BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 316: Spending Categories to Cut During a Downturn | Mindy & Carl’s Budget Review

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

When building your budget, do you have a line designated for “economic downturn” or “high inflation?” Probably not. Many financial freaks like Carl and Mindy Jensen don’t prepare for economic anomalies like rampant inflation or double-digit stock market losses. And like most Americans, they’re finding it hard to not spend more money every month. Carl and Mindy understand this, but can't seem to rein in their rebellious budget. This month was their most expensive month ever. And even though these expenses were planned, they nonetheless stung when reviewing them later. But even without these accounted expenses, Carl and Mindy have noticed the cost of goods going up while their stock portfolio continues to drop. If you’re worried about high inflation, rising home prices, food prices, and everything in between, this is a great time to make the needed adjustments to your budget. This will save you not only a bunch of time but also stress when seeing shockingly high prices for everyday things. Even financially free couples like Carl and Mindy need to reassess, and you may want to as well! In This Episode We Cover Mindy’s most expensive month ever recorded and why you should never books flights a month in advance  Categories you can cut when an economic downturn hits so you (and your family) stay safe Why saving is more special when you can truly enjoy the things you’re spending on Rethinking early retirement and why now may not be the best time to leave the workforce Budgeting, expense tracking, and keeping an eye on your overspending (before it gets out of hand) And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding BiggerPockets Events Mindy's Twitter Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Listen to The “On The Market” Podcast: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, BiggerPockets Check Out Mindy’s 2022 Live Spending Tracker and Budget 1500 Days 1500 Days YouTube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 316, Finance Friday edition, where Carl and I recap our big June spending. I have started to notice inflation at the grocery store. I don't really notice inflation for clothing and shoes because I shop at the thrift store mainly. And I don't really notice inflation for a lot of other things. I just don't buy a lot of things. But for food, I'm starting to notice that at the grocery store. And it's, I'd like to think I have a pretty good handle on our food budget and, you know, on food prices in general.

And it seems like they are going up and up. And that can be scary if you're paycheck to paycheck. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And joining me today is my co-host, Carl. You might know him from 1500 days.com or the Mile High Five podcast. but I've known him as Mr. Mindy Jensen for the last 20 plus years. This is the first time I've ever heard you refer to me as Mr. Mindy Jensen.

Oh, I say that all the time. Really? I'm okay with it. I mean, you bring home most of the bacon, so you can call me whatever you want. Oh, good. No bad words, at least not in front of the kids. Oh, I would never in front of the kids. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money

is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. 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 the 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. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take

the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Sound makes everything easier, expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. 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 to 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. Carl and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe that. financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, or start your own business will help you reach your financial goals

and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams. Wow. Wow, that was smooth as silk. Yeah. Usually Scott reads those words and he has been doing it for 300 episodes. So, He, you know, kind of has that memorized now. But that's okay. You did a great job. Thank you, sweetheart. So, Carl and I are here to talk about our June spending,

which was the most expensive month that we have ever had. We spent, let's open up our spending tracker, which you can follow along with every single month, every single day if you're really all that interested, at biggerpockets.com slash Mindy's Budget. And I say Mindy's Budget because I work at Bigger Pockets and you don't. So, we spent a whopping $11,995.70 this month, all in one month, which is a lot for us. Yeah, that hurts a little bit, but let's flip over and say where most of that spending came from.

Let's see where we go. It's right here. Oh, okay. I've been highlighted it for you. Oh, geez, yeah, I can't do anything. Are you new? I need classes. Yeah, I pretty much am new.

So eight. Well, get your classes then. $8,437.15 were travel expenses, which is quite shocking. We had a slippery slope situation where our child decided to go on this school trip to Germany. We said, fine, if you want to go on this, we'll pay for half. You have to cover the other half. And then I started thinking, I've never been there. I'd really love to go to Germany, so let's go over there and meet her, which is fine.

We can shop for flights and get all that stuff and try to find budget accommodations and do all that stuff at a time. But it turns off this tour company, who will go unnamed, but they're a big tour company, doesn't book the tickets until like weeks before the actual trip. Keep in mind, this is an international flight, and they booked it less than a month before the trip.

