BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 4: From Disorganized to Debt Free Through Budgeting and Routine with Rosemarie Groner

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

Rosemarie Groner was a State Trooper - a good, recession-proof job. Chronic disorganization led to more than $30,000 in consumer debt when she made the decision to quit her job to stay home with her first child. In this episode of The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, Rosemarie shares how she cut $23,000 out of her spending, paid off her debt in less than 4 years, and grew her income to the point that her husband could also quit his day job. Rosemarie gives you actionable tips for establishing routines that will help get you organized so you can focus your energy on your budget - not your day to day tasks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Bigger Pockets Money. Show number four. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation. You're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen.

How you doing, Mindy? Scott, I am doing fantastic. I am having a great 2018 so far. We have released this podcast. I have also just released a book called How to Sell Your Home, which will detail the steps in selling a house. How come I didn't hear about this? You probably did. You work here at BiggerPockets.com. Oh, that's right. Yeah, this is the thing you've been working on for the past year. And that's fantastic. And that we interviewed you on the Bigger Pockets podcast, actually. Yes, we did. If you want to hear the story about the, um, the book and 16 tips for selling your home. You can go to biggerpockets.com slash show 261. And that is the episode where I talk about the book. And like I said, I give tips on how to sell your house. Selling a house, you think that it's just, oh, I put a side in the front yard and it'll sell.

And there's a lot more to it than that. Yeah, you can do it that way, but you can make a lot more money if you plan ahead and do it right. Awesome. I am so excited to bring this episode to our listeners this week. Rose Marie Groner from the busy budgeter.com is one of my favorite people on the planet. She has such an energy and she's always got this huge smile on her face. Plus, she knows so much about budgeting and getting yourself out of debt when you are in a seemingly unending hole of debt.

Yeah, I love how tight, how tough her situation was when she really got started getting serious. about budgeting and financial planning and all that kind of stuff and how much progress she was able to make and how quickly she was able to make it. I mean, it's just incredible. And it's just a, it just shows that her power of organization. And she's really kind of boiled that down into some repeatable steps that you can take to get your life together. Yes. Her tips for making sure that the dishes are done every single night. Once you get into a habit with one thing, it makes it easier to make a habit out of something else. So I love that tip.

I have, since we've recorded this show, I have actually started that tip myself. And I make sure that I have no dishes in my sink at the end of the day. And it really, when you wake up in the morning and you walk into the kitchen and there's not a giant pile of dishes waiting, looking at you, like taunting you, it's freeing. Yeah. She shares a couple of other tips in the show, too, that will, are just as freeing as that one is. Yeah, I mean, it's just about doing the few kind of trigger things that you need to do to make sure that the rest of your life begins falling into place. And I think that heard examples of those few things are spot on. And I find that when I have a big pile of dishes in my sinker, when I have a bunch of laundry that's not done or a big mess in the main room, that I'm just less productive.

I'm not going to get on top of the important things if those little things aren't in place. Right, right. That's so true. Okay, so I want to welcome Rosemary Groner to the show. Rosemary Groner is from the busy budgeter.com. And one of the most popular questions we get in the bigger pockets forums is how do I start investing with no money and bad credit? And the answer is if you're established, you can totally do that. But if you're not established, you can't. You need to get rid of your no money and bad credit situation. Scott has written a book called Set for Life. And Scott's book is a great place to start. start. Yeah, it's really written for the person that's starting with zero net worth or barely positive that doesn't have very much wealth outside of maybe home equity and retirement accounts. How do you go about accumulating investable assets? But that's not the problem a lot of people face. A lot of people face a different problem, which is how do I get back to zero? How do I get to the point where I can actually begin saving $100 a month, let alone, you know, let alone a thousand a month? That's the problem that so many people are struggling with. And that's the problem

that Rosemary can really help us out with. 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 in a needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pock 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 right-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. can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax right-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 fow-u-und-d.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 Foun. 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 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 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. So welcome to the show, Rosemary. I'm so excited to be here. I love you guys. This is like a dream come true. I'm so happy to have you. I love your energy. And I know today is going to be a super, super awesome, very informative show. Yes, it is. Rosemary, you're here to tell us about budgeting and how that can help people improve their lives. Could you tell us a little

bit about your story and how you got started, why budgeting was important to helping you kind of progress with your finances in the first place? Oh my gosh. Yes. So I was a stay trooper. And if you don't have that in your area. It's kind of like being a police officer, but at a state level. And I was making about $52,000 a year. And we were pregnant with our first child and was like, oh, I'm done. Like, we were crazy hours. Like, like we had forced overtime. I never felt like I was home. My husband and I worked opposite schedules. We're like, how in the world are we going to raise a baby with this with this craziness? And then I decided I wanted to stay home. And we looked at our numbers and we realized that we were over $30,000 in debt. We lived paycheck to paycheck. We had absolutely.

zero skills in life. Like no cooking, cleaning, budgeting. Like, we were hot mess adults. So I realized that I wanted to come home and I realized that that just wasn't even remotely a possibility. And I can remember feeling like I was just stuck. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, you just can't do anything else.

Like, I'm going to work this job because I have to. And that was a moment that I just, when we had that baby, I looked into his eyes and I was like, I don't even care. I will find a way. We reduced our spending by over $23,000 a year. I quit my job. I set a goal to quit my job by his first birthday, and I made it. His first birthday was my last day at work.

I replaced my income working from home, mostly through a home daycare, but we had like a couple other smaller side hustles. And then the rest is history. Like, I found that when you actually figure out what you want and you have that goal, budgeting gets way easier. Like, I knew what I wanted. and giving up small little things that I thought meant a lot to me when I was living paycheck to paycheck meant nothing.

