BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 292: Mindy & Carl’s Spending Summary: March Money Madness Edition

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Financial independence is not a new concept to Carl and Mindy Jensen. For as long as they’ve been together, Carl and Mindy have been open and upfront about their financial situations. When they learned about the FIRE movement, they knew they had an all-time goal to hit. Fortunately for them, they hit it earlier than they needed, but has their current spending forced them to recalculate what it takes to hit financial freedom? Welcome back to Carl and Mindy's Spending Summary, or as we’re naming it this month, March Money Madness. Carl and Mindy had a few big-ticket items on this month’s expense tracker, namely things like a lovely trip to Seattle and a brand new couch (Mindy bought something new!?). As the months fly by, Mindy has noticed an “over budget” trend, forcing her to either recalculate her FI number or get back into budget mode. If you’ve gone over budget like Mindy this month, don’t fret! Tracking your expenses and keeping up to date on your budget will still help you achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. Just be extra mindful in April!  In This Episode We Cover Frugal vacations vs. relaxing retreats and how to plan for added travel spending Gas prices, utility bills, and using solar to lower your cost of living  The benefits of budgeting and how expense tracking keeps you frugal Having “money respect” for your partner when sharing finances  Accounting for big “one-time” purchases like furniture or trips  How to save money on next month’s grocery bill (look in your pantry!)  And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-292 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 292, Finance Friday edition, March Money Recap Edition. Wait, should we call it? They've got that basketball tournament. I'm not a big sports fan, but what is that? March Madness. So this should be March Money Madness, right? Oh, yes, because, shocking nobody.

We blew our budget again. Oh, wait, spoiler. Anyway, welcome to the show. We have a good money relationship and a good relationship, but money. We don't really put restrictions on what each other can purchase, but just out of respect, if I want to buy something that I might think is a little bit ridiculous for sitting next to some fancy stereo equipment I bought, I'll run it past you, and I know you're probably not going to say no, but I still feel like it's our money and I still need to let you know about

it. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We have combined finances. You said the R word. It's respect. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Joining me today is Carl Jensen, also known as my husband, also known as Mr. 1500 from 1500 Days.com, the comedic genius behind the dinosaurs and fart jokes on 1500 days. And every once in a while he'll talk about Tesla. Oh, wait, all the time he'll talk about Tesla's. Did you do anything fun last weekend, Carl?

I did. I got a ticket to the, I call it the golden ticket to the big Tesla factory. opening in Austin, which was, I still can't believe I was able to go. It was so cool. We could just do a whole episode on that. Can we record for four hours? We probably have to be a two-parter at that point. Don't turn off the show because we're not actually going to do that. He went to the Cyber Rodeo. Yay. He's got a video about it. Yay. I'll link to it in the show notes, which can be found at BiggerPockets.com slash Money Show 292. So you can see his recap of the Cyber Rodeo. shout out to JT for getting Carl into the rodeo.

And thank you again for not having a ticket so I didn't have to go. JT, I love you. In a Tesla way. Okay, before we jump into today's show and tell you all about the money mistakes that we made this month, March money mistakes. We could just do M's M's the whole time. Mindy's March Money Mistakes. Before we jump into that, I want to share with you that Bigger Pockets has a new podcast. And yes, it's about real estate because they all are except this one, which is kind of about

real estate anyway. But we have a new podcast with Dave Meyer. You might remember Dave Meyer from the Deal of the Day show a few years ago. His new podcast is called On the Market. And it is a perfect confluence of real estate information and spreadsheet nerdery because Dave is a huge data nerd. He uses his big data analyst brain to dive deep into numbers and real estate trends to keep you up to date with this ever-changing market. But it's not just Dave. We have a whole panel joining him, Kathy Fetke, Jamil Damjee, James Danard, and the Henry Washington. So the show is called On the Market. It released this past week, and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. Normally on a Finance Friday, I am joined with Scott Trench, who helps me. And together,

we give not advice, suggestions, research opportunities, learning opportunities for our guests. And we have to give a disclaimer. And I haven't memorized that disclaimer yet, but the contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice and whatever else. You should consult tax accountants and attorneys for your real advice. So you have the disclaimer from all the other episodes. and we're not giving advice anyway. We're just telling you all about our mistakes. So should we jump into our mistakes?

