BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 154: Confessions of a Former Spender: How Allison Baggerly Paid off $110K in Loans on a Teacher’s Salary

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Ever had a card declined when trying to buy the basics? That was the start of Allison Baggerly’s journey into budgeting and saving. As a big spender in college, Allison didn’t see a real reason to save instead of spend. She would take herself on frequent trips to the mall to treat herself when she aced a test, or make herself feel better if she flunked one. It wasn’t until her first son was born that her and her husband realized they wouldn’t have enough in the budget to pay for childcare costs, and thus, the Inspired Budget was born! After a few years of limited spending and frequent budget analyzing, Allison and her Husband paid off over $110,000+ in debt and are now on their way to financial abundance. Allison talks about the importance of giving yourself spending, investing, and saving allowances and how you don’t need to sacrifice everything to become financially safe! In This Episode We Cover The importance of setting budgets early on in life (and keeping up with them) Changing the “how much do I have to spend” mindset into a “how much do I have to save” way of thinking Why you need to own your relationship with money How to have financial talks with your partner (even when it’s awkward) Why you need spending allowances so you can enjoy your money Why investing isn’t a linear path, but a rollercoaster (and why the dips don’t define you!) Refusing the mental trap of “I can’t be rich” while being at a low-income job And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/moneyshow154 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Puggets Money podcast, show number 154, where we interview Alison Baggerly from Inspired Budget and hear her story of debt payoff on two teacher salaries. It's a roller coaster ride. It's not this straight up journey. And I think that what people don't realize is that there are going to be ups and there's going to be downs, but the downs don't define you. Whenever you hit a struggle, it is for a season. And I always tell people that come into, you know, my inbox and they say, I'm going through a really hard time right now. I say, this is a season. When you're willing to live and live in a season of sacrifice for a period of time, you can live in a season of abundance for the rest of your life. And that really helped us get through. I saw it

as our season of sacrifice so that I could reach that season of abundance. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my scholarly co-host, Scott Trench. Oh, I like that. What an informed and educated intro, Mindy. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, and show you that by following the proven steps, you can put yourself on the road to early financial freedom and get money out of the way so you can lead your best life. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, starts your own business, or simply build a secure

financial foundation. We'll help you build a position capable of launching yourself towards those dreams. Today we interview Allison Baggerly from Inspired Budget. And Allison really had two reckoning with money early in her story. The first is when she completely ran out of money and had to call home for it in her college days, absolutely broke, literally zero dollars in the bank account. It had a hard reset on her spending. And the second, what came a few years later, when she realized alongside her husband that they weren't going to be able to pay for daycare for their child. It was just going to be a completely unsustainable position on top of their $11,000 in personal debt. Those two experiences, I think, really set Allison up for a trajectory with money

following that. That is, some people won't believe. A lot of people that are like her in the teaching profession feel like they can't be good with money. But I'm excited to share this story with you guys and show the power of discipline and budget and consistency over a couple of years. impact it can have on the life of really anyone, including two teachers with two kids. You know, Scott, I'm going to tag on to that and say the power of knowing yourself, being honest with yourself, and being realistic about what you can do and what might not be such a good idea for you. Allison knows that she's a spender. She enjoys spending money. Does that make her a bad person? No, that makes her somebody who enjoys spending money.

So if she doesn't have any money to spend, she's not going to be super happy. But she sets up realistic boundaries for herself and then can operate within those boundaries. Oh, okay, here's where I can go and here's where I can't. Now I have a plan. Allison's one day going to have a lot of money to spend. Should we bring her in? We should. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture,

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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 Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is 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. Alison Baggerly from Inspired Budget, welcome to the Bigger Puggets Money podcast. I'm so excited that we finally connected. How are you today?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to have you tell your story today. Where does your journey with money begin? You know, I came into this thinking. I know exactly where my journey to money begins. And then I was thinking about it this morning and I realized there was a moment when I was in college. And I had taken out all of these student loans to last me for my entire semester. And I went into the grocery store. I had checked my bank account. I was like, okay, I have enough money. I'm good to go. I went into the grocery store to get groceries for the week. And my card got rejected.

And I was like, no, no, this is okay. Like, this is clearly an error on your part grocery store chain. And I swiped it again and it was rejected again. And I tried a third time and it was rejected. And so I left the grocery store with all of my groceries sitting there. And I went back to my home where I was staying at the time and I checked my bank account balance and it was at $0. And what I didn't realize was that my rent check had to clear.

And I had to make that dreaded phone call where I called my mom and I said, said, mom, I don't have enough money. It was the middle of March. This money was supposed to last me until the end of May. So clearly, I was not doing a good job with managing this money. And she said, I will give you money only if you come home and we look at your finances. And so I went home that weekend and she printed off my bank statements from the last three months and made me highlight every time I went out to eat, every time I was spending on pedicures, every time I was going to the mall. And she said, you are out of control. You are spruce. You are spending money out of control. You've got to start tracking it so you can see your habits.

And so we downloaded Microsoft money onto my laptop. It's a really old school. And I started tracking my money. And I didn't make changes right away. That was actually not enough. You would think that that would be enough to make me want to make changes in my money, but it wasn't it. It was just enough for me to not go negative again. It wasn't enough for me to want to save money. What was really truly the thing that changed me in my life and my husband's life is when we got pregnant on our honeymoon. We came back from our honeymoon, realized we were pregnant, and realized that we could not afford an $800 per month daycare payment when our son came. Yeah. Wow. So these are two extremely powerful money stories here. One is to avoid going off

the deep end going completely broke and not being able to pay for life's bare necessities. And it sounds like another event which kind of encouraged you to begin building and accumulating wealth so that you could actually have some real life options downstream. How many years apart were these two experiences? They were probably about four or five years apart. So for about four or five years, I was just making money so that I could spend it and end up with about $30 in my checking account left over before my next. paycheck. But I had no stress about it. I had no worries about it at all. I was just living this

lifestyle of making money so I could turn around and spend it and going to brunch all the time and just enjoying my life, but not going negative, not going further into debt. But it really wasn't until I had to step up as a different type of adult for someone other than myself and my husband to really say, whoa, this is not, this journey I'm on, the way I'm spending money, the way we are dealing with our finances is not going to work for the long run. So can you describe your, what was there a change in your lifestyle before and after the conversation with your mom? Or was it kind of really a unnoticeable difference, just managing your money a little bit tighter to not go broke again? Yeah, unfortunately it was that. It was just managing my money a little

It was making me more aware. I was aware. I knew that I was spending money, but I didn't see anything wrong with it. So I was tracking. I could tell you how much money I was spending on eating out every month. I could tell you how much money I was spending on some of these frivolous things. I could tell you how much I had in savings. I knew I wasn't going to go negative in my checking account. However, it wasn't enough to make me want to change my habits. It was just enough to make me aware of my habits. And so what position did you graduate college in then? You said you had some student loan debt. Was there anything else? Yes. So I had student loan debt. And then whenever we got married, we did buy a car. So I had car debt. And then when I married my husband, we had never had never had the finance talk before we got married. We never sat down and really talked about our money. I know. I know. It was not not the wisest thing. However, everything happens for a reason. We had never sat down. I didn't realize that he had over $60,000 worth of student loan debt. and he had a car loan as well. So together combined, we had over $11,000 worth of debt, and we were making two teacher salaries.