So we were forced to book our stuff a month before the trip. So I think we paid a premium. Most of that $8,000. You think we paid a premium? Let me confirm that for you. Yeah, I don't know. It's not, I don't frequently, price flights to frankfort sounds like a tongue twister say flights to frankfort 10 times fast what's

another german for forfugn that's that Volkswagen thing yeah yeah so anyway the flights were like for the three of us and then we had to buy another one for the daughter because of this other tobacco with the store company so we had to buy three roundship flights and a single flight home back from her and that was weird it was cheaper to buy her a round trip flight to go from Frankfurt to Denver and then back to Frankfurt and then just ditch the second half than it was to buy one flight. So yeah, we ended up buying three and a half flights and I think that was close to like $6,000, right? That was over $6,000. And what makes it so painful is that we couldn't even fly or we couldn't even shop for airlines. They didn't tell us if they were

going to fly Lufthansa or if they were going to fly United or or American or any number of other airlines, we couldn't even start accumulating flight points. They just said, we will get to you when we get to you, basically. So we weren't able to really accumulate any points anywhere that would have worked out. I suppose we could have, you know, going back now, we probably could have gotten those Chase Ultimate Rewards

points and done a one-to-one transfer. That actually might have been a really good choice. If anybody knows about the chase ultimate rewards points, would that have been good? Because we did end up flying Lufthansa, which is a lovely airline. Everything worked out really, really well with the airline once we were there. We flew during some pretty awful domestic flight cancellation weekend. So we're really thankful that we didn't have any of those.

We did go direct Denver to Frankfurt without any sort of layovers or stops at all, which was my favorite way to travel. All in all, we had a good time. Wait, is it Frankfurt or Frankfurt, how I've been saying? Well, I'm American, so I say Frankfurt because that's how we roll. You're mostly German, though. But I've actually only been in Germany like 10 whole days, which occurred in June of 2020. It's the first time I've ever set foot in the motherland.

I do know we have some multiple German listeners, and they will correct you because I think I'm right. Okay. Well, if you want to correct me, you can send it to Carl. So, Mr.500 at 1500 days.com. Okay. So something we have never talked about, I'm going to ask you this right now, do you regret the trip? I do not regret the trip. I wish we had more time to plan. And I say that like we didn't have a year and a half to plan a stupid trip. I wish I would have planned it a little bit better and maybe got to plan. a bunch of airline miles on Lyftonsa and United and American. And I mean, you can always use them someplace else.

Or maybe you can't. Maybe we'll just go back there. I wish we would have done it a little differently, but I'm glad that we went. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, I regret nothing. It was such a good trip. Oh, thanks for setting me up like that. And then I regret nothing.

No, no. I think there's a lesson in here. We'll tell you real quick what we did and why I don't think we should regret it. We went to Berlin. Those four days, then we rented a car. We drove as fast as our little. Skoda could go. If you want a haul butt down the Autobahn, a Skoda is not a good choice. We had that thing pegged it like, what, 160 or 180 kilometers an hour, I think 110 miles per hour,

which is not fast on the fast parts of the Autobahn. No. So we took that thing to Munich after that for another like three nights. And then we came back. We stopped in Rodenberg on the way back. And that's it. I wish we would have had more time at both places, but especially in Munich. So back to my original question, I asked if you regretted spending that kind of money. And you said no one. I don't say no either. Oh, you didn't ask if I regretted spending that money. You asked if I had any regrets.

Okay, I guess that was my question then. Let's go back to it then. Do you regret? That makes sense. This is a money podcast. It's kind of the same thing. Do you regret the trip because we spent that much money on it? Or do you regret the money part of it?

I don't regret the money. I don't regret. I wish we would have been able to. to save somebody. I mean, how many times do we sit here and talk both of us collectively on our blog, on our podcasts, on our respective podcasts? We talk about money and saving money and, you know, saving money where you can. And we didn't really have that opportunity, although I think we could have saved more money if we would have tried a little bit harder. There's a lot of information out there about how to earn miles and points and sitting down

here talking to you about this was the first time it popped into my head. those Chase Ultimate Rewards, which are like really fabulous rewards points. And we have the ability to get new Chase cards fairly frequently. I don't think we've opened up a new one in the last 24 months. They have this five out of 24 rule. You could only open up five Chase credit cards in the last 24 months. I think I'm pretty sure that's still the same rule, but I don't know. Maybe it's not.