So this is incredible. There's a lot to dive in here. Sorry, I mean, did you have something? You wanted to mention real quick? I was, yeah, I was going to say, wow, there's a thousand things to talk about. I want to know, how did you reduce your spending by $23,000 a year? Because that's a huge, huge number for just somebody who's trying, who's struggling. It is.

Yeah. So a lot of it, we actually have a full breakdown. I think it was when I started. a budgeting blog. That was one of the first posts that I wrote. And I have every single dollar of that. It was actually over $23,000. And it's all listed out there. Part of it was we refinanced our mortgage to historical low interest rates. We did a, and I only calculated the monthly savings on that, not the long term, which was actually a lot more. We stopped buying books, which I'm like a book lover. I read like crazy. And when I saw how much money I was spending in books, I was absolutely sick. So I haven't actually

purchased a book unless it's a business book since for like maybe six or seven years. I now only used library. It went from everything. Meal Planning was a huge part of it. I think you guys just did a podcast with Aaron Chase. Aaron Chase was a huge part of this story by reducing our grocery budget. We followed kind of the grocery budget makeover and we saved $16,000 a year in grocery savings alone. We did. So it was basically like a lot of teeny tiny little things that added up to really big. But I mean, we systematically went through every single thing that we purchased and we found substitutions, even all the way down to like shampoo. We were using pantine shampoo at the time. And then I found out that I love suave rosemary mint

shampoo and our income is skyrocketed since then. And I still use suave rosemary mint shampoo. It's like a dollar a bottle. So I mean, even things like that saved, you know, I think that was like $118 a year that we saved by switching shampoos. And, you know, most people are like, oh, whatever, it doesn't matter. But all those little tiny things that don't matter combine to like a massive, a massive change. So at Aldi, I don't know if you guys have the store Aldi near you. That was a huge part of our journey as well. We shop almost exclusively at Aldi now. They have groceries that are about half the price of everybody else, about 50 to 60 percent. So we've got 15 people at my house this week for a whole week. I'm feeding everybody. Like every meal is like tables and tables of food and everything

is from Aldi. It's like dirty. Wow. Yeah. We don't have Aldi. here, but I have lived in a place that has Aldi, so I miss it. Amazing. If it weren't for Aldi, I would have to be an extreme couponer, so I'm really grateful for Aldi. So I have a question about this process. So cutting out $23,000 of one's budget is a pretty intensive process. How long did it take you to cut that? And was, you know, did this come in stages? Was it all at once? How did that process work for you? Yep, it was in stages. I would say it took about six months to actually do everything. And keep in mind, I was doing this.

Like, I called budgeting my hobby at the point. Like, when I wanted that, when I wanted to come home, like, this is what I did all the time. I didn't go out and hang out. Like, I just did budgeting. But to be fair, like, it ended up being really fun. Like, at the end of it, once you get something, like, once budgeting stops being like, oh, I have to budget so I can do whatever.

And it becomes like, ooh, I get to budget so I can have this awesome thing I'm fighting for. it actually becomes really fun. And I did do it in stages. We talked a little bit about how I was really disorganized. So we were kind of like hot mess adults. I realized I kept trying and trying and trying to save money, right? And we would be like, okay, we're going to cook everything from home this week.

And then I would go out and spend $300 in groceries. And I'm like, I'm going to make all of this expensive food. It's going to be great. And then, of course, what would happen was we got busy. My dishes are like all in the sink. My kitchen's a mess. And we would end up ordering pizza. like every single night.

So I quickly realized that before I even start trying to save money, I have to set up just the routines that matter. So we set up a dishes routine, a laundry routine, and a schedule routine that we actually still used to this day. And I think it's been like seven years now. So I don't care what my house looks like. I don't care if the sheets get changed, if the vacuuming gets done. The house could be like severely dirty and gross.

but if those three routines are running, then I can do all of the things that I need to do to stay on budget, and my house actually runs really well. It may not look great, but it runs really well. And what we found was once you got those three routines, just those three under control, budgeting became really easy. Meal prepping and cooking at home became super easy. It was like, okay, I've got a kitchen, my fridge is clean, like I've got stuff that I can do. And the schedule book was an important part of that because we started something called the stockroom, which saved us a ton of money. Oh, my gosh, we still have it. So every time you run out of something, say it's like shampoo or deodorant, right, you run to the store to pick up some more, right? And there's this short list of things that

if you ran out of, you would go out immediately to purchase right now. And every time you go out to purchase that, you of course, you run into like one or two or 10 or 20 other things that you need and you end up buying a ton of stuff. Well, we realize is that if we took like a shelf in one closet and we just put all of the things at least one extra of the things that we would go out to a store and run and buy if we ran out of, that we saved a ton of money because, one, our schedule opened up. There was no more extra hours that we would spend going to purchase something. Do you know what I mean? So that's time saved.

But it also meant that we were buying these things at the lower prices. And it also meant that we were saving on impulse purchases, which is one of our biggest problems, is that when we go into a store, we're not just getting one thing. we're buying like a hundred things. So that turned into, well, now we figured that out. We figured out how much money we saved from that. So now we go further. And now we say we just automate all of our errands. So we joke around all the time now because now I work at home and we say I never leave the house, which is kind of true. Because we don't go grocery shopping. We don't go to Target. We don't go to Walmart. Like all of those things, we do go to Aldi. But all of those things are delivered to our house for

us and we get them for the same price that you would get if you walked into Target. There's tons of places online that price match, both Walmart and Target, you can have them shipped to your house for the exact same price that you can go pick it up. But the difference is I don't also pick up, you know, $400 worth of Joanna Gaines and stuff. I'm only getting the stuff that's on my list. And I'm doing it ahead of time on being conscious of where it fits into my budget and things like that. Okay, so again, 47 things I want to talk about now. Okay. So you, at the the beginning of this, you said that you got into a habit. You established a routine for budgeting or for your household. And that really just speaks to me as a, I used to be a stay at home mom.