Okay, so you're both teachers. And how long after, like how many years after maybe graduation did you guys get married? About two years. I got married two years after I graduated. He's older than me, so he was about five years after graduation. Okay, great. And so the lifestyle at that point went, you know, in the period right before and after you got married, you're basically spending all of your money every single month, maintaining a close to zero balance,

but with extreme discipline, which I think is very interesting. We haven't heard that before. Extremely disciplined budget here. Well, it was extremely disciplined. It was less like, how can I make sure I don't go into dead? It was less like, how can I make sure I get by? It was more like, how much do I have left to spend this month on something fun? So it was disciplined in the terms of I wanted to spend them. money. I saw nothing wrong with it. And I remember my mom being like, you should save some of your money. And I was like, no, that's what like, that's for later on in life, mom. Like, don't, don't be raining on my parade. I'm in my 20s. Let me be me. So it was, it was very disciplined in allowing me to

determine how much I could spend on what I wanted. Walk us through some of the good things about this, this lifestyle in that, uh, in that year before you made the change. It was so wonderful. I would walk into Ulta and I would come out. I remember I walked into Ulta one time with my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, and I was like, I just need to get a couple of things makeup. And I walked out and I had spent over $200. And he said, is this normal? Like, is this normal for you? And I was like, don't, like, you don't get to judge me. Who are you to say, like, yes, this is normal for me. And it was just frivolous. I would go to brunch every weekend. I was going on trips. Pretty much anything that I wanted, I would make sure I had enough

money to get it that month. And therefore, I had like $300 in savings. That was it. That was my emergency fund. $300. And at the time, I was like, this is great. I have $300. This is more than enough. But it was because I wasn't aware. I know. It was because I wasn't aware of what enough in savings really was. So how did you learn what is enough in savings? Because this is like, I hear this story frequently. I am a. spender or my spouse is a spender and we hadn't talked about money beforehand. I made a face when you said we didn't have money, we didn't talk about money beforehand. Carl and I didn't talk about money either. I should not be judgy because I didn't have that talk either, but we both knew

that the other one was cheap. Like, you know, you're cheap when you're both using coupons and like all the time. So how do you make the shift? Because I know there's a lot of people who are in Allison College mindset. Yes. And want to be an Allison now mindset, but don't know how to get there. Because you said, I would think, how much money do I have left to spend on something fun, which is the thought that people have, oh, when I get to Allison now, all the fun's gone. I'm never going to have another good time.

How do you overcome that? And what did you give up that has now made your life so horrible? because you have no more fun. Well, that's a lot of questions in one. That's how I roll. I know. But the first thing that happened to me was I had to face my truth. I really had to face my truth and say, hey, realize, see the numbers on paper and see how much

money I was really spending on restaurants, how much money I was really spending on all of these things. And it was almost like this dramatic moment of, oh my gosh, that's really what it is. and it was the moment of being able to realize that I could not afford daycare payments for my son. It was the punch in the gut that I needed. It was the punch of the gut that my husband needed. Now, my husband is that he does not like to spend money. So I didn't realize over time that really all of my spending was making him incredibly uncomfortable. But he wasn't saying anything because, you know, happy wife, happy life, which is not the case. I don't, you know, I believe happy wife

and happy life is a lie. 100%. But it took realizing and facing my truth and saying, okay, I've been doing it wrong. I'm okay to own my mistakes. I'm going to own my issues with money and I'm going to set some boundaries in place for myself so that I can change my money habits, which isn't going to happen overnight, but I can create boundaries overnight and I can work on them every single day for years on end. And then when you're working on it every single day for years on in and you're staying within those boundaries, it changes the way you view money and it changes your money habits. So you just said that your husband didn't say anything, even though your spending was giving him the hebi-jeebies. And I just want to say to everybody who's listening,

if you want your spouse or partner to know what you are thinking, those words have to come out of your mouth and go into their ears. You have to tell them. They cannot read minds. You cannot read minds. So tell them. I mean, don't, you know, there's a whole thing about talking about money with your spouse and don't be accusatory and, you know, all of that. But if your spouse is spending money on things that you find frivolous, make an open-ended comment, hey, is this normal for you? Do you normally spend $200 at Alta? Oh, you know what? I do this once a year and I was out of all my makeup. That's a different story than, yeah, I do this every week. It's totally cool. I had the 200 bucks in my account. You know, so, you know, and open, I can't believe you spend $200 on makeup. Well, yeah,

once a year, that's great. I don't wear a lot of makeup. So I can't, like, that's not my, that's not my spending. I don't know if $200 is a lot or not. That's not my spending habits anymore either. Because over time, everything changes. You know, you said, what is, what are the sacrifices that I had to make? Well, our sacrifices looked like really tightening up everything. We tightened up. We saved first so that way we could pay for our son's hospital bills whenever he was born in cash. We didn't go further into debt. And then after that, we paid off debt. And it looked like cutting way back, which honestly was not that hard to do. When you have a newborn, you don't tend to want to go to a lot of places.

You know, I'm like, I don't want to go out to eat because then I have to deal with all, you know. And so for for us, it looked like really sacrificing. As two teachers, it looks like in the summertime, instead of going on these nice, long vacations, it looks like working summer school. My husband is a band director. He has his driver's license to drive a bus. So he volunteered to drive the bus and he would make whenever they would go to places that he was already going to with the band. He would drive the bus to make $50 a trip. And that was sometimes twice a weekend. So that money went to debt. We made these sacrifices that in the beginning, I remember thinking, I will never live like this again. I will never budget again. Once we have paid off this debt,

I am done. I am living the life I want. But four and a half years of that turned you into a different person where you can appreciate what you really want and let go of what's not important to you and your money. So around what year was your child born? He was born in 2012. Okay. So in 2012, you're sitting there with like $11,000 in debt and a mindset shift here. And in four and a half years, I'm hearing you paid it down to zero. Is that right? Yes. And basically through this, hey, discipline, budget, and finding some extra ways to make money here and there. But mostly through that, just discipline with your budget that you already knew, you're just now applying to the accumulation of wealth.

Right. It took changing my mindset, because I really believed my mindset whenever we first totaled up the debt, I was scared, I was angry. I was in my first trimester of pregnancy, so I was, you know, just emotions everywhere. But my first one was like almost defense of like, well, Of course we're not going to be able to pay this off. We're two teachers. And this is the good we put out in the world.

We're two teachers. We're never going to make a lot. And that's just our sacrifice. That's our burden to bear. And I truly had that mindset of being two teachers was a burden, but we could take on the burden of debt because we were doing so much good in the world. And I thought of money, making more money meant we weren't doing good. Does that make sense?

