm in middle school

and I want to learn how to save. I don't know how the epiphanies come, but I'll say it's, you can't really be too hard on yourself until you kind of prioritize it, right? Like, whatever gets, if you can find a way to get you to care enough, because all this stuff, building real estate empires, blogging, whatever it is, like, it's people that really care. For whatever reason, like, they care and they're done with their old life. And they're just like, I'm ready. I want a better life for myself, right? Like, you have to figure out how to get to that point.

Because if you don't care, you know, like, I've thought about blogging before and I just didn't, I didn't care, right? You know, I knew I should have savings in retirement. I didn't care. I wanted beers and girls, right? Like, that's what was important to me back then. You know, so whatever, if you could figure out a way to start caring and you're already on that level of listening to this podcast,

like you're obviously already, you know, looking to better your lifestyle. But yeah, once you have that epiphany, just go all in if you're excited about it. Love it. Okay, one last question before we get to The Famous Four. You said that you've done these challenges, like the no spend challenge and the question everything challenge. And what was the biggest help? to you, what was the thing that, like, propelled you forward the most out of all those challenges?

The no spend month was the biggest on my finances because I quit, I quit spending money just like not knowing all spending money or just for the hell of it, right? That totally changed. I stopped buying stuff like randomly once that happened. Lifestyle-wise, not opening up my laptops on the weekends, transformed my weekends, obviously, and kind of my life. I started reading physical books again. I started reading a lot more. I started taking naps. I started allocating 100% of my time towards my family instead of my brain always thinking about my business. And then one other challenge I did, I came across on Twitter, Benjamin Franklin's old schedule, like when he was around. And one of the big things he always said was, you know, he woke up at 5 a.m.

every day during the week to start, you know, praying or learning, you know, figure out what he's going to do that day. And so 5 a.m. wake ups during the work week also propelled. held my productivity a lot more, a lot good too. So depending on what stage finances, it's the no spend month. Lifestyle and family time was the no laptops on weekends. And then the productivity and efficiency of my job and working was the 5 a.m. wake-ups. Oh, that's awesome. That sounds like, I've heard the 5 a.m. What is that? The Miracle Morning? Yeah, I heard that's good. I haven't read it, but yeah. There's a app too. There's like a 5 a. early to rise makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes is the quote.

Scott is a 9 a.m. Waker upper. Yeah, well, he's in his 20s, you know? Do you what the hell are you want in your 20s? That's a good time, man. Come on. Oh, I'm sorry. Scott wakes up at 8 o'clock.

That's right. That's still pretty impressive, yes. Yeah, I can't sleep late. I'm a get up early kind of girl. Always have been. I passed that along to my daughter who, it's not the best choice to still pass that along to your kids. You got to promote you and your daughters who was on my blog like three or four years ago.

Remember you guys did a blog post? Yes, we wrote about how we bought stocks for her so she could start learning about stock investing. We would buy her one share of stock and then, you know, you own part of McDonald's, I think, is what she first bought. And then Costco is huge in our life. Sounds weird. But like if you're looking for frugal fun, your kids going around. And that's trick or treating every time you go. Ooh, what kind of sample is it?

Brownies, yay. Oh, salad. Great. Good entertainment when it rains outside. We have babies and we always go, yeah, walk around when it's raining. They like going in the freezer to go from hot to cold to hot to cold. We go in and out and in and out. Right.

Free, free, free entertainment. Oh, Costco's a great place. to take your kids. They just think it's the greatest. Yeah, so I think she's got to share that too. Wow, good memory, Mr. Money. Well, see, and as a rockstar finance when we launched it, I got to learn all, I got to see what all the financial blogging community was doing and the people that are up and coming. And I remember you guys, I think you started before that, but I remember wanted to feature 1500 days because it was so, it was raw and real. And I think blogging, if you can be raw and real and personal and not start a blog for a business or to make money number one, you know, as your number one

priority, I think really is what the blogging space needs now. You know, I think a lot of businesses are out there and it should be a lot more normal people blogging about normal stuff, right? I completely agree. And that's when you're going to really connect with people is, you know, like you said, you wrote in your voice and you, I have to capitalize at the beginning of a sentence and subject verb agreement that, you know, that's something that I personally need to do. But, you know, throwing a swear word in there every once in a while. If you need to make a point, then darn it, make that point. It's still a podcast that I want PG ratings on or G ratings on.

But yeah, I mean, people connect with that. Matt Jivanishi from Listen Money Matters. Uh-huh. Yeah. He has a huge audience that connects with him because he's so like, this is me, this is my podcast. If you don't want to listen to this voice, then this is not the show for you. But then people get it in their own words. You have like, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but like you have like a homeboy blog, right?

Right? I like it. I've been called a Valley Girl lots of times on the blog. So if they don't know if I'm a boy or girl, they always think I'm a female. Really? Yeah. Maybe it's because I've always known that you're a boy. Maybe.

And I do, yeah, like I think they say because I do lots of smiley faces and emojis and stuff. And so like they just esteem, I guess. I don't know. That's a whole other department. Okay. Now all of that aside, it is time for the famous four. Are you ready, Mr. Money? Yes, go for it.