If you know for sure that that's changed, feel free to send us a note or comment in the Facebook group at Facebook.com slash groups. slash BP money, would love to hear the updated. If you have any tips for travel, saving money for travel, last minute tips, when you have a specific deadline, a specific location that you're going, a specific date like we had. If you have any off-the-wall tips, that'd be great too. But no, I don't regret our trip and spending that much money. I mean, $8,437 in one category that is not car is a lot. But let's talk about what exactly that 8437 is. That is the airfare, the hotels that weren't booked on miles, which we do have boatloads of. That was all of our

food, all of the restaurants, all of everything that would normally go into different categories. We put that all in travel. And the reason we did that and we did it consciously is because we would not have had those expenses at that level if we had been at home. So groceries are more expensive because we're not going to a real grocery store. We're going to like a tiny little grocery store because we don't speak the language, which is another, that's a regret. We should have learned some German. We don't speak the language and we don't know where these other grocery stores are.

So we just go to the little convenience stores and convenience stores always have higher prices. We went to restaurants. We went to what's the big, the Brough house, Broughhouse, Hofbrough house. Thank you. I always forget that. We went to the Hofbrough House and we got a great big beer. Did you post that picture of me holding two giant beers? I looked like such a lush. I did. But yeah, thank you. That's great. You're awesome. They're light beers. We drank a lot of beer in Germany. It was delicious. And I didn't categorize that into different spending categories because we wouldn't have been

going out so much, we wouldn't have been spending that much money if we had been at home. So we lumped it all into travel. And again, the reason we have so many different categories in our spending tracker is because if we had to, we could cut out travel altogether. Let's say the stock market takes a big dump, like a 25% dip. Theoretically, of course, that would never happen the first quarter, the first half of 2022. Is it down 25% or just 22%? I think it's like 20%. I think it's like 22. It's definitely in bare market over 20%. Don't get crazy. Don't say 25. It's only 22. And we're recording this on July 4th. I don't know what the market's going to do by the time this releases on July 7th. However, the market has taken a big dump and there are a lot of categories we could cut out

and get back into our normal spending threshold. So let's look at some of, we did some math before we started this. Oops, let's scroll down. So we are in, this is the end of June that we are sharing numbers for. And the total spending that we have done thus far in 2022 is $46,484 at 79 cents. Now, when we first extrapolated our phi number, what did we say that was going to be? $40,000. $40,000 for the whole year. And here is us going $6,000 over.

in six months. So that's a lot. We looked at some of our expense lines. And the biggest one that we could very easily cut out is travel. We have spent $17,000 in travel this year. And this is, you know, two years after, or the first year after a pandemic. So we kind of want to go out and see things. And yes, I'm not saying the pandemic is over. The pandemic is still going on. But we have been able to travel more this year than we have in the last two years. That's a very easy cut. But that's $17,000. So without the travel expense, we've spent $29,424. Okay, well, we planned on $40,000. So that's still, at six months, we should be at $20,000. But we planned on $40,000 with no mortgage payments. How much have we paid in mortgage? Well, lucky you should ask that question. I anticipated that, and I did the math.

and we have done $7,938 in mortgage payments. So without travel and without mortgage payments, the amount that we have spent this year in six months is $21,486.71. So now we're only $1,400. Or actually, you round that up to $1,500. That number comes up all the time. It's kind of crazy how frequently the number 1,500 pops up in our lives. We are $1,500 over our spending, over our anticipated spending, over the course of six months,

which feels pretty good because we haven't had to tighten our belts. We go out to dinner frequently. We go out to tap rooms with friends. We spend way too much on groceries. And we live a pretty good life without... feeling like we are restricting ourselves. I mean, that's what I think. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's...

Plant words in your mind. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And this is something I say. I think every time I record, every time we record, I say this. So sorry, I sound like a broken record, but we're frugal for the things we don't care about so we could spend on the stuff we do care about. The travel is important to us. When we went to Munich and Berlin, we stayed close to the city center,

so we never had to get into a car. We walked everywhere or took bicycles, and we paid a little bit extra for that convenience, but it was well worth it because I don't like to get in a car if I don't have to. So it was great, but we're pretty frugal. I'm about to order 20 tons of rocks to put in our yard, and I'm going to move all of those myself

because I think it's great exercise. You heard it here. I don't have to move any of those rocks. He's going to move them all himself. I love that. Well, did I say me? I will, we, we. No, no, no.

They're not going to cut that out. They said, you said you are going to do that all by yourself. There's no eye and rock. There's no eye and team. I guess there's no we in rock either. But yeah, but I don't mind it because I get a bunch of exercise from it. What are some other things? We take care of our own lawn.

I know some people absolutely hate mowing their lawn, but I don't mind it so much. I could put on my noise canceling headphones and catch up on the bigger pockets money podcast. Yeah. What is this episode 316? So what do you have 313 episodes to go? Yeah, I think so. I've listened to a couple.