Scott Trench sounds like Scott Tesla. Would he change his name? Would he consider that? Scott Trench doesn't sound anything like Scott Tesla. That was a horrible joke, but a very good substitute for Scott because he also does very bad jokes. But Scott has joked around how,

I don't remember how the conversation was set up. We were talking about last names, and he said, my last name is a hole in the ground. So Scott Tesla sounds like futuristic and all that. I think it would be a good publicity stunt for him and a good change. Okay, Scott, let's reach out to you and ask you if you will change your name to Scott. Well, is Elon Musk behind this or is he just going to change his name for no reason? Does Elon Musk want Scott to change his name?

Yeah. Like, is he going to give him anything for doing it? Or is it just Scott going to be, my name is Scott Tesla from now on? Yeah, no. I don't think he'll get anything out of it. Oh, I think the chances of Scott. changing his name have just plummeted to zero. Okay. Well, I'm sad, but it's okay.

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your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in a needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it.

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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 Liener 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 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.

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what we actually spent for the month. Do you remember what the approximate number is? Like, almost 10,000. It's like 9,900, 9,946 or something like that. Yeah, I think that's right. So, yeah, we almost spent 10,000. That sounds, even though I knew it ahead of it. of time. That sounds a little bit here. Yeah, I like the nine, a whole lot better than I like the 10.

Well, even that, it seems like too much. I'm frugal. I've got, for many years of my life, I made less than 9,000 the entire year. Now we spent more than that in one month. In one month, but that 60% of that 9,000 came from two categories. Yeah, and part of that was an experiment. So first, we bought a new couch. You can't see it. It's upstairs. But it's beautiful, and it fits the space that we were looking for and we haven't bought a new couch. I think what if that's like a third couch? Oh, the orange couch. That's our fourth couch being married for 20 years. And we know people who get new couches a lot more frequently than that. Maybe four is a lot. We only had the orange couch for a little time. That was really big though. Yeah. And that was only 200 bucks too. That's true. That

was used. The other ones were new though. Yeah. But we have been looking for a nice couch. We found a couch at Macy's. Oh, that was a funny story. We were at Macy's. Both of us have 800 plus credit scores. And we go in and the woman at the couch department said, if you apply for a credit card, you can get $100 off. And we're like, sure, we'll save $100. Here's my information. And they said, sorry, Mindy, you don't qualify for a Macy's credit card. And I was like, for real. Okay, whatever. And then I have a job. He doesn't have a job. I'm sorry. He's retired, unemployed, and he said, okay, well, I'll try. And then he doesn't get a credit card either. So thank you, Macy's. We don't get a credit card for your company. And I thought that was really

weird that we didn't get approved. Yeah, do you remember what the reason was? No. Oh, I do. It said, so the reason they wouldn't give it to you was because they said they couldn't verify some of the information. And that might be because we moved. I don't know. We moved two years ago. Yeah, I don't know. But I can't. I've opened credit card since that. Akeen denied us for the same reason. IKEA and Macy's, I'm sure we love you. Bigger Pucks would still love to have you to show a sponsor.

But I just, and the reason they denied me was because they said I was associated with you. Can you believe that? Wow. Look at you, casting aspersions upon my character. No, I just made that up. Of course, that's not true. I got denied for the same reason. It said they could not verify some of our information.

But, yeah, we have solid credit. That's so strange. But thank you, Macy's. the woman felt bad and gave us the discount anyway, so I appreciate you, and I remember her name, but couch employee, you are great, thank you for a hundred bucks off. Anyway, the couch is perfect. It's exactly what we wanted, but it caused our household spending to go over budget, and we had budgeted $2,000 for the household category because we knew we were going to be getting the couch, and the couch was like $1,800, and I don't know what we spent

extra money on, but. Toilet paper and toilet brushes, probably. Oh, shut up. toilet brushes have the wrong category. Wait, I bought a bidet. I haven't installed it yet, but... Oh, but you haven't installed it. No, I'm going to get to it any day.