And it's so easy to just wake up and all of a sudden the day's gone and you're like, oh, I didn't do anything. So establishing the dishes routine is really, really important in my mind. Establishing the laundry routine. So you're not sitting there and folding 47 pairs of clothes, you know, 47 loads of laundry on a Saturday when that's the only time you have to spend with your significant other or whatever. Like that's really, really important. I really like that tip. And you have established like a whole course for this, right? A whole like routine. Okay. So let's talk about that a little bit later. The stock room is also something I want to talk about. I suffer from almost horderism. And I did the extreme.

For a while, it's really not a good fit for myself. How do you do a stockroom without being like one of those crazy extreme couponers who's got 47 gallons of mayonnaise that they're never going to eat ever? Yeah. So we definitely don't do that. The secret to the stock room to start is to only get the things that you would run out and purchase if you ran out of. So like let's say shampoo, right? Let's say you have zero shampoo in your house. You're going to be like, hey, hubby, can you stop by and pick up shampoo on the way out on the way home? Or you. you're going to go out and get it yourself, right? There's not too many days you're going to go without shampoo in your house. Paper towels is one for a lot of people, deodorant, right? You're probably going to run out and grab deodorant if you run out. So if you're only getting those and you're only getting one extra. So we're not talking about a major like, I mean, it used to, we lived in a 900 square foot townhouse when we started this. We had like one little tiny shelf, but it's just like an extra, we had extra toothbrushes, extra toothpaste, extra deodorant, extra shampoo, extra laundry detergent,

extra dish soap, extra dishwasher detergent, things like that. So anything that you would run right out and pick up, my husband was like obsessed with hair or glue. So we had like hair glue in there. But anything that you would run out and pick up and the I know, right? Hair glue. What is hair glue? I guess it's like, I know, does Scott know?

I feel like you look like a hair glue guy. Really? Scott's bed. Scott's morning routine I'm guessing is get out of bed. Yeah. And go. Yeah, pretty much. I get out of bed.

I shower and I go to work. Yeah. Well, you can Google hair glue. Is it like a hair product? It's definitely a hair product. It makes his things in the front spiky. I feel like I should know this. I'm a girl, right?

I should know these things. I thought it was like, he looks like he's got a full head of hair. That's a really great toupee. I thought it was like hair glue like that. No, not that guy. Okay. Okay. So the stock room is just like one extra.

And then do you, when you take it off, like, how do you know to get more? Do you just automatically put it on your list? Or like, how does that work? How do you replenish your stock room? So you have different things available. We actually have a free Excel file someplace. We used it when we started. And again, don't start with an Excel file.

Like, because if you make it too complicated, you're not going to do it. We started with just a post-it note slapped on the back of the door. And it said something like, you know, shampoo, one or two. and then when you took one out, you like crossed it out. And there's a big joke in our house because my husband and I, like, I always use the bath and he always uses the shower. And he will come over to my bath and steal my shampoo versus walking the extra two feet to the stockroom and grabbing shampoo from there. Anyway, that's a side note. So you have to be prepared for that.

But you can just, you can just use like a little post-in-know to track what you have. But the idea is that you should, if you're going to the store, I don't suggest you go to the store. If you're going to have something delivered to the house like Walmart or Target or things like that, you can be like, oh, okay, I have one shampoo. We'll grab one more. Or I've just used my last shampoo. I'm going to grab one more or things like that. You can go one step further. And now we do auto scheduling, which means that we've done this for so long that I know how long it takes for us to use up a shampoo. I know how long it takes for us to use up deodorate. So I just set them to be automatically sent to the house every so often. And if I find that we're getting like too many, then I'll bump it out a little bit and adjust it so we can catch back up. But for the most part, where this used to be like a monthly trip to Target or Walmart that I would load up on all the stuff that we would need, or worse, I'd buy it at the grocery store where it's more expensive while I bought groceries. Now it's something that I don't think about. I don't spend time doing it. I don't go into Target and buy all of the Joanna Gain stuff there because I'm there

anyway. And it's just shipped to the door. I'll see you get lots of boxes and you can use the boxes for cool stuff, but that's a whole southern. It's a whole other thing. So what I'm getting here is this is just like incredible optimization and tracking and management of your life, the things that you just use, the necessities of life, right? And you went through this process where you, in stages where you were able to cut your spending by $23,000 by $23,000. And it seems like free up a lot of time, right?

My question for you is, let's say that I'm someone who's starting to do this and maybe haven't done any of this. I'm where you were when you started. How is my happiness going to be affected while I'm going through this journey? Isn't this going to ruin my life? Isn't this going to, you know, make things worse? How does that work? Oh my gosh. No. And I know what you're saying, because I could remember, like, in the very beginning. So the thing about budgeting is that it's all in perspective. And I think when most people hear about budgeting, like, they're stressed out about debt or they're like, or the other way, like, maybe they don't have debt and they have money, but they don't necessarily want to, like, you know, live below their means because they're like, I've

gotten all this money. I'm not stupid. Like, I want to spend it. But the thing is that budgeting allows you to get anything you want, anything you want. Like, we purchased like a gorgeous house. Like my husband's got like a fixer up or a corvette. He likes to drive around. But like, the thing is that we got those things because we put our heads together and we were like, I want this. Let's go out and get it. So budgeting, I think, has a bad, it just, it seems like something that's really negative and it's the total opposite. It just opens up this whole world of like on almost any salary, you can have anything you want. You just have to be smart enough to go after it and get it. Do you know what I mean? Do the work to get it? And it doesn't have to be. So some people are

really all about sacrifice. We are not. Like if you look at our story, we were over $30,000 in debt and we were both day troopers. And the correct answer in that situation is to stay at work, you know, hoard all that, money and then go and then go pay off your debt. And we didn't do that. I was like, I want to pay off my debt, but babies don't keep. Like, and I can't, I can't spend his younger years with him when he's five. Do you know what? I can't go back and redo this time. So I was like, I'm going to quit my job, no matter what. And I'm going to figure out a way to make it happen. And that's what I did. But the thing about budgeting is that it's empowering. Like, whatever you want, you can do it. You just have to be intentional when you do it, if that makes sense. That makes such perfect sense.