It's pretty good. I like it. It's too close. Yeah, what else we do our own car maintenance? I don't really like that that much, but it's faster to change the oil that it is to go to one of those places. And sometimes they screw it up. I cut my own hair, which looks so great. Yeah.

So I've paid like zero for haircuts for the past 10 years at least, right? Oh, it's been longer than that. We've been cutting your hair. We. I. We. That's a team effort. Yeah.

So if you think of that, like 100 times 20 bucks, it's $2,000. A hundred times 20. What are you 100 times 20 for? 100 haircuts times 20 bucks with a tip and all that? At least 100 haircuts, probably. No, a lot more than that. Over what time period? Like one haircut a month for 10 years?

That's actually 120 haircuts. You've been cutting your hair for like 20 years. Okay. So bump that up. that's all our airfare. My haircuts bought us, our airfare, or most of it, to Germany. But yeah, I think there's something in that. I think you need to, at least our models, to carefully consider where we spend

so we can not spend on the things that we, I just totally mess it up. So we could spend on the things we really care about, but then save money on things that we don't care so much about. Well, let's look at the things that we don't care so much about. Oh, I don't really want to because we haven't really. done this line at all. We need to work on that a little bit more. No, we have done. Here's one entry right there. We're looking at charitable contributions. Charitable contributions needs to be increased significantly. Yeah, we do do some. I think we gave some money to Ukraine. We forgot

to put that on there. Yeah, and we'll certainly do more. I think our goal in life is probably to give in much bigger amounts. I think we're in, this is a whole other conversation. I always think, like right now is the most spendy part of our lives. We have two children, but in like 10 years, it'll be out of the house. I hope they'll be out of school, I hope. And then we can live super cheap, and then we can give more of our money away. Now I still feel we've done well, but still a little bit of shakiness and unease due to

financial insecurity. So we'll give and we'll give big, but it's probably a little bit further down the road. I'm not going to wait until I die like Warren Buffett, though. It'd be cool to see your money in action while you live, but we've got some way off topic. We have, but that's something that we need to start discussing. We don't need to discuss that right now and hash that out as people listen to us awkwardly discuss this. We're going to stop that. But we will discuss this after the lights go down. 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 Pock. 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 the 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. for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal

candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45. percent more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed. on this podcast. Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been

helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1,500 corporate guides, who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data, and all services are handled in-house, because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit Northwest registeredagent.com slash money-free. And start

building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca.

Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. Let's look at our spending. If you look at our June spending, we only hit four red categories. And one of them was utilities by a dollar, which doesn't even count. One of them was school. I don't remember what I bought for $27, but it was a school expense that I had allocated

zero to because it's June. And I didn't think we'd actually be spending any money on school. So I think I just need to have $100. in the budget for June or for school for every month. And then sometimes we hit it and sometimes we don't. Gifts, what gifts did we buy this past? We bought a lot of gifts in June. I can't remember why.

But we went $173 over the gift giving budget. And oh, goodness, last month we went, we really need to up our gift giving budget because we have really gone over. And we had a family member graduate from school. and we took the family out to dinner, so I put that in the gift. That's where that came from. That's right.

And I didn't think of that when I was making my budget. So, you know, there's, that's a learning opportunity and a research opportunity for everybody who is listening, who wants to make their own budget. Think ahead. I don't know if you know this, but my projected is kind of just a guess for a while. Because we haven't been tracking our spending for so long, I don't really have a good guess, a good gauge as to where my money is, where my money will be going this month. So I am now guessing based on, or estimating, let's call it an estimation and not a guess, I'm estimating based on

the previous month. And that's right, May was expensive. June was expensive. I think that maybe for gift giving, we need to bump that up to about $150 a month and see what happens, except for Christmas, which will be more. It feels good to be generous. I don't mind spending money in that category at all. I think one of the gifts was we sent something to Jay Money. Budgets Are Sexy. Congratulations, Jay and buying it back.

Oh, yeah. Budgets Are Sexy is now re-owned by Jay Money. Yeah. What else do we have? That's right I did send that. Our household budget, I think $200 a month in random household expenses is going to be our sweet spot. It feels like we have finally figured that out,

although I'm looking back, $1,000, $2,000. We bought a couch. What did we buy in May? I don't even remember. That's kind of sad. What did I buy? I don't even remember. And yet I blew my budget way out of the water by $1,000.