I know you're looking forward to taking it for a test for Ivan. Oh, ew, stop. This is my show. You can talk about that on your show. I forgot to say, he has a podcast, too. It's called the Mile High Fire podcast. Maybe the bidet company will sponsor Bigger Pockets money. Bigger Pockets, Bidays. Bigger bidets?

Shush. Edit that part out. No, this is... This is good. That's why I'm here. Okay, the other category that we spent, that contributed to 60% of our spending was travel. Travel, we went to Seattle for spring break, which is cold. But anyway, it was still beautiful. We went and visited some friends who were getting ready to move here.

And before they had bought a house here, we had already planned our visit there. And it was a lot of fun. and we have always vacationed frugally, buying breakfast and lunch at the grocery store and maybe doing a very inexpensive dinner or even cooking at home for the dinner. But this time, we decided that we would be less frugal. Yeah, I remember real quick, the last vacation we went on,

we actually brought a cooking appliance with us. Remember this? We brought our air friar with us, and we felt kind of self-conscious carrying it through the lobby, like, oh, what are they going to think? Where we have a cooking implement in the hotel. So we stopped at Costco. We bought chicken nuggets or we bought wings, and we cooked those to have with our pizza

just because that's how we're probably usually not that frugal, but most of the time we are. We'll bring sandwiches or lunch meat by yogurt, stuff like that. We still go out to you occasionally. But this time, we decided to go a nudge. We just let it rip. We took, our friends were nice enough to host us, so we took them out to a really nice dinner. And I think that was almost 200 hours. after beer and appetizers and kids.

There were a lot of us, and then we rented a Tesla, right? And that's a luxurious thing. It came with free charging, but even with that, the savings on fuel, it would have been probably $100 cheaper to rent a fuel car. I rented that on Turro, and car rentals are still expensive, so it wasn't the difference you might think it would be or that it normally would be, but it still was a luxury item. And then we went to that fancy hotel in Friday Harbor,

and we went out to eat an awful lot. So this was an experiment in spending money. So let's do the opposite and see how it works when we just do whatever we want. And how do you think it worked out? I felt very relaxed on our trip. And I don't know if cooking has always made me nervous or not relaxed. But I didn't have to prepare in advance. I didn't have to like start cooking three hours before it was dinner time.

I didn't have to plan ahead or do anything like that. I could just be in the moment and then go out to dinner. And we didn't have to really plan anything. And that part was really, really nice. Yeah, I guess I didn't think of it like that. We were in this beautiful place. So by eating out, we were able to spend more time enjoying the place than than preparing food.

And you made a good point too. We had a little kitchenette in our place, but a lot of those aren't equipped well. Or at all. Yeah. So that would have added to our pain, and you can always get stuff like a frozen pizza, but that's not so great.

So, yeah, would you do it again? What are we going to do for our next trip? What's our next trip? We're going to see your sister, so we'll be staying with family, so that's not really an issue. And then we're going to Camp Mustack. So that's, I think food is provided.

Yeah, we're kind of mustache outside of Seattle. They provide food there. And then we're going to Camp Fi in Campi Rocky Mountain, and food is provided there too. And it's good food. What's our next trip out? Oh, we're going to San Diego before BPCon, Bigger Pocket's Conference, is October 2 to 4 in San Diego. And we are going the week before to just kind of hang out and live. relax before the conference. I don't know what we're going to do there. Maybe we will do

kind of the same thing. Yeah, you forgot our big vacation though. Oh, I forgot we're going to Europe and I don't know anything about Europe. Yeah, you're lucky because I've done some research and I didn't tell you this ahead of time, but I found, I found a brewery there that has, it's a German brewery, it's in Germany. Not that there was a stupid thing to say, but anyway, I like sauerkraut a lot and I found one place that has all these different types of sauerkraut. I don't know if Mindy's as enthusiastic about Sourcrowd as I am, but are you going to try some when in Rome? I don't want to try Sourcrowd. It's probably better there.