And that's, you know, budgeting, you're right. It has this negative connotation. It's restrictive. But if you don't know where your money's going, you can't direct it where you want it to go. And if there's something that doesn't matter to you, then don't spend money on it. Like, I don't care what my clothes look like. Yeah. So, I mean, I want them to be, you know, fairly current and I want them to, you know, be clean.

Yeah. And that's kind of it. I'd like them to fit, but that's a different story. So, you know, I don't go and spend on these brand name clothes because it doesn't matter to me. But, you know, there are things that I like. So I spend money on those things because it's that's, I don't want to say it's important because it's probably not as important as like, you know, kids and stuff. But yeah.

And then also like you also have to think about the fact that this is a very short amount of time. So this was about six months of my life that I was really, really into budgeting. And once I had established those habits, I was like, Okay, now we're just talking about like an evening a week. Do you know what I'm saying? And at this point, we still spend an evening a week, but it's like an hour and it's almost like a date night. Like it's kind of fun. We talk about our goals. We talk about what we're going after and then we start, you know, crunching the numbers. But it's really like, it's kind of like a cool thing that we do now and not like budget night. That's kind of fun. Okay. So I want to point out that you have a conversation with your husband every week about money. And yeah, I've been married for almost 16 years. And I have, one of the best marriages on record because we talk and we talk all the time and we don't fight and we don't fight about money. And that is just doing the budget to have a conversation with your husband every week is totally worth it. Because you know how kids like suck up every bit of

your time? And then all of a sudden it's been a month since you've said hi to your husband. And this was interesting for us because when we got married, John and I had incredibly different philosophies about money, right? Like when we got married, I married into a lot of debt and we had a house that was $100,000 underwater. And I was not great with money, but I was also, my biggest issue was being chronically disorganized, but I didn't have a ton of debt coming into it. And when we got married and looked at what we had, we were, I was totally freaked out. Like I was like, we have to fix this right now. And John's like, let's buy 3D TVs. And I'm like, what? What is going on? And he was very like, so we fought about money.

I can remember in our first year, like, crying on the couch being like, what have I done? Like, this is never going to work. And we have not had a money fight in, I think, five years, maybe six. So I think just having like both of us having goals that we're going for and having him be able to flip his perspective from this is restricting to like this gets me what I want. Made a big difference. Yeah, that is, I got to write that down. So I have a question here. So you get an alignment with your husband.

You've begun the system of budgeting and tracking. You've cut your expenses a lot. You quit your job. What happens now to income? You know, I found in my life, for example, that when I got serious about tracking my finances and making sure that I'm accumulating as much money as possible, given my happiness constraints, that I was doing two things. I was accumulating money and I was, which I could.

invest and I was also more comfortable taking risks, you know, on new ventures, that kind of thing. Did you find that to be the case for yourself? Yes. And I think part of it is like we reduced our spending so that we mitigate some of the risk. I mean, because it was a risk to quit our job. Like we were like, well, we can live in a budget for six months. Let's just quit our job. So there was a little bit of a risk there. But we reduced our spending so that worst case scenario, like we can handle it. And then of course, what what we found was that it's not as hard as you think to increase your income. Like it was pretty. easy for me to make up my income from home and the home daycare. And then at the point that we were

looking at the decisions like, okay, so I don't think I'm going to be able to do this for 25 years. Like, this isn't going to be fun anymore when my kids are in school. Do you know what I mean? Like, okay, bye kids. And then like, oh, I still have four kids at home. So what we did was I started, I started a blog and then we turned that into an additional income stream that ended up taking over everything else. So I think that it's actually a lot easier than most people think to increase their income and to kind of that would give you money, that would give you money to invest, that would give you more kind of wealth. And then again, the budget gets a whole lot easier, but we still budget. It's again, it's just your budgeting for more fun stuff, bigger fun stuff.

Yeah. The point that I want to, I kind of want to throw out there is that in my experience, I've met a lot of folks that have gone through a process somewhat like yours. Yours is by far the most intensive and coolest that I've heard with the incredible results in a short period of time. But folks that go through any type of this process often find opportunities present themselves on the income front, even though that's not their focus. Their focus is on saving money. But because they're saving money, they become more comfortable with their position. They build up a bigger financial moat.

And then all of a sudden, the opportunity to go and do something that they love or something that may pay off financially presents itself. Yeah, absolutely. Because you get out, like, we call it the paycheck to paycheck cycle. When you're in that paycheck to paycheck cycle, like you can't even build a stock room. Do you know what I'm saying? something that could save you hours and hours of time. But if you don't have that $100, $150, like, you can't do that. We talk about this all the time because my audience is typically

people that have zero money. These aren't people that have any wealth at all. They're just trying to like get by. And but if you bring that on a larger scale, like we have a ton of savings. We're debt free now. Like our life experiences and the risk that we can take and the things that we can go after, we can build new businesses, we can try new things. And all. All of those are within our reach because we kind of like did the work before. Do you know what I'm saying? But I think there's this whole world that most people don't know about. They just think they have to go to a job.