Now I have to go back and research that. We didn't have any entertainment last month, but we were in Germany. So that was kind of all entertainment. And again, that went into. to the travel expenses. So a lot of these numbers, the category numbers in June, are artificially low because we were in Germany for 10 days. What else do we have? Health care is going to be ongoing until we figure that out. We are going to have that about $400. And I'm happy to come in a little bit lower. But overall, we had pegged it at 13,600, and we came in at 12,000-ish, just under

12,000. So we're $1,600 low below budget this month. And it feels good to have a green month instead of a red month. Next month, I have us pegged at 9,200. I think I'm going to bump that up to 9,500. And it looks like a lot of this is coming from travel. We have one more big trip plan. We're just going crazy. We're going to be out in Oregon for some time. Yeah, we.

We. I'm going to be here in Colorado. Yeah. After this, we're not, well, you're coming out to California for a little bit. Yes. Yes. So there is that. But then after that, we're going to calm down.

We're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. We'll probably stay here for the rest of the holidays, we're going to travel out to you for the bigger BPCon. Is that what you all call it? San Diego BPCon, October 2 through 4. You can find more information at Bigger Pockets Conference about the BiggerPockets Conference at BiggerPockets.com slash events. So I think we should talk about what goals we have for the second half of the year. What have we learned the first half? And we have learned that we don't know how to make a budget. Yeah, but I think, for me at least, I think the keeping track is more important than the budget.

The keeping track, and especially the reflection part, like what we do now, this is probably our money date. I know certain couples do money days where they'll meet on a weekly or maybe monthly basis to review their numbers, and that's exactly what we're doing here. We're just doing it in front of everyone. I don't actually like budgets because that puts constrictions on your spending. you should spend thoughtfully, but that's where what we're doing comes in. We can review and consider if all our spending was thoughtful spending. Ooh, I'm going to disagree with you and say, I like a budget because I open up this spending

tracker frequently. I have this open on my computer all the time. So you can follow along at biggerpockets.com slash Mindy's budget. I am speaking specifically of the second tab, the 2020. budget. I keep this open every day and I will look at it. I'll just check in to see how we're doing. And I will see that in the month of July, I have already spent $40 on groceries. Okay, that's no big deal. I have $709 left. Or I will see that I have already spent two, oh, that's fitness. $250 of our $300 fitness budget was on a bicycle for our dollar.

we've spent a lot of money on our travel budget. We have two trips to take, and we only have $1,200 left on that budget. I'd like to be a little more conscious about our spending on food when we are on those trips. So instead of going out to dinner every single night, maybe we go out to dinner every other night, and we make sure we have breakfast and lunch in the Airbnb or hotel wherever we're staying. Yeah, I agree. Can I go to Taco Time when I go on my road trip? Okay. What's Taco Time? It's a taco restaurant. They've got like a deep-fried taco. Or a deep-fried burrito. I think we call those Chimichongas, but they call it something else. I'm not going to have that one.

Wrapped up heart attack. I value my cardiovascular system, so I don't abuse it too much. What else do we have? Oh, parties. Well, that party number is going to go way up because we're having a Fourth of July party today, and I didn't put that expense in yet. Crazy. So I like to keep track of this. We've already spent almost half of our clothing and shoe budget this month. So I want to make sure that we keep that under the $250 mark, which means that maybe I don't go to the thrift store with the girls whenever they ask. Yeah.

Even though it's the thrift store, we're still going. In fact, I think I didn't put the Coles charge from yesterday in there. Okay. which means that there's more money that we've already spent. So it's just, it's very helpful for me to see this. When I don't see this, I don't think about it. When I see this, I think about it and I think to myself, oh, maybe I don't need to charge that item. Maybe I don't need another pair of shoes.

Maybe I can wait another month for a new pair of workout pants. I would like to know what about these monthly money budget dates are helpful to you and what you would like to hear from us in the next recap because we've kind of just been doing what we want to talk about, but we want to make sure that you're hearing what you want to hear. Do you have any questions about our budget or how we come up with any of the things that we're doing? or any other questions that you would like to know about making a budget, making a spreadsheet. Yeah, I agree. I think it would be super fun to answer a reader question or two. Yeah, any questions you have about our finances? Do you think we're missing a category? I think we're pretty good on categories, although we don't have the umbrella insurance category in here.

That's going to add another $100 a month. $75 a month. Wait, how much is it? Oh. It was like, wasn't it $900 a year? No, I don't think it was that much. I thought it was pretty small. I should go back here. I should look that up. Yeah, it wasn't that. It was $900 for all of it.