I can see where you're coming from with that mindset, but no one doesn't make sense. You can do good and make money. Exactly. But I didn't have that mindset because we have two teachers and I thought, well, this is just what it is for teachers. And then after a while, I thought, no, I don't care if that's how it is with teachers. And I got to the point whenever, you know, we were pregnant.

And I thought, if this is how it is, this sucks. And I choose not to fall into this belief that this, you know, this belief I had that no one necessarily put on me, but I had formed in my own mind that teachers cannot pay off debt and build wealth. Teachers will always be poor. Teachers will always work second jobs. Teachers will always have student loan payment because they don't make enough to pay off their student loans and then therefore their children have student loans because they don't make enough to save for college. And I just saw this cycle and I just said, no, I choose not to play a part in this game. I choose not to play a part in the cycle. And when I brought it up to my husband,

he is very much the visionary. He immediately got on board and said, yes, let's do it. Let's pay off our debt because that's step one for our family to get to where we are no longer living in this cycle. I'm just so proud to hear you say that and fascinated by this concept. My fiancé was a teacher for a long time.

And that mentality that you just described is present with a lot of teachers. And you know, you hear it in passing, oh, you know, we're not going to make much money to our teachers and all that kind of stuff. You know what? Like, look, I know it's not the highest income profession out there, but two teachers can make 40, 45,

sometimes even upwards of $50,000 per year each as the career progresses. And with discipline, there is a path to becoming a millionaire early in life. You know, maybe not in your 30s, but certainly possible in your later 40s or early 50s to retire early with that. And we've had multiple examples of that here on the show of folks coming in like the millionaire educator who have been able to create

millionaire status. There are advantages to every single profession out there. And I love that you chose to kind of approach it from a different angle, get disciplined, manage it mathematically and get that outcome. Rant over. Well, and that's sometimes difficult because when you're surrounded with other people, these other teachers that have that mentality and you start trying to have these conversations, there were times that would get shut down a lot. Like, oh, like you're just dreaming, or people would say, like, don't pay off your student loans early. It helps you with your taxes. And, you know, I would just have these people and these older teachers that would tell me that, you know, that's not possible. It's that's just not possible.

You're two teachers. And if I had listened to them, we would likely still have our student loan debt. We would likely still have, you know, car debt. We would have all these things that would not allow us to be able to turn around and invest and say for our kids' college fund. and live a life that we enjoy, live a life where we are able to live and enjoy guilt-free because we have budgeted for that family fund money. We've budgeted for me to go shopping every now and then at Ulta. We've budgeted for us to enjoy, you know, my husband going golfing every now and then to enjoy our family life together.

Okay. So I'm fascinated and delighted by the mindset here. What happens? So it sounds like you started this journey in 2012 and you made really big progress by 2016, 2017. When was it you paid off your debt? 2016. Great. And I think you told us that you immediately revert back to your previous pattern of spending

every dollar that you bring in and not accumulating anything. Is that right? No, I thought I would. So I thought I would immediately do that. Okay, I was like, no, no, no, no. I would not be here if you were. So, well, I mean, I think also the shift that happened during it, you know, as someone who, like, I generally love to spend money.

Like, Mindy, you and I are opposites. I get a high from spending money. There are times still that I fall into this trap of spending money. And I have to pull myself out of it because I find joy in it, which was really hard for me whenever we were on our journey because my husband doesn't find any joy in spending money. He doesn't see the point. He would rather save money. And so there was a lot of compromise. I remember I went to, I had no spending money and I went to Target one day and I had had a bad day at work. You know, my emotions were high. And I just said, screw the budget. I don't care what it

says. I don't care what our goals are. I'm going to get what I want right now because I am angry. I'm upset. I had a bad day and this is going to make me feel better. And so I went, shopping and I spent, you know, $200 at Target and I walked out and I texted my husband and I said, I'm not taking anything back. And so what that led to was the realization that number one, I'm an emotional spender. And number two, that I need some spending money to my name so that I can use that money to save up and spend it on what's important and not turn to emotional impulse spending in moments where I was not feeling good. Or, you know, I used to spend money whenever, like in college, if I got an A on a test, I'd go out and celebrate and buy something new at the mall.

If I got an F on a test, I would go out and be like, oh, well, let me make myself feel better. I did bad on this test. Let me go get a pedicure. If a boyfriend broke up with me, I would go, you know, spend money. If something good happened, I'd go and spend money. I was using money to celebrate or mourn all of my emotions. And that carried into adulthood. I really like that you said, okay, I need some money to spend. It is so much easier to look at how much money you've got and where it needs to go and say, okay, I want a small amount to come to me.

This is my Allison money. This is hubby can't tell me what I can spend all. and I get $10 a week or $1,000 a week or like whatever you're putting towards that, I get this money and I can spend this much. And then it's up to Allison to only spend the money that's in this account. And does your husband get the money to? He does. And he just saves it.

Sometimes he does. Right now he has a long commute. So he spends it on like sodas and random things. But he does get money as well. And we don't get a lot right now. It varies different amounts throughout the years. We were giving ourselves different amount. Right now, I only get $25 a month.

And here's what's happened is that sounded ridiculous at the beginning of our journey. It sounded outrageous, $25 a month. What do you hate me? But what I've learned is that I don't want as much. Instead, I save that $25 for something I really want. Being able to create these boundaries with my spending allowance has allowed. me to decipher the difference between what I kind of want and what I really want. When in the past, I just really wanted everything. And right now I have $50. Look, I left over. I still have last

months left over. So it allows me to kind of build up. And I'm really just very choosy about how I spend my money now. So this is extreme discipline. And I love it with this. How would you say, how much were you able to begin accumulating per month by the end of those four years? Like putting towards that debt and then beginning to accumulate. So our debt payments at the beginning, the minimum payments for us were $1,400 a month. That was our minimum debt payments as a family, you know, family of four, basically. And our goal was to always send $2,000 to debt a month or more, depending. You know, things came up.

We had another child along the way. Our daycare expenses went up to $1,500 a month. Things shifted and changed when we got any, you know, if we, had tax money, we would send it to debt. We did whatever we could to try to knock it down. And then there were times whenever my youngest son needed an unexpected surgery. And that happened one month before we were supposed to become debt-free. One month before we were supposed to become debt-free, we found out he needed this surgery and it was going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars. So we paused and I worked summer school that year to help cash flow the cost of the surgery.

And one month after his surgery, we became debt-free. So, It's a roller coaster ride. It's not this straight up journey. And I think that what people don't realize is that there are going to be ups and there's going to be downs, but the downs don't define you. Whenever you hit a struggle, it is for a season. And I always tell people that come into my inbox and they say, I'm going through a really hard time right now. I say, this is a season. When you're willing to live and live in a season of sacrifice for a period of time, you can live in a season of a season of a abundance for the rest of your life. And that really helped us get through. I saw it as our season of sacrifice so that I could reach that season of abundance. I love that. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I am going to correct you because I don't think it's a sacrifice.