They have to work in a job. And most people don't even realize that they don't have to live paycheck to paycheck. That there are people out there that aren't doing that. Yes. And this is the foundation for entrepreneurship, I think, if you want to go down it. Like exactly what you're doing, what you've done, I think is that foundation. All those skills that you've built will, if you ever, know, will help you in your business that you, that you're building currently and any ones that

you go on to in the future, I think. Yeah. And that's, it's kind of funny because when I started this whole thing, when I started the home daycare, I never thought to myself as being, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. Like, I never even probably thought about that world. It was just, I just need to escape. Like, this is my escape route. And then when I built the blog and I kind of got into that whole world, and I realized how many people were making a killing at home, it helped me kind of. of like catapult my business because now I'm in this whole entrepreneur world and there's so many things that you're learning. But essentially it's all really the same. It's maximizing your ROI. It's your return on your investment. If you look at my budgeting journey, what I did was I figured out the

chronically disorganized things that were keeping me from saving money. And I let everything else go and I only focused on the three things that gave me the highest ROI. On the budgeting journey, I only focused on the things that were going to give me the best results for what I was doing. And then you flip that over when I started the blog, I did essentially the same thing. Yeah, I want to, I want to jump back to a couple of comments ago. You said something, we did the work before. All these things opened up because we did the work before. You make this sound really easy. Oh, I just looked at my budget and I cut costs. And it's, it's not hard, but it's not easy. It's work. And you have to do the work if you want to see the results. And nobody is going to just do it for you. And there isn't a button.

that you can push to make everything just go away. You have to do the work and you have to be committed to it. And I think that that's what a lot of people will jump in and be like, oh, I'm going to do this. Oh, never mind. It's work. Well, yeah, it's work. It was work to get into the debt and it's going to be work to get out of the debt. But how free do you feel not having this $30,000 worth of debt?

And I don't want to belittle your debt. But I've heard stories of people like $100,000, $200,000. Rockstar Finance has a blogger's net worth. And at the bottom is somebody is like negative $600,000. It's mostly student loans. But that's still $600,000. Do you have $600,000 just sitting around waiting to be deployed at your student loans? I mean, that's, I'm not talking smack about that person.

I think they're doctors, like two doctors or something. But still, that's got to be pretty soul crushing to wake up every morning to that. And, you know, having that. having no debt, I think all three of us are debt free on this call. So, you know, I don't wake up worrying about debt. I don't go to bed worrying. I don't, my phone doesn't ring and I'm like, oh, which bill collector is that? So the work is so worth the reward of being free. Yeah, it is, like, it's amazing. And it just, it gives you so much, you can stay at home with your kids if you want. You know what I mean? You're no longer in chains. You no longer. And the other thing is like,

we were just talking about this is it makes you excited to, make more money. Do you know what I mean? Because when you're paying off your debt, it's like, oh, I can make more money to pay more debt. And now it's like, if John wants a Corvette, it can be like, okay, let's like make a little extra money and we don't even have to take it off for our budget. And that's what we do. Like we, we seek ways to get what we want. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's budgeting is actually amazing. It's like the most fun thing ever. And we kind of like, when I say I turn it into a hobby, like we really did. Like when I say I'm working on our budget, I'm not talking about, like, sitting in a computer and on Excel.

Like, we do, like, what we call, like, Pinterest pretty workbooks and worksheets. So it's like, if you have, like, this inner organizer in you that, like, it's, like, pretty things and pretty workbooks and things like that, everything that we do is all, like, gorgeous. And it's almost, like, scrapbooking. John says my budgeting is, like, my scrapbook. It used to be. But it's, like, something at creative outlet, you're sitting down. Everything is, like, laid out. And it just, it's really fun.

It really is. I promise. Try budgeting. It's super fun. Try budgeting it's super fun. 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 in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pock at Monarch.com 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 sponsored 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% 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. Marvel Television's Wonder Man, an eight-episode series, now streaming on Disney Plus.

A superhero remake, not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action! Simon Williams, audition for Wonder Man. I'm going to need you to sign this, assuming you don't have superpowers. I'll never work again if anyone fall out.

My lips are sealed. Marvel television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming only on Disney Plus. One thing I want to go back to is this, you know, we talked, I asked you the question earlier about whether this was done in all at once or in stages. And for me, my journey was really like a long process of just continuous optimization bit by bit

by bit as opportunity presented itself as time went on. And the word I use for this, like for this is the grind. It's like you grind it out for a year, two years, 12 to 18 months I found is when I kind of really look back and I'm like, oh, wow, I made a huge amount of progress over 12 to 18 months, but it didn't feel like it at all during that time. Did you kind of experience that when you were going through this journey as well? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the exact same thing. So the first six months was like, it wasn't awful,

but it was like, that's all that I was doing. Do you know what I'm saying? It took a lot to overcome the organizational problems that I had and then to start trying to make some progress. and I really had that date in my head. Like, I could not stand the idea of working past his first birthday. But over that, like, we still look for ways to reduce our income. And I would say, like, the grind for us was probably the first almost two to three years. But year three, everything was a routine and we just kind of keep the routine going. But I would say before then, it was still we were just learning new skills.

It's like skill building. So, and it's different skills for different people, depending on what you spend money on. Like some people have to figure out how to reduce our interest, which credit cards to pay off for us. It was all grocery budget, figuring out how to make our groceries last for the entire month, how to cook at home, how to meal prep, how to get out of the awkward, like everybody else goes out to eat at lunch at work. And then you're like, well, I don't really want to spend 70 bucks a week. So how do I do this and not like, how do I do this and still have friends at work? And figuring out all of those little things that we never had to think about before. So it took us a long time to get out of everything.