Yeah, for all of it. For all of it. Yeah. So that's okay. Yeah, we have a cheap old car, so what is, our auto insurance is like $800 a year or something like that, right? No, auto insurance is like $300 a year. Homeowner's insurance is $600 a year. That's it? Wow.

Or well, and the umbrella's in there somewhere. I can't remember what it was. Okay. Wow. You ate a crappy car. Or maybe Homeowners is $900? I don't know. I should look this up.

Maybe it was $600 every six months before and now it's $900 for the year. Okay. Anyway, shout out to the Mazda people. That thing will not die. Yeah, Mazda 5. We call it, yeah, it's a Mazda 5, which is like a mini, minivan, or as Mindy it likes it called the Mindy van. It's the Mindy van.

Mindy van. Yes. If your name is Mindy and you drive a minivan, you should change the name to a Mindy van. It's pretty awesome. It is great. Is there anything else you want to talk about? I don't think so. For the second half of the year, I would just like to keep watching things. It's become a little bit, I don't say scary, but yeah, this is the first time since I quit by job since we started our journey. we started talking about financial dependence October of 2012 and we had a little bit of a correction when COVID happened

but that one was very short. The Fed just jumped right in to prop things up, V-shaped recovery, hit the bottom, bounce back up like a rubber ball. This one has already gone on longer and I think it will be, it will go on for a little bit longer as well. We might be in for some more,

I don't even want to say pain. I hope it's not painful for you all. But do you have any thoughts on that? Does that change the way we think about things? I've been noticing inflation, too. Like, I always notice gas prices. Everyone notices that, but I went to the store to buy some other stuff, and the diet amount of new was, like, way more.

So I've cut way back. You should cut way back because it's Mountain Dew. I know. It sucks. It is the diet, but it's still bad for you. I have started to notice inflation at the grocery store. I don't really notice inflation. for clothing and shoes because I shop at the thrift store mainly.

And I don't really notice inflation for a lot of other things. I just don't buy a lot of things. But for food, I'm starting to notice that at the grocery store. And it's, I'd like to think I have a pretty good handle on our food budget and, you know, on food prices in general. and it seems like they are going up and up, and that can be scary if you're paycheck to paycheck. You know, having a meatless Monday, meatless Tuesday, meatless Wednesday,

to try and combat that so you're not spending so much money on the big expensive things. Go to budget bites.com, B-U-D-G-E-T-B-Y-T-E-S dot com, and get all sorts of really inexpensive meals there, inexpensive recipes. We had Beth on the podcast just a few months ago or just a few weeks ago and she had some really great tips. Cheese and nuts are really expensive sources of protein, but eggs are an inexpensive source of protein. We could buy our own chicken. You could buy your own

chickens and eat the eggs and then when the chickens don't make any more eggs, then you eat the chicken. Well, I don't want to be involved in that part. I don't want to either. Plus, all right, HOA doesn't allow us to have chickens. Yeah, the kids would probably need the chicken. It would become a family pet. Can you imagine the hassle they would give us if? So, yeah, I'm starting to notice it, but I keep hearing that things are going to change. So we'll see.

Yeah. But I'm not really concerned. And I really hope that this doesn't come back to bite me in the butt. I have a job. We have say. We hit our fine number and then you didn't want to quit. So you worked another couple of years. We doubled our fine number.

And it has continued to grow even after you left your job. And we have, according to the 4% rule, we have far more than we need. The 4% rule failed 4% of the time, which is interesting. And that's not why it's called the 4% rule. but the 4% of the time that it failed was when the person, the retiree, retired into a period of extreme inflation. So if that's, if you were planning on retiring now, if this, if you did retire and all of a sudden we're hitting inflation, keep track of your spending. Use my spending track or copy and paste and change my numbers to whatever you want and, you know, keep track of

your funds. You're not going to go from perfectly fine to absolutely destitute overnight. You should have some warning, but you will have the warning if you're paying attention. Yeah, and right now it's the best time ever to be looking for a job, too, super low unemployment. Are you going to go get a job? I don't think so. Is Bigger Pockets hiring? Yes. BiggerPockets is hiring. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash careers, and you can see all the current job openings that we have.

Are they paying me for my keynote at BPCon? I think they're going to call it the Carl Note, right, instead of keynote? No, you're not speaking at BPCon. Sorry. It's okay. Speaker submissions are closed. Okay. I'll try it next year.

Okay, good luck. Okay, do you have anything else you want to talk about? That's all. Okay. Should we get out of here? Let's go. From episode 316 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Carl Jensen, and I am Indy Jensen, saying, See You later, Alligator.

Right back to the basics. Thank you.