Jay. Okay. What is your favorite finance book? I'm going to cheat a little bit and I'm going to do a life and business slash finance one. Essentialism by Greg McEwen, McEwan. That book really kind of got me to focus on what's important. and stop doing the crap that isn't. Kind of like the 80-20 rule kind of thing.

But for whatever reason, the way he wrote it and the time that I needed to hear it really jump started like my lifestyle. And that's when I kind of started selling off more stuff and living more. That makes sense. I don't think anybody's ever recommended that book before, Scott. There you go.

You can apply it to a whole bunch of things. You can apply it to finances, but it's more business lifestyle. I'll have to go and check that one out. But have you ever read the book Life and Air? No. I love that. name, though. That's great branding. A lot of what you just described kind of reminds me of that book.

I reread it recently, and I really like it. Disclosure, there's a little bit of like a religious component to that. So if you're not into that, don't go there. But it's a really good kind of framework around the concepts you just described. I think probably overlaps heavily when this essentialism book. I'll check that out too. Okay, very cool. Thanks, man. Awesome. So we've probably already gone over this, but if your housing choice was your biggest money mistake, I think you said, It's my biggest money regret. What was your second biggest money mistake? That's a good question.

There's nothing that's really that high other than, there's a couple of businesses that a friend of my started that I invested about $5,000 into, two of them, and it didn't really work out. So I kind of lost money. I probably lost about $8,000. So those are my probably biggest, they're hard to say feelings too,

because you never know if they're going to take off or not, but financially, those are the biggest losses outside of the house, which is definitely the first one. And by the way, so we just moved and I actually bought again. I didn't want to buy again because obviously I enjoy running. And my wife convinced me to buy, like that was important to her. So now I'm in this phase of remembering that your family isn't just you

and you have to put other people priorities also up there. So that's the new stage I am. Usually when there's something you want, you go after it until you get it. you know, and so this is when I had to back down learning about how to be okay with a decision I really don't want. But we do own again. So your first house, what year was that built in? Well, I bought it in 2007.

I think it was built in the late 80s maybe. Okay. And then the one that you're living in now, when was it built? I think early 90s. Okay. Or at the same time. Yeah. They're the same time frame.

I'm just wondering if you went like with a new build. I like old houses. I like the character. I like ugly so I can make them look pretty again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like they're nice and solid.

But I also go into this knowing I am pouring a ton of money into it. Right. And I know that there are a lot of people who want to buy a brand new house because then there's nothing wrong. And if you're listening to this and not watching the video, I'm doing air quotes around me. There's nothing wrong. Because something. always breaks, but if it's a new build, then somebody will come in and fix it for you,

like within the first year and whatever. So, okay, I was just wondering about that. Yeah. No, and our decision was basically around kids, like a yard and school district. Like, it's a weird, you know, again, because it's not, I would never have bought this house on my own, but because of what everyone else's needs were we went with that house. And I'm growing to like it. Don't get me wrong. But yeah, that was the decision for buying. Yeah. As somebody who moved around a lot as a kid, good decision. Good decision. Okay. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I would say, again, are you talking about like money or entrepreneurship or lifestyle? On their money journey, yes. On their money journey. So it's a big thing for me that I

realized later was when I put money somewhere that I couldn't touch. And it sounds stupid, but like the reason I was able to invest so much was because of the 401K and even before the crazy matching, but putting money where there was like bad things would happen if you took it out, like you get penalized like crazy, right? With retirement, what happened to me, I always knew retirement was important and I'd always contribute a few dollars, like the 3% or whatever. And when I started seeing that money go up and it never went down. down for very long that really, because before you invest, you have check an account and a savings account, right? And if you're anything like me, you put money in savings, but then towards

the end of the month, you're like, ah, I need money. You pull it back out and it goes in checking. And your savings account like goes up and down and never really goes anywhere, right? With investing, seeing the money grow and if you're tracking it, it just keeps going up over time. Like, that was mind-blowing. And the only reason it kept going up is I just putting money in is I never took it out. And when I hit 50,000 in investments, I remember specifically thinking, like, wow, this is the most money I've ever seen in my life. And it keeps going up like I was sold. Like, I'm just going to keep pouring money in. And as long as I don't touch it, it's going to be fine.

So I guess put money where you can't touch it. And whatever that means to you, investments, if you're easy to pull out, that's fine. Maybe it's home ownership because you don't want to resell it. I don't know. Whatever it is to stash money that you can't touch was huge for me. I bet. I don't think we've heard that tip before. Because it's so obvious.

That's awesome. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Do you have more funeral puns? I have two. The ones that like hip hop, I always say, why does Snoop Dog carry an umbrella? Oh, drizzle. Nice.

And then the ones that are like more family-ish, I always say, oh, a grasshopper walks into the bar and the bartender says, oh, we have a drink named after you. And the grasshopper says, oh, you have a drink named Steve? The grasshopper's friend, the termite, walks into a bar. And he says, he says, where is the bartender? Yeah, the bartender runs a good.