And then we also say the art of saying no, like when people are like, oh, do you want to go to this like rock concert? And you're like, well, of course I do. But it's also going to be like $200. And it's like trying to figure out how to say no, but still having a lot of fun and still maintaining friendships. Because if you just say no, every time everybody asks you to do anything, it's like you have no friends. So this is exactly like how I felt during this day's time. I didn't have to get out of debt. I was trying to build my financial foundation from which to house hack.

then begin investing. That was my goal. It was way fancier than what I did. Do it Scott's way. But I really wanted to, I really wanted to get ahead and get like on the other side of the financial, you know, equation here where I had a little bit of passive income and some things working for me. And I just remember doing exactly what you're talking about, like saying no, sacrificing, optimizing. And now I look back. And that's the part that I'm really proud of. It's, It sucked while I was doing. It didn't suck. It was actually my life got better bit by bit, day by day, month by month,

a week, you know, year by year. But it was a struggle at first. And now I'm like, that's the part where I really became a better person, a better worker, better financial, better with my finances, you know, equipped to handle money for the rest of my life, I think. Absolutely. Did you notice, by the way, like, I noticed. So like in the beginning, as far as the art of saying no goes, like,

in the beginning, like you have this huge entourage of people. And it's not that they weren't real friendships, but I feel like you discover your people and your real circle when they support you in your efforts to save money. Like we came out of that with like ridiculously close friends. And I feel like once we figured out who our people were and who we were spending all of our time with, like it became no problem at all.

Like we would have game nights at our best friend's houses. We would go to different houses. and we'd have game nights, we'd put the kids to bed. We would step up to like 2 a.m. drinking wine and craft beer and playing board games, and we would have the most fun ever. And then wake up the kids at like two in the morning and go home. It was like almost being in college.

But like the cost of this was zero. Compared to like if you go out to an expensive restaurant with friends, like you talk for a couple of minutes, whatever. You spend $100 on babysitters. You spend $100 in your meal. And like you have a good night. But like in comparison, I find that when you do things that are cheap, it's not like it sucks.

It's actually weight. more fun. It's just nobody ever does it. Like, you know what I mean? People don't think about it or try it. Yeah, absolutely. People don't. Oh, go ahead, Mindy. That was just, we're both going to agree with you. We're finding we could agree with you more. Yeah, no, that's, and that's Sarah Wilson, who will be on the show in a couple of weeks. She had the same thing. She had the same tip. She would have friends over, and she's like, you know what? I made it a point to pay off my debt, so I just said no to everything. And I told my friends what I was doing. And I think there's a, big like shame or stigma around oh, I want to pay off my debt. Why is that shameful? I don't want to

have debt. Nobody wants to have debt. There's no big prize at the end to have the most debt. So do these fun things and not everybody is your friend. The people who want to go out and spend $100 a night, $300 a night, go out to bars and drink all the time. They might not have the same goals as you. They probably don't have the same goals as you. And that's not to say that going out is a bad thing. But if your goal is to pay off debt, then buckle down and do it. Because like I said before, there's no, nothing feels as good as, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Well, you know what? Nothing feels as good as being out of debt. Yeah. Completely. So, okay, now you agree with her, Scott. I also agree. So I guess, I guess, moving on,

before we get to kind of our famous four and wrap up here, do you have any other tips that you want to talk about for people that are getting started with this. I know you have your first three things that you mentioned to get out there. Any other mindset things that you want to mention or just I'm struggling to get into this. What do I need to hear? So the number one thing that we hear is that, well, the thing is I really want to get started in budgeting, but I can't because and some of them are really, really good reasons. You know, my significant other just got diagnosed with cancer. Like, I'm really sick. Like I've got a little one that's sick. Like legit reasons. And there's all a slew of other things. There's, you know, well, I've got 15 people in my house for a week. I've got

Thanksgiving's coming up. In Christmas, you know, I don't want to ruin the kids' Christmas. Like, we're getting married. There's all these reasons not to budget, but I, I love my readers enough to say you have to do it anyway, and this is why, like, you are already doing the hard thing. If you're struggling with paying off debt, or if you were living paycheck to paycheck or just not saving any money, right? You're already doing the hard thing. The easier thing is just to take a couple of months of your life, get it under control, and make it so that it's a routine. It's like shopping or like taking a shower or brushing your teeth. It's not going to like suck your soul out to continue doing this for the rest of your life. And if you can put the time in now,

and if you can find time and space for this now, it's a skill that you will have for the rest of your life that will pay you back tenfold. But you have to start. Even if you start and suck, it's better to start now than just be like, well, after the holidays, when January comes, I'm really going to get into it, or there's always going to be something else. There's always going to be a point in the future that you're going to say that you're going to start and you're never going to start. So just the second you listen to this, we're going to start tonight right now. Yeah. I love yelling at people. It's like my favorite.

It's probably the stage you're going to be coming out. I can just imagine you. It's really your gun on somebody, which is funny because I have no idea how I think. I spent nine years in that job and I'm like, I have no idea how I did that. But there are very few people who could be, I don't know how to say this out being like offensive. There are very few people that I find less cop-ish than you. I know. Because you always have a big smile on your face.

And you're like, you exude happiness and positivity. And, you know, when police officers pull you over, they're not like, hey, how's it going? I'm so happy to see you. They're like, why are you speeding? So, you know, it's just very difficult to... It's true. I think I was a great trooper, but I think my supervisor would have probably liked me to write more tickets. So I'm like, no, they really were sorry.

Like, I swear, you were super nice people. Mind, you seem to have a lot of experience getting tickets. Is that true? No comment. What is that I plead the fifth? Well, awesome. Let's go ahead and move on to our famous four. These are the same four questions that we ask every single guest.

And they're first, well, let's jump right into it. The first one of these is what is your favorite finance or business related book? So it's total money makeover by Dave Ramsey. I'm pretty much a Dave Ramsey fan like through and through. So anything he writes, I'm like, I listen to it all. I read it all. He's awesome. Or maybe it's Scott's book.

What's Scott's book name? That's going to be my next favorite. Yep, that's right. I can tell how much you live. What was your favorite part? Part two. Chapter two. Great.

Yeah. Thank you. I love Dave Ramsey as well. And that on the original Bigger Pockets podcast, the number one recommended book is the Rich Dad Portad by Robert Kiyosaki. I think Total Money Makeover is going to be the number one recommended book on this show. Because I think everybody has said that so far, not Aaron Chase. It's just, it's a really great book.

