Financial Audit - Ignorant Wife Faces Financial Infidelity | Financial Audit

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

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We're pay advancing. Do you know he's pay advancing? I don't know what that is. He's getting his paycheck, parts of his paycheck early. And then having to pay it back. Yeah. She doesn't even know that? I'm Natalie.

I'm 22. And I'm Christian. I'm 23 from Willis, Texas. And this is financial audit. Well, thanks for coming over, guys. So what do you currently do for a living? I'm a stay-at-home mom. Got two kids.

Right. What are the ages? You guys are so fucking young. This is insane. What is this the 50s? I mean, I'm all about it. I'm just like, I can't even picture a little stinky, sticky thing running around and I'm 29.

Kill me, okay. So we've got 2002. Kill me. It's not for the faint of heart. I will tell you that. My oldest... It looks like you're in high school. This is insane.

Okay, sorry. Sorry. This is blowing my mind. I'm just getting old. I'm getting old. That's fine. My oldest is two and a half. He was born in September.

And then my youngest is 14 months old, born on December. Yeah, so being a stay-at-home mom makes sense. What do we got going on over here? Yeah, I'm a restaurant manager. I, um, in the Woodlands, Texas, I just recently got a promotion. It's going to be like a multi-unit type of thing. Oh, that's cool. What's our current household income? It's about, uh, $5,500 a month. Nat or gross? Net? 52 to 54, you said? Yeah. Was it going to be? I already got the raise. Oh, okay. I'll be honest. I mean, for, a two-person household in a not cheap area with two little kids.

It's not the most like beefy salary, but we are young also at the same time. So we can't, I'm not going to knock $53,000 net at 23,000, not even close. So, I mean, that is cool within itself. And child care is very expensive, so it's hard to do that. What scares me. Okay, we're young. We're a young couple. We've got kids.

Cool. awesome. So we take out a helock and then we continue to borrow money. Is this the way we're starting off marriage? Is this the way we're starting off building a family? What the fuck are we possibly doing? So I was in insurance for a while and you'll see some of the deposits from that. And I was like buying insurance leads and basically living on a credit card. When I turned 18 years, old, Chase gave me a $15,000 credit limit. Okay, but then it's your choice to knock it up or not. I know, I know, but yeah.

I know at 18, it's hard. I open a couple card cards at that time. I was dumb. It's dumb and I paid it off. But that did not answer my question about Helock and continuing to borrow more money. That's not starting raising a family off in a financially good position. What are we doing? I feel like I'm in a situation where I can't.

save my way out of my expenses. Save your way out of expenses. You mean earn your way out of expenses? No, like I... Either way. Like you want to save enough money. I feel like... I guess the reason I keep spending is because I feel like

no matter how much I save my expenses will be more than my income. But your expenses were all like... Yeah. You say that like I don't have the numbers right in front of me. No, no, I know. What are we doing? Yeah.

I feel like that's why we spend. Why? That's why we spend? What's why we spend? No, I know. I know that's a bad mentality, but that's just like having my mind. He has a problem telling me no. What are you the spender?

And he's the decider and he says no? And you say, well, I'm the spender. I'll ask for things. He won't tell me no, even if we don't have the money for it. And so it's gotten to the point where I have to really push and say, do we actually have the money for this? What do you guys not sit down and talk about your money? No.

No. Okay. Well, let's have this marriage like exists longer than a few years. And a good way to do that is sit down and actually understand where our financial picture is, right? I say that as someone who's never been married. But at least I understand the finances around it. Yeah. Why have we not sat down and talk about this?

Money in any way whatsoever. I feel like my responsibility as a man is to make sure that I'm living below my. means, which I'm not. That's a responsibility as an adult. That's nothing about you being a having a... To provide for her. Yeah. So that's why it's hard for me to tell me.

Is that where you guys are mentally? No, I think he feels guilty about not giving me things that I would like, if that makes sense. Like he, I'm at home with the kids. Do you pressure him into getting things? No. Does she pressure you into getting things? She says that.

we're broke a lot, which makes me feel bad. Then why do you get the things if you're the spender? If you specifically say, hey, we're broke, then why do we go spend money as the spender? I will say I'm also the spender. Okay, then what the f- I'm dead by a thousand paper cuts and she's like... So you do the big purchase, he does lots of small purchases. Yeah, okay, yeah.

I'll give him that. He does get like the coffees. What are you getting? What's your thing? Close. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a moment to consider something.

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I think you guys had kids too early. Yeah. I would agree with that, yeah. Was it a... Not an ex. The first one wasn't. We actually planned him. The second, yeah.

So I feel like we were really good with our finances. We bought a house at 18. What? You said at 18, you got a massive credit card limit and max it out. That was like a year or so later. I'm just saying they gave me that credit card limit when I was 18. Okay, okay. So I feel like we were more financially responsible when I had a job.