I don't like that word because so many people are like, oh, well, I have to give up everything. Yes. No, you don't have to give up everything. But if you try it, who was it, Scott? Liz, Frugal Woods, Mrs. Frugal Woods, came on the show and she said, when I discovered FI,

I gave up everything for a month. And then I discovered I wanted to add some of this stuff back. Great. Add that back. Add back the stuff that works for you. But, you know, get rid of the things that don't. Get rid of the things that don't spark joy.

Who is that? Marie Kondo. Yes. That's not trendy anymore, but. It's okay. I still appreciate it. I love that quote. It's a roller coaster ride, ups and downs, but the downs don't define you.

Yes, they don't. And they aren't your future. You know, your deepest, darkest moments with finances aren't your future. And that was the mind shift I had to make whenever we were sitting there at the kitchen table. I had my heads in my hand. I was thinking, how on earth are we supposed to bring a child? I was 24. I was not ready for children.

I will put that out there and own it. And I thought, how are we? going to do this if we're always going to be in debt and we're just two teachers. But then I had to turn it around. I had to question the thought because your thoughts can lie to you. And I had to turn it around and say, it doesn't have to be this way. This does not, where I am right now does not define me now and it does not define my future. And I have the ability to change my future. So when you got back to zero, and thank you for sharing that that final, I guess, you know, problem at the end there with surgery there and all that. That's a, you know, I think that's a really good bit of color there

and illustrates it. This is not just like some smooth journey with that. But it does sound like you were able to save about $1,400 to $2,000 a month on average with some bumps and bruises, some tailwinds, some headwinds. Is that kind of a fair way to describe the situation? Yeah, there were times whenever it was more, there were times where it was less. And I'm the big dork that I would try to, you know, we were paid monthly. And so about two weeks before we were paid, I would make a budget and I would give myself a goal. This month I'm going to send $2,000 debt. And then by the time that it came, I would say, okay, and I'm able to reach my goal.

And my goal would sometimes be to send $1 more to debt this month than I did last month. And so there were moments of just encouraging, you know, myself just with some internal motivation, talking about it with my husband to keep going because it's a long journey and it's easy to give up. And there were times I wanted to give up. there were not times my husband wanted to give up, but he is, he's a different person. What was the interest rate on your debt? Do you remember, do you know, kind of like the general average? You know, back then I was not as into it. I, you know, I learned about budgeting and personal finances throughout my journey and I became super passionate about it throughout my journey,

but I think our highest interest rate was like 6%. So we didn't have any of these huge massive credit cards with, you know, 18, 20, 24% interest rate. We actually, I have no, I have never carried a credit card balance. So we didn't even have that to speak of. Well, that's interesting. You've never carried a credit card balance. No, I haven't. I feel so judgy now. But that's like for somebody who loves to spend money, that's actually a pretty big accomplishment. Because it's too easy to carry a credit card balance. I know, but remember, I would see my money just in terms of how much can I spend to get to zero and never go beyond that. So it was always like there was this line in the sand for me as a spender.

And they're still there. I mean, just even last year, we moved into a new house. I started getting really my spender heart took over. And I started falling back in my old ways. And I was buying all these new things for our house. And we weren't going into debt, but I was putting it on a credit card. And then we weren't able to save as much as we wanted to each month because we were paying off the credit card in full.

And I had to get to a point where I said, whoa, Alice. listen, like you're going back into these old habits. And so I gave myself boundaries with a credit card. And my husband did not tell me this because I'm very big. I'm like, you're not going to tell me what to do with this. But I said, okay, I know there's a problem. And he said, yeah, you're getting a little bit out of hand. Like, this is starting to get out of hand. You know, we're not going to be able to reach our goals. If you keep doing this. And I said, okay, I will not use the credit card unless we talk about it first and we both agree it's a purchase we need to make. And he said, okay, and I won't do that either, which he never uses the credit card. So that wasn't, but, but you know,

it was that solidarity. So it was creating these boundaries where whenever I wanted to make a purchase, I had to say, okay, I'm going to have to bring this to Matt, who is my equal in this marriage and helps decide our finances as well. Do I think he'll approve it? Probably not, because it's just not my one that I don't even need. And then it would, that was enough for me to say, okay, I don't need it. I think this is huge that you recognized an issue, spoke to your husband, and he said, yes, I recognize this, but hadn't harped on you about it, which is kind of a testament to his commitment to the marriage in that he's not just going to, you know, yell at you for spending

money because you're not now in debt anymore. So, you know, but he had noticed it. Maybe Matt, you know, he also knows you a slightly better than I do. So, or a lot. And knows that maybe you wouldn't be so receptive if he was like, hey, Allison, stop spending all this money. So exactly. That's very important that you guys started talking about it. And hey, I'm not going to spend money without discussing it with you.

Yes. That's the mindset that Carl and I have. And I like to think that our marriage is successful. We've married in 19 years in January. But I feel like if I want to spend money, I should consult him. Do you mind if I spend. this money. And he always says, no, he always says, I don't care. And I think it goes back to, he was always the breadwinner in our relationship. He made a lot of money and I made like slightly

more than minimum wage. And then I stayed home with our kids. And I was like, oh, well, what's his is mine and what's mine is his. But oh, this isn't my money. This is his money. So I should ask. And I don't know why I had this mindset because he never felt like that. But it just, I've gotten into the habit. And now that he's retired and I'm the one making the money, still confer with him. Hey, you know, do you care if I spent, I just spent $200 on a purse. I haven't spent $200. I heard that in another, another episode. Good job. I commend you. You get that purse. I love this person. It's so pretty. And it's so big. It holds everything. It's wonderful. But like, that was really hard for me to do. And when I told him, he's like, I don't care. I don't care.

Whatever. Like, it's, it's no big deal. And I don't know. It's just, it's just, it's, it's, hard to get past that for me. And I think it's really fabulous that you have, like, recognized that and took a step back. Well, it also comes down to therapy, years of therapy. That helps, because in therapy, I learned that my thoughts lied to me. You know, the thoughts that I'm thinking that come into me can lie to me. And for so long, I believed everything that came into my head. And I didn't question my thoughts. Yeah. And I just want to point out here that both of you guys have worked out relationships with money

and your spouse that are healthy and work in the context of your relationship, right? You know, like Mindy, you know, in your case, you've, whether, you know, while this is 100% what you love to do and are willing to do, you're willing to move into a dilapidated house and spend your own time and effort fixing the house up and then resell it later for. hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? I think that that entitles you to a two-hundred-dollar purse when you want it in relationship with that, right? And Allison, you guys have a little bit of a tighter budget and maybe at least at first did not have access to some of those really

meaningful ways to leverage your wealth. And so the answer had to be disciplined and coming up with this reserve that you could spend as you wished whenever you wanted on it, right? And so that's wonderful. That's what you needed at those times in your relationships. And as time goes on and you become millionaire educators over the next couple years, those dynamics are going to change and you're going to have a different set of options when it comes to spending guilt-free in those types of things over time. Exactly. It's a journey. It changes. And I think so many people think that where they are now is where they're going to be forever. And it doesn't have to be that way. And that's what I thought, you know, eight or eight, nine years ago. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most

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That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. So you mentioned that you said, hey, if we spend this money, we're not going to be able to reach our goals? What are your goals or what were your goals as soon as you became debt-free and what are they today and how have they evolved? So when we became debt-free, our goal was to save the money. We didn't have any idea of saving the money. We didn't have a plan. We just said,

we want to save. That's it. We want to save. We had our eyes so long. We were so focused on paying off debt for so long that we just said we want to save. So we set up some retirement accounts. We set up a college savings account. Now, I'm no longer teaching. I work on my business full time, but my husband does have a pension, and we don't get a say in that. It just automatically comes out. We don't have any say in what it goes to. It's just there.