I think that Dave Ramsey does an amazing job of taking you from whatever debt level you are all the way up to zero, where now you're even, you don't have debt anymore. He does a really awesome job with that. And I kind of like the fact that he yells at you. Like I respond really well to that. Like I don't want someone to be like, oh, it's going to be okay. Like I want somebody to be like, fix it now, right now. Well, yeah, I don't want somebody to yell at me.

So I'm totally going to do it. So he stops yelling. Right. See, I like it. It can be effective. Okay. What was your biggest money mistake? Oh, gosh.

So we have a $300,000 townhome that is not. 900 square feet over three stories, no bathroom in the middle level. And it dropped almost $100,000 after the bubble burst. So we learned a very important lifelong lesson about real estate and that we should actually research and know what the heck we're doing before we buy a house for $300,000. That was, I think, our biggest money mistake. And we're still paying for that one. We have renters now in it, but we became reluctantly landlords for that. And we're kind of, I think that's kind of the next goal is that we look for ways to maybe instead of being reluctant landlords, being like opportunistic landlords and turning that into like a happy ending.

Well, there's a great website that could help you out with that. I heard about that. Biggeropockets, right? Biggerpockets.com. You know, I think, I think maybe somebody wrote a book on rental property investing. What is that called, Scott? I think it's called the book on rental property investing. Oh, that's really.

Mr. Brandon Turner. By Mr. Brandon Turner. or maybe you've heard of him. Yeah, let's send Rosemary a copy of that book so she can start. It's like a happy story. I don't want to say so she can start doing it right, but so she can start doing it right. Probably, yeah. Awesome.

What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I know you've given a lot of these now. This one might be redundant if you just want to restate. So highest ROI, like let's say you're just trying to reduce your budget. You're reducing how much you spend. Number one spot for most people. I'm assuming you don't have some. some crazy spending thing that I don't know about. Number one spot to reduce your budget is almost

always in groceries. So that's the spot that you should focus on. But again, there's a little bit of skill building involved in there. So if you don't know how to cook or if you're not really good of keeping up on dishes, you need to learn those skills before you attack the grocery budget. But when John and I, just John and I, we didn't even have kids at that point, we were spending $1,600 a month on groceries to feed two adult people. I know, right? Whenever I say that I'm so embarrassed. But now at the end, I'm like, oh, it's great because it's better now. But I think at our lowest, we were able to spend between $250 and $300 to feed my husband and I and our two kids a month, right? So that was mostly with freezer cooking. That's no extreme couponing. That's definitely a lot of

Aldi. High five to Aldi. But once you are able to really tackle that, that makes a massive difference. Now, part of that was chronically disorganized. We would go out and buy a ton of groceries, let it all rot in the fridge and that we would do eat out every night. So skill building has to come first. But if you're looking for the biggest impact, it's almost always the grocery budget. And that's the biggest variable expense in someone's budget. That's the biggest one that varies month to month. Some people may have more rent, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the easiest one to. And then obviously also like if you're going to be making a big decision, like buying a $300,000, $900,000, $900 square foot townhouse, maybe do a little upfront thinking about

that one. Talk to some people. Awesome. Where can people find out more about you, Rosemary? So I'm at busybudgeter.com and we actually have a special link. I think you guys are going to put the show notes for you guys. So it's going to be busy budgeter.com backslash bigger pockets. Awesome. And what does that busybudgeter.com slash bigger pockets get you? So we have a 90-day budget boot camp that we've put, we've had 65,000 people go through. And what it actually does is it takes you from like chronically disorganized like I've got dishes exploding all over my house I haven't done my laundry in a month I kind of suck it being an adult it takes you from that moment to being able to get out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle so we teach all of those skills

in the order that you need to learn them and the idea is that you're going to be able to go through these challenges work on one skill a week it's not overwhelming I promise it's super it's way simpler than you're thinking it is in your head. And I promise it's also going to be kind of fun. But the idea is that we give you the things in order so that they have the maximum return on your investment of time and that by the end of it, you'll be out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Then you could do whatever the heck you want to do. You can keep budgeting. You can do investments. You can do whatever you want. As long as we get you out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle, we're happy. And it's free. Did they mention it's free?

Awesome. No, I was just going to ask you how much does that cost? No, it's totally free. When we created this, everybody, else was kind of charging for courses. And the thing is that if most of my readers can't pay for it, do you know what I mean? They really can't pay for it. So we made the agreement to keep the 90-day budget boot camp free always. And we stand by that. It's been really, really important to us. And I'm sorry, did you say 65,000 people have taken this? That wasn't, yeah. And the testimonials are, the testimonials are insane. Like, we keep a Slack channel of just testimonials from it. And I try not to go in there too much because I always cry.

but it's nice when you have a bad day and you're like, oh my gosh, see, I don't second life. That is awesome. That's so many people that you've helped with this problem. That's amazing. Definitely go check out. Definitely go check out that link. And that'll be there in the show notes as well. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's one of the number one questions that we get on the bigger pockets forums is how do I start investing in real estate with no money and bad credit? Well, you don't. You don't. You fix your money. Fix your no money and bad credit situation. That's really funny. Wow, that's weird.

Yeah, that's, well, you know, real estate can change your life. Yeah. Real estate can, you know, it can provide you with so much financial freedom that you can quit your job and live the life that you want to live and do whatever you want to do, but you can't do it if you don't have any money. I mean, nobody's just going to give you a free house. Yeah, I promise. Or if you are able to do it and you are unprepared and you don't have the financial

foundation from which to invest, it can make your life way worse. We've heard that plenty of times, too. So that's why we go through this process. Almost all these successful investors that I know have have gone through the process of getting their financial house in order and probably their regular house in order before they go ahead and begin thinking about things like making large real estate investment purchases. That's really funny. Yeah, I need that book. I got to get that. next year I want to be a real estate investment person. Oh, well, have you on the original bigger podcast. I know, yeah.