I think you'll like it. I bet it's amazing. I'll let you have all of it. I don't want to take it away from you. Is it because of the sour in the name? For a while, Mindy had a mental block where anything that had the name Sour. For a while when I was little. No, what, there was something recently you wouldn't eat.

And then I... Sour brotten? Sour cream. No. Then I called it special cream. Oh, shut up. Okay. We're going off on a tangent.

Okay, let's talk about the wins that we had this month. The thing I want to say about our budget is we spent almost 10 and we had six in. Well, four of that was luxury spending. We didn't have to take the vacation. And 2000 was for a couch. If we would have been diligent, we could have got one on Facebook Marketplace or Boulder, or Boulder Craigslist. That probably would have been bed bug free and probably would have suited us. So if we would have lived on our normal budget, it would have been like $4,000 for the month.

And that includes our mortgage and everything else. Yeah, I think that would have been about right, four or $4,500 depending on, like we did, while we were on vacation, the restaurants out, we put those in the vacation spending instead of in restaurants out. And you, if you want to follow along at biggerpockets.com slash Mindy's budget, you can see exactly where my category. are being spent. And we did go over on restaurant food anyway. So, and we did go over on groceries, but only by a little bit. And I really do feel that $750 at our grocery number. And I'm going to try very hard this month of April to come in under $750 for the groceries. Yeah. Maybe we have to adjust a bit for inflation. Maybe. But right now I want to see, I'm still going to keep that number at $750. Okay.

I did adjust some other numbers in our spending for April and our projected April spending because we are planning a couple of big parties. We are planning a couple of, we're planning to go out to tap rooms more. It's getting nicer where we live and we want to be out and about in the outside doors, in the outdoors. The outside doors, okay. Shut up. But I think what this all comes down to is save on what. doesn't matter so you can spend on what really matters to you. Like I don't really

care about, I guess I do care about toilet paper. I was going to say that you can't get the cheap stuff here. Fingers will go right through it and then that's bad. We have the bidet so soon we won't even need that. Yeah, we're pretty frugal most of our life. We're just unfrugal in these very specific areas. Well, we've gone over budget every single month and we've gone over by a thousand dollars. It's almost like we don't like being told what to do and we're going to spend $1,000 more. But it's always been something weird that's happened. April's our month.

April, we're going to do it. We should have a frugal month. We'll pick a month that's not May because we have a vacation. June, we have a vacation. July, we have a vacation. August, we have a vacation. Okay, so October, you were to hear first. October is super frugal mini month.

And super frugal Carl month. Let's make sure you get in on that super frugality. So, yeah, six months from an hour, whenever that is. But let's look at some of our wins. Gasoline price-wise is going up, but we came in under budget. Yeah, we spent 50 bucks on a tank of fuel, which was kind of shocking. I don't even really look at the price. It is what it is.

You never pump the gas, so that's why you don't work on it. I pump the gas sometimes. Mindy has a superpower that she can bring the car back in such a fashion that it's my turn to drive next and it's got about three miles before it's on fumes. But the gas light's been on for like 20 miles. I really do hate pumping gas. The mileage thing is like negative too. I'm just kidding.

It doesn't go to that. But if it had that, it would do that when you're driving. So we came in under our gas budget. In fact, we came in under budget on most categories. Yeah. There were just five categories that we came in over budget, which kind of stinks. And two of them were the big ones that made. up 60% of the budget. So like you said, this was discretionary spending. We could have stopped.

We could have not gone on vacation. Should the markets have completely tanked? We could have canceled that vacation. We could have not bought the couch. We chose to spend the money. We know we have the money to cover the expenses. So it's not like we're going to be eating beans and rice for the next three months to pay for the couch or to pay for the vacation. And I think that's an important distinction to make. Yeah. 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 tax refund can make the biggest

impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one. personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves

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Project Hail Mary. Only theaters March 20th. Our utilities projection is going down next month because it's getting warmer where we're at. And we have solar panels. Yeah, so the way our city does it, well, first I'll back up a second. What I did is since our city pays the market rate for a, any excess production. I did the panels myself. It would not have made sense to do them. To pay someone to do them, they would have cost like four times as much. But luckily, our city lets them do it

myself and from watching some YouTube videos I was able to figure it out. So anyway, I put toys on as many as we need. And what our city does is with the excess production, they give you a credit towards all your other bills except for the gas bill, which is a separate entity. So it's been sunny out. I mean, we've been producing way more than we've been using. So from here on, out, we should never have an electric water or a sewer bill again. I think the only bill we'll have from here on out is the gas bill, and that's it. I think that is correct. And I do want to point out that even though we aren't going to have utility bills going forward except for the gas bill, which I think is going to be like $130 or $150 a month in the cold months,

But again, I don't know because I don't have the history. And the billing was weird the first couple of months because they charged me a deposit. The repayment on the solar panels is still an extremely long period of time. And our solar panel project was DIY almost the entire thing. what did we have to hire out the electrical panel? Johnny came over to help with the electrical panel upgrade. And Todd came over. Todd's going to be on the show in a future episode.

Todd came over to help you do the installing of the panels. And you went to his house and helped him put on the little cleats. Yeah. And then, of course, Eric and Travis. And who else was that putting the actual panels on? That was it. Yeah. They came over to put the actual panels up on the thing.

But that was more like just friends, helping friends. It wasn't like hiring that out. Yeah. The other thing we paid for was you have to have a structural engineer certify your roof and I think that was $200. Okay. So yeah, that was it. So we were able to DIY it and even then what is it out of pocket was $13,000 and then with the tax credit it's going to be $9,000? Yeah, slightly under $10,000 with the tax credit. So I think the payback period is and we've gone back and forth on this. It's well, I guess we're not exactly. sure what it's going to be, but we spent $1,000 on electric last year. So all that's wiped out and then whatever we managed to put back into the grid.

Yeah, so nine years of paying out is our payback period. And then we will have the excess that we're paying, that we're putting back into the grid. So that will cut down on the payback period a little bit. Or maybe a lot, depending on how much we can generate. Colorado does get a lot of sun. But again, this is, this was our cost. And what was the cost? What was the quote that you got to put the solar panels on? 26,000 after the tax credit for a system that was 50% smaller. Yeah, that's just, that's shady all the way around. First of all, tell me what it's my total

out of pocket. Don't tell me what it is after the tax credit. And I guess it's not shady to quote half the size of what we put on. But I mean, that's twice as a sense. much as what it cost us and for half the system. Yeah, it was a lot more. And don't forget the entertainment value that the solar panels provide us with. I love to watch the meter go backwards. The sun comes out and the thing just starts going crazy. It's awesome, isn't it?

I've mentioned the entertainment value that I have found. Did you hear me talk about it? Oh, we should put a link. Let's put a link. So there's a public website to our solar panels. That will be in the show notes too, unless I get edited right now, which is a strong possibility. No, I'll put a link to the solar panels. You can follow along with Carl and watch the solar panel production.

It's thrilling. Will Scott change his last name to solar panel? Probably not. Will you change your first name to Tesla? Me? No. It'd be kind of cool. Maybe he'll be solar panel trench.

You could be solar panel Jensen. Yeah. If you change your name, I could tell people. people, I've got a Tesla if I cared about those things. Oh, my goodness, stop. And then they'd be like, oh, my mind went to a bad place. This is a PG podcast. So never mind.

Stop. Okay. So let's get back on track, Mr. Let's talk about the purpose of tracking our spending and the benefits that we're finding in tracking our spending. Oh, and this is great because JT. Thank you again for the cyber rodeo JT. JT was asking us about that again like why do we do this and why do we bother with spending our time doing it? Do you think it's been a valuable exercise so far?

I do because it makes me conscious and here I have to choose my words carefully so you don't sound like an ogre. It makes me conscious of what I'm spending because I know that I have to share it with you. I am logging every purchase that I make. So if I don't tell you about it, you'll see it in the credit card reports anyway and ask me, oh, you didn't put this in what was this? And it isn't that I'm trying to hide things from you because you don't care. And it feels weird to say, you know, oh, I have to tell you that I'm going to buy something. I don't have to tell you that I'm going to buy something in that you're tracking, in that you're like limiting my spending. I have to tell you because we're being open and honest with our spending.