And then I went 1099 in insurance and just wasn't working out. Yeah, he didn't really work when he was in insurance because he was working from home. But then we had just had our first son. And I guess he felt guilty about leaving me at home with him, even though I was like kind of okay. And so he would just stay home. Or if he would hear him like fussing and stuff, he would just come downstairs and like help out and everything instead of. going to sell insurance. Hmm.

Okay. So you took it out to pay off the credit card debt, to be clear. Correct. Okay. Any more kids? No, not yet. Not right now. Okay, but, okay.

So, okay, as long as that's not in your media future, I'm just trying to determine, because we are not starting this family off in a financially secure way, and then our spending is ridiculous. I mean, to be clear, I mean, spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Wee woo, we woo, total income that came in. This includes some extra stuff that came from your insurance days, I guess. Some reoccurring.

Yeah, I still get. I get paid every month. Yeah. So if we're bringing in $5,161 in total, $6,6,630.55 going out is insane. Yeah. So we went to Oklahoma, I think, during that statement for a cousin's wedding, and we just kind of went crazy. I will say if we didn't have to go to Oklahoma, I would not have wanted to. to go to Oklahoma.

So I'm my prefer. But we like pity kind of made that a vacation. So. Yeah. But, but, but we have debt to pay off. Right.

We have kids to take care of. Right. So, fuck you vacation. What vacation? Why? What kind of responsibility is that? You guys are young,

but you've taken out a lot now. It's time that we were growing up. Yeah. I guess it was just like we had to go to Oklahoma. We were like, if we're going to be there, we might as well. Go to Oklahoma.

Cost two. to exist in Oklahoma. Over-exaturation, calm down. But you did not have to go crazy, dude. Not even close. Yeah, but we did. I know you did. But what makes me afraid is doing it again.

Yeah. Yeah. And if we don't understand that it's completely bad-f wrong when we're in terrible, destructive, absolutely terrible debt, how do we know we're not going to do this again? That scares the fucking. Me too. All right.

Not giving me a... I guess that's kind of why. I guess that's kind of why we're here is just to, since we don't create a budget, we just kind of like don't look at it and spend. Yeah. Well, we're obviously going to put you through the budgeting program like any other couples. So make sure you take that, take the education, build the budget. But all the actions that have let up, starting at 18 from you, now five years later,

how has your finances been since you graduated high school towards now? Okay. So we basically, we met when I was 17. he was about to turn 18. High school sweethearts? No, he's homeschooled. Yeah, so no. We met at his sister's wedding.

Sure. Yeah. So basically he, I didn't know anything about finances because they don't teach you that in school, which they should. And so he was the one that was really doing everything and I was just kind of working. He was helping me figure it out, got me a credit card to build up my credit. Yeah. then we did you teach

you the fundamentals of credit cards? I don't think so because you're your own credit cards. Okay, so cool. Yeah.

What were you doing? I did buy her a car and cash though. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We didn't take it a lot so that's good.

Yeah. Okay, cool. High five. That doesn't negate any of this stuff here. That's not how this works. Mm-hmm. Okay.

This is insane. This is ridiculous. Let's just start. Actually, before we dive in, give me a financial score. I'm going to say three, two, one, go on go. I want you to both give me your household financial score.

Zero to ten. Zero being the worst, ten being the best. So three to one go and then you say it. Three, two, one, go. Five. Oh. What the fuck? That is a big difference by 50% of the scale.

Yeah, she's just not involved in our finances. Okay. Well, that's an immediate red flag. You guys got to do this together. Even if you're not out there earning, I mean, at some point, you probably will again. It'll be many years down the road. And maybe not. It doesn't have to be a requirement, but just typically that's what we see these days.

And still, you guys need to come together, understand where we're trying to get to. What goals are we trying to achieve? What does it take to hit those goals along the way? Those are conversations we need to have together. If one person's dominating the household finances, that's a recipe for disaster looking forward because at some point you're going to want to be more involved in the conversations. If you're jumping into the deep end of an absolute mess and confusion, and you don't know how to work with someone at that point,

because we've just been doing it so long together, it's going to be a mess. I think that's part of the reason why I don't bother with it is because it is so like overwhelmingly confusing. You're burdening her by f***ing up the finances and she's having to deal without knowing what's going on. That's a burden. You're burdening someone by giving them, well,

you can burden someone by giving them. Well, I do tell her that we go more into debt every month. You guys want your hammer finance score, though. It's linked in the description below. It's free. but speaking of yeah going into that every single month we're pay advancing

we're pay advancing do you know he's pay advancing I don't know what that is he's getting his paycheck parts of his paycheck early and then having to pay it back yeah she doesn't even know that no

no you've never told me that never what do you think because that's like scary like what are you doing that for for bills that come up what bills because our bills come out the first of every month Not all of them.