Have your real estate empire. Success story, yes. Awesome. Well, the last question here of our famous for is, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? What are you going to tell your 15 guests in your house this week? So I am the most socially awkward person you've ever met. If that hasn't come through the podcast, I don't know how to happen.

That's why I'm a blogger, because I love writing, but talking to people, I'm like, whoa, that's a lot. So if I'm telling any jokes or laughing in a party, I'm probably making fun of myself. I do that a lot. Sorry. Yeah, the social awkward did not come through. You just are this effervescent ball of energy.

Oh, yeah. With this huge smile. Charisma. Charisma is what oozes out of you. Yes. That's a really good, that's a really good word, Scott. It's a perfect way to describe her. Yeah.

So I'm definitely not a joker, though. What's yours? I wouldn't know yours. Do you guys have a favorite joke? My God, Scott is the worst person on the planet with jokes. He tells all these dad jokes. He doesn't have any kids, but he's got this dad joke thing down pat. I just have to come up with puns all the time.

I don't know. It's a very annoying tendency. I don't know. Some people appreciate them. That's funny. Well, here's a toast you can give to your guests. Okay. There are red ships and there are blue ships,

but there are no ships quite like friendships. And you know what happened when the red ship collided with that blue ship? What happened? Both the crews are marooned. Thankfully, I'm not going to know. You're welcome. You'll use it. So they're all scared.

Every day, Rosemary. He tells jokes like that every day. He were so lucky. The office. All righty. Well, this has been so much fun, guys. Thank you so much. This has been really great.

Rosemary, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about budgeting. I really appreciate your time. Thank you guys for having me. This is awesome. I love you guys. Oh, we love you too. Okay, we'll talk to you later. Okay, bye.

Bye. All right, that was Rosemary Groner from the busy budgeter. Thank you, Rosemary, for joining us on our number four episode of Bigger Pockets Money. Scott, what did you learn from today's show? Well, I just thought she had, again, I thought she had such an incredible story that she came from. You know, she was, you know, in such a tight position, they were both police officers. And she was able on, on, on to, you know, what was previously two incomes, you know, in a very tight situation to sustain their lives. She was able to just take complete control of her finances back and quit and have, and support the entire family on one income.

That's a 50% reduction or a 50% reduction in your level of household income. Yet they're able to make it work and then continue to build wealth and then accelerate that wealth creation and then start a business all because of the power of her organization in the very beginning and getting command of every aspect of her life. Yes. And her energy is infectious. I sat there listening to her talk about all of these things. I'm like, I want to get out of debt too.

Wait, I don't have any debt. But she's just, she's so inspiring. I'm so happy that she was here to spend some time with us. Yeah. Again, I just think that what she's got there, what she, what she speaks to is really an incredible business-like optimization of her life. Right? Yep.

I mean, she keeps inventory of her shampoo. That's nuts. I know. I'm thinking, what can I put in my little supply cabinet so that I can, always have it and I never have to run to the grocery store. That's such a big tip. And I mean, you got to make sure it doesn't go bad, but deodorant doesn't go bad. Like she said, you know, shampoo doesn't go bad. And have you ever been there where you have to run out to the store? You can't make it another day without, you know, running out. It stinks. Yes, I am a single guy.

So if that ever happens, then, yeah, you know, just shower without the soap that day and get it tomorrow. You, no. That's gross. Yeah. I always have hotel soaps. No, but I, you know, I think that if you are in a position in life where you're starting out and you are really struggling to make any progress, this is the approach to take.

You ruthlessly optimize. You know, you take those simple steps that she's, that she talked about, you know, get your laundry, you know, get your laundry done, get your dishes done. And then you go and expand that where you can and where you can. you're willing to, to each aspect of your finances that you have direct control over. And month by month, you know, week by week, you're going to make progress. And you're going to start to see those results accelerate and accelerate and accelerate until you've built up a pretty sizable financial foundation.

And then you're off to the races with the rest of the stuff we're talking about on this journey to financial freedom. Yes. And I don't know if you as a single man caught the tip where she and her husband did this together. When you and your husband are on the same playing field, when you're playing the same game, you are going to accomplish so much more than when he doesn't have any interest in it or she doesn't have any interest in it and you're just doing it yourself. Yeah, absolutely. I have a girlfriend and we're actually starting to do these, our goals together on a weekly basis. We have a little goals and we

reward ourselves with a little bit of a wine or beer and hang out and watch a movie after that. But it's like a little ritual we have on Wednesday nights now. Oh, that's nice. That's nice. I'm really excited for you. Yeah, I think it's great. And I think that's, you know, I haven't, you know, I've never been married, but I can see why that would be obviously a huge part of your ability to get ahead on this. Yeah.

When you're both on the same page, it just makes such a difference. All right. Well, so should we close out here? We should. Awesome. Well, before we close out, let's just quickly beg for a little bit and say, hey, Hey, guys, if you like this show, if you like us, or even if you just like Rosemary, would you please go ahead and give us a review on iTunes? We are a brand new show here.

This is our fifth ever episode. And we're still trying to get those reviews in place to let everybody know whether or not we're awesome or we suck. So if we're awesome, please go ahead and give us a review on iTunes. And if you don't like us, well, you know, do you can. You could. You could. Yeah. Constructive criticism.

Awesome. Well, anyways, please go ahead and give us a review, give us a shout out, maybe share us on Facebook, Twitter, whatever the kids these days are using. The kids, like you're not 20. Yeah, but I don't use any Facebook or whatever. Okay. For episode four of the Bigger Pockets Money Show, this is Mindy Jensen over and out.