So that makes me, at the point of sale, question, is this worth talking about? And it isn't like groceries. You're not questioning me, why did you buy groceries today? Well, because we needed them. It's little weird things that you're asking me about. Why did you go to Taco Bell again this month? Oh, well, because they have the nacho fries out now and they're really good. Yeah, I'll give you a pass on that one.

But, you know, I could drive by Taco Bell 16 times and be like, ooh, nacho fries. And you're going to say, you probably shouldn't be buying nacho fries every day. And you're right. So that helps me. Am I making you sound terrible? No, I don't think so at all. Because I'm not trying to. Yeah.

No, I think you're saying you have to be accountable to the spreadsheet, which transitively, I don't know what word by. And that makes you accountable to me too. It makes... It wasn't the same thing. Like, if I see, how did we spend so much money on this this month? And you will say, oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I bought a new Whatamabab for the car.

Well, we didn't talk about that. What is the Whatamabab for the car? And why do you need it? And you'll explain it. and oh, okay, that's great. Or, hey, maybe we should talk about that kind of thing before you buy it because we really didn't need it. Yeah, I think we have a good money relationship and a good relationship, but money-wise, we don't really put restrictions on what each other can purchase.

But just out of respect, if I want to buy something that I might think is a little bit ridiculous for sitting next to some fancy stereo equipment I bought, I'll run it past you. And I know you're probably not going to say no, but I still feel like it's our money and I still need to let you know about it. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We have combined finances. You said the R word. It's respect. It isn't that I am hoarding the money or lording it over you or not allowing you to spend, just like you aren't hoarding it or lording it over me or not allowing me to spend. It is a mutual respect because it's our money. Hey, I'm going to spend our money on this item that isn't necessary. I don't call you up to ask.

Oh, is it okay if I spend $150 on groceries? I'm going to spend $150 on groceries. And you know that that's fine because we needed groceries or whatever. But it's the little things that are the non-essentials that I feel a need to check in with you about out of respect for us and our money and our relationship. And we do have a good financial relationship because we talk about it all the time. Yeah, including right now. Including right now. And our kids are like, I don't care.

We had a past acquaintance who we knew they would volunteer that they would hide purchases from their spouse. And if you're doing stuff like that, then there's some kind of issue. Either the spouses, there's something toxic going on there. And it might not even be that person's problem. It might be the other person's problem. But if you're not completely honest about stuff like that, yeah, that's not good. And why can't you be? Like, look into yourself.

Why do you feel like you can't be honest with your partner about the money that is being spent? But that goes outside the scope of this episode. One last thing, I'm probably the bigger spender just because most of my clothes are pretty crappy. I did buy this fine sweatshirt from Etsy. And it didn't show up at time. It was for a talk, and it showed up like the day after I love to give the talk. But, yeah, you've encouraged me, hey, if you want an electric vehicle, go buy wine. And that alone will be far more than your thrift shop spending for years.

But you're okay with it. I'm okay with it. If you would buy it, then you could maybe stop talking about it. Or maybe it would go the way of solar panels and he would talk about it all the time. Yeah, you better watch out what you ask for. He has gone unrecognito. saying that when Tesla hits $1,500 per share, and that's now shares, not if they split, right?

Well, if they do a five-for-one split, then it'll be split-adjusted. It would be $300 per share at that point. Okay, okay. When Tesla hits $1,500 a share, he will buy a Tesla. The back story on this is, I got very lucky. I'm no stock savant. I thought Elon Musk was cool. I thought the cars looked nice.

So in 2012, we bought a bunch of shares for like $5 each. Now they're like $1,000. So pure luck don't do as I say. What's how does that go? Yeah, do as I say, not as I do invest in index funds. Yeah, index funds are the way to go. I just got very lucky with that. And yeah.