The ones you've told me? No. Not all of our bills come out the first of the month. But so here's what happened. Are those in February? I accidentally paid my car payment. This month. I accidentally paid my car payment twice.

Okay, but that doesn't account for everything here. You pay advancing constantly. Well, yeah, but it's one of those things you get into, once you pay advance once, then you just need it the next time around and the next time around. But not necessarily, though. because these are like close to $400. Okay, that's not an insignificant amount of money, but $400.

It's $100. Okay, but when you pay it back, when you do the reset, okay, I see what's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, that makes, that makes what I was about to say even easier. It's $100. Yes, for many people, you get into that, and that's a hard cycle to break. $100 is not even close to a make or break for someone who's bringing in net $53,000 a year.

Yeah. What is going on, man? Got to give me something here. I got to get some kind of insight. So I guess I finally decided to like close our credit cards or lock them or whatever, however that works. And I was just like starting off in my checking account with like nothing. Because kind of the way like my mindset worked was. And I feel like I learned this just throughout my childhood, except for my parents made a lot more money than me.

They would put like everything on a credit card and pay it off. So I would just put everything on a credit card. card not knowing how much I actually spent on it. And then I go to pay it off at the end of the month and I can't. I don't know. I mean, I know how to manage P&Ls and stuff. I'm pretty good at that.

But I just never dealt with my own. How do you feel? How do you feel? You're hearing things for the first time a lot. I need to know how you feel. How is the status of your guys' marriage right now, mostly revolving around the finances, but where are we sitting today? I mean, it's concerning that I didn't know that he was taking out

part of his paychecks early. I definitely feel like that's something I should have at least known. Yes, he doesn't really involve me in the finances, but I feel like I should have at least known that on if he was taking out parts of his paycheck before getting paid. Don't you think you should have told her? Yeah. Why didn't you?

I don't know. I honestly just didn't know. I don't know. I didn't think about it. Come on. I didn't. But like you didn't think. I've not included her in our finances since we got married. So I just didn't think about it.

Have you ever asked to be included in the finances? No. Why? It's just really confusing for me. It's stressful. Yeah. And I... Well, it's clearly going to get more stressful if we don't ever.

Yeah. Okay. So, yep, we're borrowing that, and then we have the fees on top of that. He loses four bucks every time. So that's a 4%. Four percent immediately gone from the money that is borrowing from his paycheck. Yeah. All right.

And then on here, so here's a tool. So we have a paid for a car. You said you've got to pay for a car for her. but yourself, no? No, I bought my car in cash, but the, so that car ended up going out. First off, it was a coop and we had two kids, which was. I had been begging him to get rid of that car for a really long time. Yeah, why didn't you get a car within what makes sense for your finances?

Because we had, we had no cash when my car died. That doesn't answer the question. If you have no cash, how does that equal get a more expensive car than you can afford? usually that would mean getting a car within your zero dollar budget huh i mean i i didn't have any cash so so how does that equal getting a car you cannot afford that doesn't make sense i don't have any cash that means i get a car i can't afford instead of a car that's within my budget buddy you got to give me something well what am i working with okay so i mean it's it's it's hard to drive around a small cheap car when you have two kids and a car seat two car seats yeah but i think you

went a little overboard for what you needed. You could have got a Jeep Cherokee like my Jeep Cherokee for about $12,000. 2019 Jeep Cherokee. That's what it's worth about. And you could easily fit them in there. It's safe. I think where he was coming from is we know we're eventually going to have more kids. Well, that's why I said at the beginning.

You guys said no. We said yes. Yes, but not like not right. Not right now. When? Probably in the next year and a half. No. It doesn't make sense.

why not clean up your finances first? Kids aren't cheap. You can still have them while you're getting out of debt. Yes. And while you're building wealth, sure, absolutely. But a lot of your things, I don't know, because you're delaying a lot of things that set you guys up for success, which pushes a lot of the pressure on them at some point.

Yeah. I want you guys to be in a better place before we start bringing in, before we stop popping out more. I think one more planned. More planned. I'm getting sniffed after. Okay. So I think my justification for that was it's a good, reliable car.

What is it? It's a Toyota Sienna. And even still, what you just said didn't make any sense because my Jeep likely holds. You can't put a third car seat in there. No. No? You're not supposed to. We've tried.

Oh, well, that's me. That's on my lack of knowledge. Maybe if you get some of the more expensive car seats that are really skinny. Yeah. It's a van. Yeah. It's eight people. Okay.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to. Car seats. Car seeds. It's not my field of care. Giving a shit in any way whatsoever. That's okay. Toyota, Sienna. For $21,281.281.

At a interest rate of what? It's 8.9. Not great. 9%. Minim monthly payment. 549. Because it had over 100,000 miles, the banks will only do 48 months.