But we set up some savings goals, and we realized, and this might shock y'all, is that we felt like because we then in turn were saving so much money that we weren't able to enjoy life. we were coming up short every month on our budget. And I'm talking, this is in the past year. In the past year, we're coming up short every month on our budget. It wasn't me going out spending too much money at Ulta. I promise this time. That was not the case.

And when we looked at our savings, I said, Matt, we're saving so much money, which is wonderful. And I love saving money. However, this isn't allowing us to enjoy our family time. This isn't allowing us to enjoy our life. Like, can we cut back? And I know that sounds crazy. can we cut back a little bit on the savings, still save a lot, but cut back and give ourselves a little bit of family fund money? Because what we were missing, this summer we got into camping a lot, we're going camping, we drive long distances, we take our kids on these trips, we get them outdoors.

And it's a big, passionate thing for our family to be able to do this. And we weren't having enough money to go on these camping trips, and they don't cost a lot. we're not talking about $1,000 a month for this family spending money. I just said, can we just cut it back a little bit and adjust and then give more? Because we were saving so much, we weren't able to give more. So we about six or seven months ago, we went to a socially distant dinner where it was just us. I brought my computer.

And we had about a two-hour talk where we dive deep into our finances, which we had not done in a while together. And we talked about our goals. we talked about our dreams. We talked about how we didn't want to just save, save, save, but we wanted to give back to charities that mean something to us. And we talked about which charities that are and why they mean to us. And we talked about saving for kids college fund.

And is this enough right here? And we revamped our normal budget so that we also have money right now to live a life we love and to be able to take some of those trips, be able to do some of those things with our family. because as much as sometimes my kids drive me crazy, which they do, I only have them with me here for a moment of time. And I'm not using that to justify. I know people use that all the time to justify not saving for retirement. They use that all the time to justify going into debt. But that's not what the case is. The cases that I wanted us to have about $300 a month specifically for family

experiences. What wonderful. And so what was your kind of like when you say you're saving, What do you mean by that? Is that going into the bank account? Is that going into an investment fund? What does that specifically mean? So we do have some money going into an investment fund. We have money going into a college, kids college fund. We actually saved up money into a high-year-old savings account and then turned around and bought a car, used car and cash earlier this year. So money was being saved for that. And now we're actually starting to increase our emergency fund more. Okay. So you spend four years accumulating this this cash at a pretty, I guess three to three and a half years or something like that since you came out of debt, accumulating this cash. And your position now is you have a very strong emergency reserve. It sounds like you've got these funded accounts for retirements, a paid off car. Do you have any other assets at this point when you have this conversation?

No. We are working. I mean, we love to pay off the house one day. We do have a mortgage. So that is something that we'd like. And honestly, I'm still learning and my husband is still learning more about investing because for so long our focus was paying off debt, we're actually starting the process of learning more so that way we can be more hands on. Because just like paying off debt is a small season in our life, that small season of not sacrifice, but paying off debt, the season of growing wealth is going to be longer. And so we do want to be more informed, more aware of what's happening with our money so that way it can grow. Okay, wonderful. I love that you had a money date. What do you think, Mindy?

I love the money date. The money date is so important for getting on the same page and then staying on the same page. Spending an extra $5 here, there is no big deal. But when it starts to add up, it's $5 this week and $5 a next week and then it's 10 and then it's 15. And then all of a sudden your budget's all out of whack. All of the couples that we have interviewed, the most successful couples on the same page financially and growing towards financial freedom, have a moment. money date, a regularly scheduled money date. Weekly, I think, is too early, I'm sorry, stop sign. Weekly, I think, is too frequent except in the beginning. Like, if you do it for a month, weekly for a month, and then biweekly for a couple of months, and then, you know, once a month, or even once a quarter. I think Christine and Bryce sit down once a quarter and revisit. J.L. Collins and his wife sit down once a year and revisit. But it's every single X amount of time

they are getting together and having a conversation and just keeping it present and being conscious about where their money's going together as a couple. It isn't one person saying, you have to do it this way because that is like you said, I don't want to be told what to do. Right. Anybody else, I super don't want to be told what to do. So, you know, I want us to do this together. That's fabulous. And can I make a suggestion for the money date? For people who have a spouse who don't want to have a money date because we do have weekly, I call them family business meetings, but they cover just very, very just basic spending, just, you know, oh, this is, you know, oh, we have this much until paid it, that kind of stuff. And like, what are our weekly meal plan,

who's cooking the meals and activities? So we do that every Sunday night. And then once a year, we have a big goal setting meeting where we talk about our goals we have for the year. And this is separate, it's this finance goals, but we also have family. goals, faith goals, and then we even set goals with our kids. We talk about with our kids, like our six-year-old sets goals. And it might be, you know, read a book, you know, read a book independently or it might be something like that. But even as a young, when our kids were young, we would set goals for them. Like we want Evan to be potty trained by this year. We want, you know, him to recognize all letters. So we would do that. But the way I was able to get my

husband to start this because he did not want to have this meeting was it was while we were traveling for Christmas and it was in the car because he couldn't escape me. And that is how it started. I would wait. And so now we have this tradition where if we're traveling for Christmas, which now we live close to family, so I'm not going to be able to do this. But we would have these five-hour trips. And our kids would hear us talking about it. And I would open up the notes app on my phone. And I have our goals from years past to say, okay, what is it that you want to do? What is it that you want to do? in terms of finances. How much do you want to have saved this year? What do we want to save for? All of these things. And he could not escape me. Because if I try to do it at the house,

there's going to be a football game on, you know, there's always these distractions. But when you're in the car, they can't escape you. And it's good for kids to hear these conversations as well. Sounds both wonderful and terrifying. Thank you. That's a great tip. Financial ambush. But yeah, no, that's true. He can't escape. Hey, let's just talk. Maybe you set them up to know, hey, we're going to have this conversation in the car. Well, now he knows. Now he knows. One time I tried talking to him about it beforehand and he said, hey, I don't want to talk about this now.

I'm prepared to talk about it in the car. Like, he was like, don't be pushing this on me now. I know it's happening in the car. And so he knows now every year we have these conversations. It happens on our long car rides. So we're actually, we're going somewhere actually this Christmas. So maybe we'll have that conversation then as well. but it's usually in the car.

So how much do you think you're going to save this year, net of the 36, after you pull out the $3,600 or $300 a month for family experiences? Oh, goodness. This year has been crazy. This year has been unprecedented. So it's different. You know, we did buy a car. We're still saving.