The contents of this podcast are informational and nature and are not legal or tax advice. So does that mean Scott's going to change this last name to Tesla? Probably not. Scott Tesla. Scott Tesla. I don't see that happening. He could just have one word like Madonna, Scott Tesla. It's one flowing thing.

Yeah, I don't see that happening either. It can be awesome. Let's get him on. Can we get them on right now? He's probably busy. He's the CEO. Oh, okay. Of Tesla?

No, that's Elon Musk. I wish he was. Then he could hook me up. Then he'd give you a car. And then you could stop talking about it. Yeah. Okay. What are our goals for next month?

Come in under budget. Next month is April. So I'll be the big spending because you let me go to my fancy cyber rodeo song. I'll probably be the big spender for, even though it was free, I took J.T. out for some nice experiences. So thanks again, J.T. The grocery budget, I am, I put $750 for next month, and I am for this month, I guess we're in April now. I am hoping that I will come in way under. We spoke to Beth from Budget Bites, and the episode will release in, a few weeks. It's episode 299. She's fabulous and this shows a lot of fun. She suggested a pantry

purge. So I am doing a pantry purge and we are going to go and take stock of everything in the pantry. I'm going to go to Beth's website, budgetbites.com, B-Y-T-E-S. And we are, I'm going to use her ingredient index and search through the things that I have in my pantry and see what recipes she has to create from those ingredients so I can start to purge some of the things that we have stocked up on so that we can get rid

of some of this stuff. Because why have it in your pantry if you're not going to eat it, right? Yeah. Look for a lot of chili next month or this month. Sounds good. And continue to come in under budget on a lot of things. Gasoline,

I think I did leave around 300. I actually I don't have it pulled up right now. I think I did leave it at around 300 just because prices have gone up so much. But I had been spending so much gas, so much in gas because I was driving clients around looking at houses. And we are now under contract and I don't have any clients right now that I'm driving to houses, to see houses. So that probably will go down, but I will keep it a little bit higher just in case. Our projected budget is $5,400 for this month.

And I'm hoping we can come in under that. One thing I want to note, again, maybe we'll just call this the JT show. JT's asking, why do we bother tracking our spending? When we originally thought of or discovered financial independence and the 4% rule, we did our numbers and we thought we would be spending $36,000 a month, that we rounded it up to 40 because that would be generous. And then we just got, we just, we extrapolated that our retirement number should be a million dollars. You weren't comfortable with that when we got to our fine number.

So you waited a little bit. The market has continued to increase and we are now past our retirement number, but we are also past our spending. And I think that if you don't continue to track your spending in retirement, it can be easy to let it kind of go. Oh, I want to go to this restaurant. I want to try this thing. I want to just buy this. It's only a dollar. And then all of a sudden, you're spending a lot.

So I just want to keep tracking it. And I don't have to track every penny. I'm trying right now because I opened my big mouth and told everybody that I would for a year. but I you know in 2023 I might not track every penny I am still going to track because I want to make sure that I am on the same budget because I have the ability to change my ways with enough enough notice but I don't want to get to the end and be like oh I've got a dollar left and 30 more years of life that would be bad that would be bad So I just want to be conscious, be money conscious of your spending. Yeah, and the spending, we have this calculator where you're going to have an episode with Ray where he's going to show how to set that up and it doesn't take any time at all. It puts it into a nice Excel, Google Sheet, and it creates a pivot table.

So it is no, it doesn't take any time. If it took any time or became a pain, I would not want to do it. Yeah, exactly. And this is easy. It's on our phones. We take it with us when we go. and it's customizable. Yeah.

Okay. Do you have any last thoughts? I don't think so. I mean, Mindy. Oh, geez, I started calling you it already. Shush. Okay. From episode 292 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast,

he is Carl Jensen from the Mile High Five podcast from 1500 Days.com. What else do you do? I think that's about it. I work on the house sometimes. I'm underemployed, not unemployed. and from working on our house and I am Mindy Jensen saying what do we

need a cute one okay let's go out the door dinosaur nothing about Tesla okayosaurus Mindysaurus no that doesn't make any sense yeah that was pretty bad I just made that up spur of the moment

Ha ha ha ha.