What do you mean? banks will only do you mean that's the longest they'll go yeah why but i want you to go longer than that that's terrible no no i i'm just saying that's why the payments high payments high because you probably got something that you just couldn't afford right now well you're paid off car what kind of car is it no that's her car now i took over her toy or corolla okay so you're never gonna drive around the kids well no he does see doesn't make sports okay so sure i had the lack of knowledge in terms of where you have to put a car see and that's you know fine okay that's awesome you're preparing when you got this for this new kid that just again we've already established and you guys kind of agreed

that maybe you had kids a little too early yeah uh does does that flow in with having another one right now now maybe you're just trying to keep the ages like less get so that I mean there's a family planning perspective and then there's a financial perspective and it's hard to mesh what were you going to say I mean I could probably only go through having one more kid I almost died with my last one. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was a whole whole ordeal. I would not recommend almost dying. It was not fun. Yeah. You want to

almost die again? No, which is why I want to wait a little longer. If I even want to have... You said a year. Well, yeah. You guys are not decided on this. No. It's more like... Well, why do we buy the car for it then? Instead of waiting into getting the car then? That's, because that's all I was going to suggest is this was not

necessary right now. Right. Right now. You could have gone a car that was about $10,000 cheaper, that would fit your situation now and then figure it out financially at that point. Yeah. Get a credit score is better, get a better loan. That's the thing too. When I- Is having a fully funded emergency fund. But do you want to have a kid without a fully funded emergency fund anyway? Like, I mean, no. I mean, I know you're already in the situation you're in, but without having a fully funded emergency fund, our situations is so dangerous, financially speaking, as a household. Yeah. I think also the reason the interest rate is so high is because my credit score when I took that out because my credit cards were at 110% utilized.

Yeah. Yeah. It was 580 when I took it out. Does this make sense to have done this at that point? Probably not. 12%? 12% interest in what? 32,000.

Oh, that's a credit limit. Oh my thing. No, that's, it's maxed out. Oh, fuck me. What are we? What are we doing? Why? What?

Do you know this is maxed out? You know he has a maxed out card at 12%? It's a helock. Oh, this is the helok. There it is. Yep. The HELOC, when, okay, I need to, when he went and did the HELOC, where you consulted it anyway whatsoever. Yeah.

And? I agreed with it. Okay. Did you understand it? I did. He explained it. Okay. It was that or just not pay our credit cards.

But you said the minimum of the payment, it was like $500 a month, right? It was on one card. Oh, all together. It was like, it was like $900 a month. How much were you making in your previous position? My household income went up about like $500. them up. What I mean, now?

Yeah. By the last time? Yeah. I mean, depending on your living expenses, you could have made it work. You could have also done this. Maybe. I mean, I think the fact that I only worked 40 hours a week. Yeah.

Any consolidation? Did you look into any kind of consolidation? Yeah, but my credit cards are like 110% utilized, so I couldn't get anything. And the only reason I got that is because it's a credit union. So $32,419. $53. Yeah. 12%

the minimum monthly payment of 330, 41? Yeah. It's interest only for five years. Part of the reason it's so high is because we also had a second lien on our house because the... Are you kidding me?

So we were in a program that paid for our down payment for our house. So we closed in our house for $20 and they forgave it like 20% a year. Well, that's okay. So we have... to pay off 6,000 for the second. I think you guys have rushed into something.

Yeah. Trying to be a little older than you are right now. Sure, at some point, it would have made sense in the history of the United States and the prices of homes for someone in your age range to have bought a house immediately like, oh, we're going to go pump house and kids and just go get a house for a, you know, box of donuts. That's like, that's not, I think you guys are rushing into the wants of this life. those dream life that we've envisioned. We've just gotten ourselves into a risky situation in general. I think sometimes I forget that we're so young. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think about the fact that I'm 22. Yeah, you guys have baby face. So hold on to it. Well, you haven't. It gets sad real quick. Does it? Freedom. Just wear a sunscreen every day.

I've heard that. Okay, $2,446. This is you're not close to maxing out this one. No interest. Is this in an interest free period? Or do you pay this off every month? I'm not sure. It was paid off before that month. It's not anymore? No. Why? Why did you do this? We had $1,500 in car repairs.

Well, your spending's also ridiculous. Starbucks and tuckie. Car repairs on what? The Carolla. The 2009. 2009 corolla. It was $1,5007. And I had to do it because it was the part of it was the EVAP system, so it couldn't pass inspection. $40 minimum fee payment inspection. Isn't something we have to do in Texas anymore. What do you mean?

I don't know if that's been officially been applied yet, but you no longer have to get an inspection to get registered. Really? Yeah. They passed that law. I don't know if it's effective yet. Is that smart? Don't let me spread misinformation.

Well, it blew my mind when I moved down to here in Texas that the inspections are even a thing. Because it's not a thing in Michigan. Oh, you're from Michigan. Yeah. You didn't have to do that. Up in there, you just got your car registered. Hmm.