I would say, we aim to save $2,000 a month among different savings goals. Oh, that's good. That's $24,000 a year on a college, on a teacher salary. Yes. Well, so he's a teacher and then I run my own business, but I pay myself what I made as a teacher. So I still pay myself my normal salary. We didn't change anything as my, you know, I let money sit in my business savings as well. But I still pay myself what I made.

The difference, because we are able to still live a little more extravagant life, is that my youngest son went into kindergarten. So that daycare savings really does help. No more of that preschool tuition or daycare savings or daycare payments. Wonderful. And I'm really excited for you, Allison, to see what you guys think through when you, you know, after you've done a little bit more research on investing and kind of get a framework around that because you guys are in such good shape,

I think, in terms of your accumulation rates here. I mean, that's that's $24, $25,000 per year in savings. You can do some real damage with that in terms of whether it's stock investing or even buying real estate in those types of things. So I'm interested to see where you settle and what you come up or building or reinvesting in your now business. You've got a lot of really good options and a really strong position. So.

And it sounds like that's about that's about to improve even more with kids going to entering school age. Yes. So we're excited. I asked my husband if he would ever invest in real estate. He said no. So we're working on that. You know, got to plant the seat early. You know, that takes time to be able to get him on board with something like that. All right. Well, because it's bigger pockets, we'll just say, yeah, there can be some advantages for teachers, for example, in real estate investing. Oh, yes. You could buy one at the beginning of the summer and fix it up during that summer and stabilize it, then repeat in the next year.

And that right there is a selling point because he, He loves building. He loves doing things. He loves working with his dance. He said his job. I said, if you could leave teaching and work with me one day, what would you do? He said, I don't want to work with you. What I would do is I would leave teaching. He said, I would leave teaching and I would completely remodel our house on my own. That is his goal. So actually, like, that is his dream. That is-me introduced you to a little concept called the live-in flip. Yes. So that is his dream is to remodel our house on it to learn everything, to learn electrical, to learn plumbing. He wants to do it. And then I said, well, you could do that for other homes. You could help people. We could buy a house and you

could flip it. He said, yes, and I'll practice on ours. I was like, ooh. He can come practice on mine. I'm doing everything. And he's right. So here's the deal. If you can take your own house and increase it in value the way that your husband seems interested in doing it, you got to be smart make sure that each improvement is actually increasing the value of the property. And that's where you could go and talk to a couple of investors. But that's really powerful because if you've lived in the place for two years or two or more years, you can sell the place and not pay any capital gains on the profit. So it's really smart in a lot of ways to start with a live-in flip, which is Mindy's

whole schick here that she's done a bigillion times. And it's an incredibly powerful way to build wealth. And then if you can apply that to real estate, you can flip a dilapidated rental property, turn it into a habitable one, and rent it out or sell it for a profit. You'll pay taxes on the sale, though, if it's a true flip. Right. Well, and I think he would love that. I really do. I don't want to sell our house. I love our house. I love our neighborhood. But he is a very much a hands-on person, loves to build, loves to fix things. The other month, we had like a really tight month, and he wanted to do some stuff with the house. I said, here's $50. You do what you need to do.

And he was like, I get 50. He was so excited to go to Home Depot, $50 and do things to fix up our house. I mean, he found ways to make it stretch. But I'm telling you, he would, I'm telling you, and he is cheap. He is, he is very, I don't want to say he's cheap. He is mindful of everything. He wants to do it himself. He wants to change the car well himself.

He wants to fix cars himself. He's very handy. And so he would actually, I think really love to buy a property, flip it and do all of the above. He just doesn't know it yet. So that's what I'm working on now. Oh, so I've got a book to send you. It's called Burr, buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat.

And that's where you take and you buy an ugly house. You rehab it. You put a tenant in place. You rent it for a year. And then you pull out all your money in an ideal burr. You pull out every dollar you have into that property. it still cash flows afterwards, and then you take that money,

you recycle it and put it into the next one and do it again. Yeah. So. I think he would like that, but I think he doesn't realize that yet. Wow, maybe he should get a book for Christmas called Burr. Maybe he should.

Maybe that'll make its way under the tree. Well, we'll send you a few potential books here. Okay. It won't break your budget. So we'll just go ahead and send them for free in your favorite format. But another idea, here just because I'm getting excited about this is if he wants to work on your own house, there's a way to leverage that as well. So let's say your house is worth, I'm making this up,

$250,000. Okay. If he improves it and you get somebody to appraise it for, let's call it, $350,000, well, now you could theoretically pull out $100,000 in the form of a home equity line of credit. And so if that was a goal, if that was a goal, is to practice on your personal house and learn those goals as a fun project, that now you could potentially use that as a seed money to invest in real estate or other investments or for the business, as long as you're careful about that, you know,

making sure that it is being put to good use if you take the money out. But that's another way to think about it if you don't want to sell the place. I know, we just got to get him. I don't know if he needs to do it full time. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I know he has summers where he is bored out of his mind. Oh my God, send him to me.

I'm telling you, he has to have a project on spring break. I'll find a piece of furniture. I'll say, build it. And every project, he gets to buy a new tool. So he gets really excited about projects because then he gets to buy a new tool. So it's, see, I'm not the only spender in this marriage. Man, there's no, there's a, it seems like there's a lot of good possibilities ahead of you. Yes.

I agree. Well, this seems like a great place to start talking about where you are currently in, You had made a comment that you want to learn more about investing, but that you are currently saving. Where are you putting your money currently? So we do have two Roth IRAs. We do have my husband, yes, we do have my husband's pension. We do have college fund. And then we do have a high yield savings account. We are trying to save specifically in a high yield savings account and build up our emergency fund even more, especially now that I am a full-time business owner. I do have business savings to help cover things, but it's just just in case. You never know. So that's currently

what we're doing. However, I have been reading and learning, and I'm the annoying person that when I read and learn and I highlight everything, I go to my husband and I'm like, did you know? And then I read from the book, which I'm sure he hates, but that's me. So, but I am reading and learning more about investing. And I'm really excited because I'm thinking that I want to almost give myself an investing allowance, where kind of like you have your spending allowance, giving myself an investing allowance and say, okay, this is what I'm going to invest every month and just practice. It's just like practicing. It doesn't have to be a ton of money, but being able to learn more about it by putting money in and watching it grow and learning just even more. So that's something I'm

be talking to him about as well, because I know that we have a lot to learn, and I'm willing to do the work to learn. You know, I find your story particularly interesting because, you know, most of the people we've interviewed, I would say the vast majority, maybe the only exception, actually, who is saved for multiple years in a row with extreme discipline and aggressively and kept that strict budget without an express goal of that being. investing and creating, you know, long-term passive income. Have we, have we interviewed other folks with that mentality, Mindy? Oh, I don't have a good memory. I don't think so. I think that people put money into investments, but they don't save for investments. Well, what is your why, Allison?