Good job. Okay, the last question. Where can people find out more about you? I have like an online resume-ish. J-Money, just a letter J, then money, M-M-O-N-E-Y. B-I-Z, J-Money.M-I-Z, J-Money. Not biz. Oh, on J-Money.Mondy, it says that you were once called

the Miley Cyrus of Personal Finance. I was. That's just real identity. I don't think it was a compliment. Can you explain that? Oh, yeah. Some chick that email. or maybe it was on Twitter.

It was something because it wasn't directly to me. It was something like, why does everyone say Jay Money is a big deal? He's like the Miley Cyrus of Finance. And so it was kind of like a not a nice thing to say, but I actually like it because Miley is herself. She's feisty. She's great at marketing.

People know her, whether you like or hate her. And she's herself at the end of the day, right? And for me and money and blogging, that's like always the core. Like, no one's going to love you, you know, You have your own journey, but just be yourself, you know, true to it as much as you can at least. Okay. So whoever said that?

I'm sorry. Do you know how my personal finance newsletters I have subscribed to? There's my husbands because I have to be and yours. Really? And that's it. That's all that come in. And every time I see Jay Money there, I open it up and I read the article really quickly. Hey.

I love your site. And for her to say that you're the Miley Cyrus of personal finance, when you explain it like that, she's 100% right, but she's wrong to make it sound like a negative. Well, thank you. I didn't know that you read it like that. I appreciate that. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm a big fan. Thank you. Okay. Well, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate your time today, Jay. Yeah, thanks, guys. This is fun. It's always fun to talk about money and life and all that good stuff. And by the way, if you need to read any of these websites that we have talked about, budgets are sexy.com, budgets are not sexy.com, why you're poor.com or jaymoney.com.

We will have all of these links in our show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 103. All right. That was Jay Money with budgets are sexy.com. Why you're poorer.com. And what was the last one, Mindy? Budgets are not sexy.com. Budgets are not sexy.com. Yes, that's right. The last two of those are very serious websites. Well, Mindy, what do you think?

I am such a fan of Jay. I have been following his site forever. I think that he is, like he said in his own words, he tells his story in his own words. He talks about money in his own words. His website is about his experience. And he doesn't use formal, financial language to discuss money. He just talks about money like your friend at the bar.

And I think it's really, it really makes financial education accessible. And that's what people really need is just to be accessible. I love his story. I love that in the beginning of the whole growing budgets are sexy, he cranked it out. He had a regular job. Then he'd come home and, you know, work four or five hours a day every single day, including nights and weekends, or I guess including weekends, on this site. And the day, what we kind of glossed over is the day he decided to go in and give his notice, he got fired. And that's, as somebody who is married to a man who gave his notice, and then two weeks later, their company shut down his entire project. It's really important to come to terms with it yourself before you just get the axe. But I love that he

cranked it out of the beginning and now he can sit back and choose what he wants to do with his time. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that. I'm playing it out in the show, obviously. I love that story arc of the entrepreneurial journey, right, where, you know, person goes and get to start, they start hustling and optimizing on every front as, as maybe they should. They grind it out. They get a very low cost lifestyle or at least, you know, whatever. and their income starts to scale. They apply that towards investments. And then they reach the point at which they're like,

you know what, I'm over the hump. Whatever that hump was, I've passed it. And it's great that he was able to recognize that relatively early in the entrepreneurial journey because I've known other entrepreneurs who have gone on five, seven, ten years past that hump point, probably. And maybe some of whom regret it, where they've gone so far and worked so hard that they've lost a couple of key years with their families or whatever. it else it is. So I think that's a wonderful story arc and a good lesson to take away from this.

Yeah. And he's got he's got a good piece of advice for, you know, discovering where that hump actually is for you. So yeah, I'm glad that he was able to pull away. Like you said, you know, you know some people that have gone way past that hump. He even talked about how he knows people who are making, you know, a million, five million, ten million. Where's the end? What's enough? knowing that about yourself because the journey, I mean, if you really like building and creating, then continue doing that. But when you only like building and creating because of the money, you're always going to be chasing something. Yeah. And I think another philosophical question that stems from that is, you know, the goal, this is why I think the fire movement is so powerful,

is because the goal is to replace your expenses with passive income. So you can pursue your dreams. than replacing your income with passive income, right? Because replacing your income is a never-ending rat race, chasing after an ever-increasing number, especially if you're an entrepreneur like Jay, but he was able, because he kept a budget and had good control over his spending and adopted those kind of minimalist practices, he was able to cover that spending, again, relatively early and live the life of his dreams. Yeah, and that's it. He's living the life of his dreams. It's not the life of your dreams. It's not the life of my dreams. It's the life of his dreams.

And he put in the work ahead of time. And now he has all the freedom in the world because budgets truly are sexy. It was a shame that we didn't get to go farther into the grave puns, the cemetery puns. I had a couple that I was going to do there. But apparently that's an undertaking for another time. Oh, God. Do you get out of here, Mindy? Yes, I want to get out of here because I don't want to hear.

She's dying to get out of here. Oh, oh, I walked right into that one. Okay, from episode 103 of the Bigger Puckets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen, and we are saying adieu cockatoo.