F me. Oh, it's because. of a car repair. The pink lines are all bullshit. The pink lines are all bullshit. The pink lines are all bullshit. Two pages of this. Do you even know you're spending?

You guys don't go over it. Do you even know what's happening at this household? Wendy's, Amazon, Wendy's, Juice Bar, which, by the way, it's supposed to be giving you money, not you giving them money. Panera bread, liquor, raising canes, Sonic, Life Cafe, Juice Bar, Raising Cains. Just make a fucking juice.

Just make a juice. juice. They won't know. No, no, don't steal from the company. Raising canes. No, I get them for... Viac. I do get them for free, but there's like some bottled stuff that I don't. So I get like the assayasie bowls and juice for free. Stop. Then stop. Then stop spending money. I know.

It doesn't make any sense. Disney store. Tequitos, tequitos. McDonald's. What is this BlackRock thing? Coffee. That's me. Great. Coffee Panda Express. Juice bar, juice bar, once upon a child. Hello, Wisp. Cupa Yo, Starbucks, Tequitos, McDonald's, Tequitos,

Amazon Marshalls, BlackRock Coffee, Waterburger, Black Rock Coffee, Tequitos, Tequitos, Tequitos, Waterburger Pizza, Netflix, thrifts. It's the gas station. He says, oh, so I take it you're the watcher of the show, you're not. Yeah. I watch in passing. Oh, in passing.

So, Takedas essentially means stopping at a gas station and just get in some bull. Okay. Yeah. We eat a lot of chips. Okay.

Go to the grocery store. I'm talking about. Get passive bags for much cheaper. You stop at the gas station for chips? Yeah. For chips? Never heard of people doing this. Who stops the gas station for chips?

Go get a big bag. In the grocery store. He comes home every day from work with beer and chips from the gas station. No, I wouldn't say every day. You're going to get fat when that metabolism dies 30, 23 years old. It's what happened to me? The Doritos are just so good and they don't have them at H-EB. They don't have Doritos at H-EB.

Not the ones that I... Well, which ones do you get? The fireline ones. Go to Walmart or something. Okay. I will say a lot of those food and spending is him. He gets food, fast food, quite a lot. The only things on there that are mine is BlackRock, the kid stuff, and then marshals.

Yeah. Brom's store. Tequitos. Chick-fil-A. Double-shot coffee. Double-shot coffee. Kidoba. McDonald's.

Bram's store. Tram's store. Laundraining baking. More banking. That's when we're in Oklahoma. Yeah. That goes into Oklahoma. Rise and grind.

If your spending habits didn't change, whether you're in Oklahoma or not. It wasn't like a unique situation. You're just spending going crazy. Rise and grind. Brom store. Tequila. and baking again.

Takedos, Takedos, Starbucks, Tequitos and Carl's Jr. The spending's wild. You said you have a new balance on the Freedom card, right? Yeah. Oh, oh.

Right there. This is the one that I was using. Yes, okay. So right on this one is like, new balance. So that's the same thing. Okay. No need for that one.

And then on the Apple card, $839. 88. cents. The minimum monthly payment of $28. Oh, shocker. Most of the things on here are bullsh. In fact, there was only one thing that wasn't bullshit. And actually, it probably, you know what? In fact, it definitely was because it was only five bucks. So I know you stopped and got some chips.

Where was it? Yeah. And I will say also, he has told me that we can't afford things and we can't afford to eat out. And I'll cook at home for myself and the kids. And then he'll get off of work. And he'll say, hey, I'm so hungry. I'm going to stop and get food. I'll tell him, we can't afford that and he'll still stop what are you doing why i don't know that is not an answer i i don't if you can't get to the core of why you're doing what are you ever going to change i feel like it's because i work you know for like eight whatever however many hours and then i just don't you work eight hours a day no i know no i i i know oh it's a hard i know what well i i'm just saying it's like one of those things where i don't take any breaks at work so i just get off and i'm so

hungry. Oh, buddy has a job. Yeah. A job where he has to do work. And to be fair, also, he could get a free assaye bowl instead of going to a fast food restaurant. Yeah. And metabolism, man. When it dies in a couple years,

your husband's going to be a fat watch out. I hope not. DoorDash, Chipotle, Starbucks, Starbucks. So who's the Starbucks? It's right next door to my work. Congratulations. Make coffee like a human adult. I know. Nectar juice bar. And then some tequitos and tequitos juice bar. DoorDash. DoorDash. Crespeas. I thought, see, I thought we were at least picking up food on the way home, but we're getting Friadash. DoorDash. Cres pizza. Tequitos, Starbucks, Starbucks, Starbucks, DoorDash, Starbucks. And also, DoorDash is him.