Why are you continuing to be so disciplined with your spending, if not to create passive income or invest the money and build wealth and those types of things? What's the motivator there? So I think the motivator there is almost like a limited mindset. And like, I'm going to call myself out on this. A limited mindset still that I need to break through. The motivator is almost just like having cash on hand just in case. I have a lot of these like just what if, what if moments? What if, you know, my husband loses his job?

What if my business fails? My son had an emergency surgery when he was three years old and it landed us in the hospital for a week. and those bills covered our entire emergency fund, even negotiated down. You know, we had to use our entire emergency fund. So I have a lot of limiting beliefs and fears when it comes to money that I'm still working through, which is why I have to question my thoughts. I have to question, you know, is it realistic? And thankfully, because I am emotional and money is emotional, I have a husband who is not

as emotional as me and he's more realistic. And so when I do have a fear related to money or related to anything, I can go to him and he can say, okay, is this realistic? Is this fear? Like, is this really going to happen? And I'm able to work through my thoughts and my fears. So that way, I don't fall into them and live in those fears and make decisions so emotionally when it comes to money. But I can tell you right now, when it comes to saving money, we have had some, some situations come up in our life that have required quick cash. And so I want to have the quick cash on hand. No, absolutely. And I think that's a requirement of building wealth, frankly, is that everybody needs to have, I think, a strong emergency fund, whatever strong means

to them, whether it's three months, six months, 12 months, more or even a little bit less, depending on how things go. But it's just everyone needs to have that strong emergency fund. But once you've got that emergency fund, the cash on hand, the surplus, you know, I'm interested to see how your motivations change as you do more digging into this concept of investing, financial independence, retiring early. Those types of models can be really powerful motivators to keep you accelerating your progress there. So I'm really excited to see what you uncover there. Well, thank you. I want to chime in with a couple of suggestions to steer you towards the first one is the 457 plan.

Your husband as an educator has access to or should have access to a 457 plan, which is like the 401K, but so much better. The 401K, the contribution limits for 2020 are 19,500. I think it's the same for 2021, but I can't remember and it doesn't matter. It's only going to be like 20,000 if they increase the limits. It's not a huge deal. But either way, that's, I mean, that's still a lot of money, $19,000. When you put it into a 401K, essentially you can't access it until you're retired.

There are ways around it, but for the sake of this argument, you can't. When you put it into a 457 plan, you can access it as soon as you separate employment. And that's all that I know about it. I know enough just to be dangerous. It doesn't affect me so I don't have to do a lot of research on it. But luckily, the millionaire educator who was on episode 124, knows all about it. He talked about it. And he actually used to change jobs and money into the 457 separate.

And that's tax deferred, isn't it, Scott? So or tax? I want to say yes, that it's tax deferred. It reduces your taxable income. Yes, it does. But then you can access it. So again, I just know enough to be dangerous, but I know 457 is better than 401K for your husband. Right.

For you as a business owner, do you have any employees other than yourself? No. Oh, okay. So let me introduce you to the self-directed solo 401K. Okay. As a business owner, you can put in your... I feel like you should have a product here that you're holding up. Yeah.

Yeah, we get a big commission each time. It's a 401K. It's a 401K, so Allison, the person can put in her contribution limits of $19500. And Allison, the business owner can too. Allison, the business can match your salary up to 25% up to $52,000 or $54,000 total going into your 401K every year. So if you have some super successful business year, you can jumpstart and throw all this money into this retirement account. Your husband can put more money into his retirement accounts, especially that 457. and it's just a couple of things.

I'm very excited about this. I'm trying to calm down. It's a couple of things that you should look into because there are a lot of options for, and it's not just educators. I think it's all government employees, Scott. Again, the 457 is it doesn't, I'm not qualified for it, so I haven't done a lot of research. But episode 124, and who did we first hear that from Jamila Sufront?

Ah, Jamila. I think that was episode 37. She's so wonderful. I bet it is because. With her husband's an educator. Yes. Jamila Sue Front, episode 39, talked about the 457 plan, and I was super excited about it. You can hear me learning about it for the first time there.

And then the self-directed solo 401K, there's a company called Sense Financial. Dimitri Fomachenko is the head of the company? Or anyway, he's my rep, and he knows everything there is to know about the self-directed solo 401K. He can walk you through it. And so, you know, when you're ready for that. But those are two things that you should definitely look into because they are, available to you and not everybody and so much tax advantages. Yes.

Investing in those. Yes. Okay, well, that was a really long financial scam. Yeah, that was great. I think it was fantastic. And I think what was interesting, again, is just the fact that you're new to investing and learning about, which I think is wonderful.

And I'm just, again, I'm just really excited to see how you harness all this stuff because the pillar is spending less than you bring it. Yes. You're doing a beautiful job. We have that down. We have that down. So hopefully, and, you know, I can come back on and update you on our progress. Oh, yeah. Of course.

I see a path with ease for you guys becoming, building $500,000 in household net worth within 10 years easily. Maybe significantly much more, significantly more than that. Well, thank you. A couple things go well. So this is exciting. One last question for the financial scan is, in terms of monthly spending, how much cash do you keep on? hand. I'm not looking for an exact dollar figure. I just want to know like three months spending, nine months spending, 48 months spending. So right now we have about four months spending, but I want to increase it to about eight months, eight months spending is where I'm comfortable.

But my husband, he's okay with four months spending. So it's very much a, you know, there's some compromise there. One of the things that we do in our marriage when it comes to some of this type of stuff is who feels more passionate? You know, I feel more passionate about increasing the spending, and it's not going to hurt us to increase, or sorry, not increase our spending. I feel more passionate when it comes to increasing our emergency fund, our savings, whereas he doesn't, but it's not going to hurt us to increase that. So he's like, okay, we'll go ahead and you feel more strongly about it. We'll reach that amount. So that's, that's what we're working on right now. That's an excellent compromise tip. When you feel really

passionate about it, you should win. But when you don't feel really passionate about it, you should let them win. Yeah. And when isn't the right word. No, when is not the right word, but compromise. There are things that he feels a lot more strongly about. And I'm just like, you clearly are more passionate about this than I am. I don't really care as much as you do.

So, you know, we'll go ahead and do it. But it's never anything that's like detrimental to our family or our marriage or our finances. You know, it's never like, I want to go out and, you know, spend $1,000 just because I'm feeling sad today. It's nothing ever like that. Love it, love it. Yeah, and you know, when you're compromising with your spouse, when you're working on money with your partner, it's not you against them. It's the two of you against the world. Absolutely.