That I draw the line there. What are you? I will get DoorDash like once or twice a month. he I will go to bed and lay down and I'll come out in the morning and there's like wing stop on the couch and he'll tell me like oh yeah I ordered door dash last night is your guys the relationship and communication and everything how is your relationship I would say it's pretty good other than the finances yeah yeah really yeah so that's the one hard part yeah yeah have you guys done anything to help to try to mend the financial financial part of the relationship I mean we're here it's a good first step yeah so this is it this is the first step.

You haven't done anything until now? No. When did you guys get married again? We got married. Yeah, it's 2020. Wow, it's a long time to wait to try to do anything. It's okay. Here's our mortgage.

This mortgage is incredible and it's discussing that you ruined with a HELOC. So you took a risk by doing that down payment financing thing. It worked out in the end. Risky. Yeah. That a 2.7 rate. It's delicious. Yeah, we got.

That sounds kind of high. I thought it was 2.25, but... Oh, yeah, 2.7, so high. Compared to now? Yeah, I guess... It's like the one good thing we've looked at. I'm happy. $1,236 a month in $0.40.

Which, it did go up quite a bit. Parific to tax? PMI? No, so it was... My home insurance doubled, so I got a new home insurance policy, and I signed stuff that said that they would cancel the other one, and it never canceled.

So my escrow account got hit with $3,000 in home insurance. Okay. And you take care of it? Yes, kind of. And then also I didn't file my homestead exemption. Why? I don't know. I know.

Okay. When you guys talk about things and have conversations, I filed it now. I don't know about everything. Yes. Yes. I did file my homestead exemption now when I saw it went up because my mortgage used to only be like $9.50. Checking account.

This scares the fuck out of me. the absolute $121.67 in our checking account at the time of the statement. That's insane. We have kids. We have kids. But we choose to go out to eat and get Starbucks and do all this every day.

And even shop at our own place to work and we have $1.21 in our checking account. No shit. We're borrowing money from our paychecks. Here's this Aqua thing and more DoorDash, nectar juice, Spotify. the juice bar. Aqua's my water bill.

Okay. And then the juice bar. Apple cash sent. Apple cash sent. Clear cover? What's that? Wait, that's my car insurance. But can I talk about the Apple pays?

Those do get reimbursed for me. That's like if an employee buys something for the store at Kroger. Zelling out money. Adobe. Who is it Zell to? Adobe. We canceled that. Good.

We have to buy our way out of it, though. Yeah. Affirm. Someone. affirmed some hair removal at home things. I justified that in my head because it is cheaper than hair removal.

He wanted that. Yeah. Right. Don't need to go into that. Earning repayment. NBC. Peacock. Peacock. There's nothing on there. Apple bill. Amazon.

There's the Apple cash sign up, but we understand that now. Juice bar, Chick-fil-A, some tequitos. Juice bar. Amazon. Amazon, Tequitos, Kindle Unlimited, which, you know, I'm not opposed to you having that at some point. Get out of debt first. At least have an emergency fund for the sake of your family first. Go to the library and tell them, juice bar, tequitos and Apple Bill, Amazon, Tequitos. Tequitos, Tequitos, Apple Cash Sent.

We went over that, though. Adobe. She signed up for Photoshop on two accounts by accident. Yeah. Don't ask me how. And lightroom. And light room. It was like $100 a month.

McDonald's Wingstop, Tequitos, Apple Bell, tequitos, juice bar. Another Adobe, three. Three. All of them are canceled now. What are you? It was $100 a month.

There's the Apple Cash. McDonald's. And then our savings, we went from $400 to $0. So our finances are $100 in our checking account with two children, wanting to have three. But yes, removing hair is the important thing.

Yeah. It was sold to me like, it was sold to me. Listen, if it prevents you guys from getting and other children immediately grow that hair. The way it was sold to me was like you would save money not buying razors and shaving. All right. All right. But the fast food. Come on.

Yeah. So again, we spent about $1,000 more than came in. Mm-hmm. Debt payments total net in the end. 5.6% of our spending are $3.71.17. Net because, you know, we put more money on debt. So, but net, that's how that worked. Housing total 22.7% of our spending or $1,5002.77.

Phone total, 0.8%. Transportation total, 23.5% or $1,55.95 and 94. Necessary food, going to the grocery store, $1,36. That's not unreasonable for a family of 4. 14% when going out to eat or $926.25. So essentially doubled the grocery budget. I will say the gross. The grocery budget is highly inflated because of my job.

And I get reimbursed for some of it. All of it. No? Yeah. What? Like if I buy something at Kroger for. Okay. There were a few of those.

Sure. Yeah. And that... So groceries, though, we've talked about cooking at home and not eating out anymore. Yeah. I will do that. He won't. Why?

Be a fucking adult. I don't agree with that. I really don't. Why? How do you not agree with that? So I'll give an example. Like yesterday, I was like on my way home and she's like, we have no food in the house. And I listed off like five different things that we had in the house.

And she was basically didn't feel like making it. Is that true? Yeah. Okay. So why are we putting the blame on him? Well, we hadn't gone grocery shopping this week. But we had food in the house. Eggs.

Hot pockets. Mac and cheese. Yeah, there's hot pockets in there. There are hot pockets in there. She also said there wasn't mac and cheese in there. I got home and I showed her the mac and cheese. There are also hot pockets in there. There's food in our house.

What do the kids eat it too? Huh? What do kids eat it too? Everything. Everything. A lot of fruit. A lot of fruit. A lot of fruit.

My kids are basically fruititarians. Yeah. Which is expensive. So we've gone to buying bags of frozen fruit. Not a bad idea. Yeah. Takes them longer to eat. Unknown shopping total.

$518,31 cents of 7.8. spending. That's usually Walmart, Amazon, in your case, mostly Amazon, and Target, because we just do not know what was bought there. 1.2% of spending, spend a color health care, 1.9 with subscriptions, 0.6 with miscellaneous BS, which is mostly just stopping and getting some BS because we threw the Kroger's in your grocery, which a lot of those were stopping and getting something small, but I guess you're saying you're getting reimbursed for those of work. Sometimes I do get off work and I'll get like three gallons of milk because I also work next to a Kroger. kids go through like a gallon of milk a day.

Sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I will say that sometimes I will go. I don't normally drink coffee, but sometimes I will go and get some. Oh my gosh. Guys, get a Mr.

Coffee for like 25. We have everything. It can be cheap coffee. Just give you that little high that you crave so much. I like coffee, but I don't like the taste of coffee. It doesn't. So, fuck. Drink tea.

Drink anything else that has caffeine. Diet. I don't care. If you don't like to taste of coffee, but you need the caffeine, take a caffeine pill. Well, I like getting the sugary coffee drinks. I don't taste like sugar.

Okay, so you like the dessert. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, shut the f*** up and stop. Is what I would say next time you want to go get that. It's called be a big girl. Yeah, but if I'm waking up in the middle of the night with my kids and I'm not getting enough sleep and I'm tired and stuff.

I will say I, the one that wakes up with the kids. Our kids sleep through the night. now. But I wake up with them at 4 o'clock in the morning when they wake up for the day. And then we wake up at 5. 5.30. Yeah. Because I got to work at 6. So what you just said was incorrect. So that was your excuse for getting your little dessert coffees. But it wasn't true. Well. She does still get up pretty early just because I leave for work pretty early. Dude, just make coffee. Fill it with sugar and milk. Like,

Figure it out. You can't afford it. It's as simple as that. Yeah. Okay. Other large purchases is 6.2% of spending are $410.39. Let's see how those broke down. Marshall, Sport Clips, and Miscellaneous.

Oh, that's where all the stopping and getting the things went. That's what we put it. Okay. Where? And the other large purchases. We just combined them as essentially one big thing. Got it. What is our goal financially?

Where are we right now in terms of our goals? couple. I've mentioned to him because he has told me multiple times now that we go further into debt every month. So I have mentioned putting our kids in daycare and going to get a job, but he doesn't want me to go and get a job. Why? Well, because, so this is one thing. I mean, that's not what, that's not what she ultimately would like. So I would like to stay home with my kids, but if I need to go out. So you choose. And I do only work 40 hours a week, so I can go out and make, more money. And I guess where he's coming up with it. I can't get another job where I have a commitment, but I can go out and do like 1099 side hustles. Well, let me, hmm, I like to come at this.

And I think where he's coming from also is the income I would bring up bring in would basically be the same amount as a daycare. It was $2,400 a month. Well, have you shopped around? Yeah. How much a month? She's like very particular about the daycare though. Well, well, fair enough. Yeah. I mean, my kids are going there. Um, I used to work, how much? How much? $2,400. Yeah. To, how much? How much? 2400. Okay. I'm up.

Yeah. So I guess it's probably you buckling down and making some more money. Yeah. If we're not going to compromise on anything. And even like they're at a daycare right now while we're filming this and it was $25 an hour. That we are paying for. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Okay. Let's do your budget. Yep. So total income across everything was the. Okay. So what came in was $5,161. Okay. Let's get your minimum monthly debts.

947 hours and 50 cents for debt payments. Now our mortgage, which I'm not including on that, is $1,236. And 47 cents. Love the rate. Water, what was that water bill? What's our water bill? It seems like 20 bucks a month. Okay.

Gas and electric? Nothing. How? Oh, electric? Oh, it's 265, but that's another one that's just highly inflated. So we didn't live in our house the first like eight months it was there and I enrolled in average billing. So when I, the first year, the payments were like $60 a month, but they. How many square feet?