Okay, Scott, I think we're ready for the famous four. Let's do it. Allison, these are the same four questions. We ask of all of our guests. Number one, what is your favorite finance book? So my favorite book is Grow Your Money by Bolus Akumbi because it's just really good. explaining everything, like the basics of investing, explaining everything. And then what I love is that she gives you action steps at the end of every single chapter. Because when I read a book,

sometimes I'm like, okay, well, what do I do now? I like it whenever people sometimes will lay it out for you. Okay, now go take this action step. I feel like it's a lot more action driven. I feel like she wrote it very well. And it's just a great, great book. Awesome. What was your biggest money mistake? Oh, goodness. So my biggest money. money mistakes goes back to my husband and I being very emotional and impulsive with our money. When we were on our honeymoon, we bought a timeshare. We went to one of those, I know, I know. And we actually bought a portion of a time share. So we spent $4,000 whenever we were on our honeymoon because we got roped in and we thought, we're going to live our best lives. We're not having kids

anytime soon. This is going to be great. And the next day, I said, this was a mistake. We have three days to cancel and go back on it. Let's cancel. And he said, no, we have 30 days. They said 30 days. I said, no, they said three. He said, we'll just wait. We have 30 days. So we get back from our honeymoon. We realize we're pregnant soon after. And I said, we need to call and cancel. You said we have 30 days. And my husband called, and it was three days. So we ended up paying $4,000. And this is not even actually included in our $11,000. and we did not use it one time. So that was our biggest money mistake.

And it was very much just this impulsive, emotional decision that we, I wish I could go back and say, Alison, pull yourself together. Come on. You don't need this. Don't even go. We haven't heard that one before. Yeah. Don't even go to the timeshare presentation.

I know. Don't even do it. They're so good at selling. I mean, if you want to learn how to get sold or how to like the. of selling. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a big, a big mistake. That is the first time we've heard that one, Scott. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? So I feel like people who are just starting out, it can be really overwhelming and scary to look at your money. And so my best piece of advice is to remember that you don't have to be an expert in finances to become an expert in your finances.

And that becoming an expert in your finances looks like tracking your spend. and knowing your money habits and knowing where your money is going. Because when you become an expert in your spending, then you can create a realistic budget, keyword realistic, that you can actually stick to and create money goals that you can reach. That's fabulous. That is, yeah, because my budget is not going to make Allison happy. It's not going to make Scott happy.

It makes me happy. Yes, exactly. That's the only person that has to work for. That's awesome. I know for the most difficult question, What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Okay, I thought about this one. I don't go to parties right now.

And I'm not much of a joke teller, but I do have a funny story. So we have a three-legged dog. His name is Joey. He's had only three legs about half of his life. And he lost his leg, one of his front legs, whenever my son was about one years old. So whenever my oldest son was about five years old, he's petting Joey right where his other leg used to be.

And I said, Evan, did you know that's where Joey's other leg used to? to be and he stopped and he turned to me and he said, dogs don't have three legs? And I was like, oh no, most dogs have four legs. I'm glad I said something. So I pictured sending him off to kindergarten and like they have a math problem about there's two dogs and how many legs do they have? And he's like six.

Oh my gosh. But what a sweet story of accepting. things the way they are and not questioning it. He just thought all dogs had three legs. We had one dog and we weren't around a lot of dogs or the dogs he were around. He didn't notice. My uncle had a three-legged dog. They're sweet.

There's a pun there that I'm missing, but I'm sure there is a pun there. He bounces around, you know, whenever he walks, he's always seeing things just with his head bouncing up and down. and he can't go on long walks like he used to. But he's happy and gets more attention than ever. There you go. Okay, Alison, please tell people where they can find out more about you. So you can grab free printables or even a free budget course at InspiredBudget.com.

Follow me on Instagram at InspireBudget. Or if you're already listening to this podcast, go to This Is Awkward Podcast, where I have a co-host, Chris Browning, and we actually walk through awkward money situations and stories. And we give you advice on how to deal with those situations. situations without losing your friends and family in the process. That's awesome. I didn't even know about that podcast. I love Chris. I know. It's really fun. It was actually a project that Chris came to me and said, hey, I went to start a podcast.

I was like, you're crazy. You have a full-time job. You have another podcast. And we started it. We launched it last March. And it's been wonderful. We actually have people call in and share their awkward money situations. And then we respond to them. And it's just really lighthearted. It's very fun. It's not educational at all, but I promise you will laugh and you will love it. Not educational at all. You're not going to learn. You're not going to learn, but it's entertainment. It's fun. It's funny. It's actually situations that you would deal with in your real life. And we give somewhat decent advice all the time. Okay. So the name of the podcast is this is awkward? This is awkward. Okay. Well, I should be the host of that one.

Queen of the awkward. Well, if you have a money story, an awkward money story, you could always call in. I am now racking my brain. What's my most awkward money story? I'm totally calling it. Okay, awesome. Allison, this was fabulous. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you for having me, Mindy and Scott. I really had a good time. Fantastic show. We really appreciate it. Okay, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Holy cow, Scott. That was an awesome episode.

What did you think? I really enjoyed it. It was a really refreshing perspective. It's incredible to see her discipline and how she has come to, you know, with alongside her husband, really come to master her emotional relationship with money in a really, really healthy way that's moving the family towards their goals. That said, I thought it was even more interesting that they didn't even have the why, the motivator behind their incredible financial discipline of building financial independence or, accumulating assets with which to invest. Once they layer that in, they're going to be off to the races, in my opinion. I thought that was a fascinating concept because to me, there's no point in accumulating cash. You know, inflation is just going to eat away my cash. Why would I, why would I just pile up a big pile there? It's all about the investing and beating inflation and building a position capable of sustaining myself in perpetuity. I am going to go out on a limb and say that as CEO of Bigger Pockets,

you probably make slightly more than a middle school band teacher. I would say that's probably right. Without being part of the financial picture at Bigger Pockets, I'm going to say that maybe you have a dollar or two more an hour than the teachers that we spoke to today. However, I am also going to hit on my famous mantra, personal finances personal. And there are people who feel that they have to pay off their mortgage right

away. As soon as I can get that debt paid off, I'm going to pay that off. And I don't agree with that. But for me, it's okay to have a mortgage. For them, maybe they couldn't sleep at night until they got their mortgage paid off. Or it helps them sleep better because they know they're working towards paying it off. So personal finance is personal. And for Allison to choose that, I think is a great choice for her. And I'm super excited. Like you said, she's going to be really wealthy someday. and I completely agree with that. When you lay the financial foundations, you can't help but be successful.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I'm not trying to question her why currently. I just think that I found it fascinating that because she hasn't yet layered in some of these concepts that perhaps you and I and many investors who are listening to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast take for granted that those are, to me,

a really exciting additional and perhaps a very powerful motivator for her and her family, which I think will be fun to watch as that develops. I'm super excited about the 457 plan for them, and I'm so excited for her to learn about the self-directed solo 401K. We have one, Carl and I do, because he is self-employed, and it's just unbelievable how much money you can throw into your retirement accounts through that. Definitely two avenues. I really hope that she pursues. Awesome. Should we get out of here, Scott? Let's do it. episode 154 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen and we are saying goodbye with love, peace and chicken

grease. Because she's from Texas. They eat fried chicken in Texas, don't they? Yeah, I'm sure they do. They eat fried chicken in Nashville too. It's just cool. Yes, yes. Oh, Nashville hot chicken.

Yes. Well, they eat chicken. They eat fried chicken everywhere. I just think love piece and chicken grease is funny. That is funny. I love it. Okay, thanks for listening. Thank you.