It's 13.09. Okay. And then it went to $265. I'm going to say $100. Okay. But it is, it's $265 every month. For how long? I think it, I think the average billing resets in September.

Okay, 265. Internet? It's $50 a month. Okay. Gas on average? Room, car gas? Probably 400 a month. Car insurance?

2-996. I mean, 196. Sorry. For both? Yeah. Total paper fun for the house. We've got to get things for the kids. We've got to blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's really anything and everything else you need to survive around the house is get all the goodies. When you take the budgeting program, it's going to be more intensive. and you're going to line out everything. But $200. Necessary food. Okay. I think we could do about $900. Should be.

As you're going to figure out the exact number of what I think we should be able to do about $900. Medical health care, gym, that kind of stuff. So we don't... Our health insurance is like $25 a month, depending on what I... Post? That's what it costs. But is that taken out of your paycheck? No, we're on Obamacare.

my job doesn't have insurance so but you work 40 hours a week yeah I thought that was the law did they reappeal that part of the law it's a small business so yeah oh okay

but if I go out and do like side hustles and stuff since it is based on income it's a 25 yeah subscriptions and nothing we don't have any right now anything else in your budget that I am missing these are the usual go-toes

obviously you're phone phone we pay 50 it looks like no that was team mobile home internet oh okay um we pay 116 a month to my parents that's those are the zills to your parents yeah why is it so much because my phone is financed once you pay that off dude switch to helium i partnered with them specifically so that i can get people like you on like 20 dollar month plans to use the same tower towers it's crazy 116 Yeah, the lines are 55 each. Do you consider it a work-from-home job with the kids?

I have, actually. I just haven't been able to really find one that's suitable for me. Yeah. Most of them you have to be on the phone and we just got to wait a little bit longer. Yeah. So the kids can be quiet. But that could be something cool. One thing you could do, I mean, I'm just thinking of people, the resources that we set up people with.

If you want to do like a tech work from home thing, I could probably set you up with a certification through course careers. We could probably do that because we partner with them as well. That'd be cool. I would like to bring in money for us. No, absolutely. And I was actually not anymore because he's in an actual preschool now, but I was for a while watching my nephew, and my sister and brother-in-law were paying me to watch him.

And I was bringing in about $400 a month doing that. So at least it was something. It was something. I would cover your gas. Right. I mean, I guess so expensive and only you drive. No. Oh, you drive a lot?

She drives to her mom's house an hour away. Oh, how often? Geez. Like twice a week. To grandmas. Okay. Sure she's happy. One thing that is really cool.

I know I've talked a little, I'm cheeky about children because they're just a, yeah. But like, one thing that is actually really cool, and this is something that, you know, I'm lucky enough being the first born when my parents were 19 and 18. What is cool is these two and potentially three. they're going to have a long time with you guys, which is really cool. You guys are going to be able to be young and active when they are able to go do things.

You can take trips and all these things. But in order for us to live that cool life and stuff, we've got to take care of our finances now so that you can do those trips and things that you'll want to do when they are able to form core memories and actually do things. You want to be those fun young active parents.

I think that's a argument that I've made. made with him about me going to get a job is because I have said that I want to be able to live comfortably and be able to do that stuff with them. And listen, if you want to, you can. How much can, okay. So this was, what town does grandma live in? How far away from Houston is? It's about 30, 40 minutes.

What if? Hear me out here. This would suck. This would take some grinding. Wait, what does grandma do right now? She works from home. She does oil and gas stuff. Is she able to do babysitting?

I know. It's okay. So I'm just in her brainstorming. Yes and no. I could potentially get a job in Cyprus because she lives. Yeah, that's what I was like. Yeah. Like she lives like 20 minutes from like all the stuff in Cyprus.

Dude, even if you were making 725 an hour and she was babysitting for free, that's still more money in y'all's pockets. Now it might not cover the gas that's required to get there. But even still, that's just an example. Right. So if she's able to, if we're able to utilize her and you still have to drive, like it'll be inconvenienced. But if you're able to bring an extra 500, maybe even $1,000 a month, that pushes, that pushes us closer. Right now we have a necessity of $4,355.90 a month to survive. That's our minimum.

How much? $4,355.90. Yeah, it's life, buddy. It's expensive. You guys got yourself into a mortgage. I mean, it wouldn't be much higher than your rent would be, honestly. But it's probably lower. Well, I mean, depending.

People think they can't really find bargains and then I pull up the bargains show them. And I know it's in a safe area. And they're like, well, I guess I just never looked. Yeah. But either way, yes, that's probably what it would be about anyway. It's going to be like it's going to go back to $900 a month next year. Yeah. After it re-escue us.

No for sure and that will be fantastic. That'll be incredible. It'll be different at that time. Also, for the groceries, I feel like it's a little high since... I don't. Well, I mean, if I eat at work five days a week. Well, you shouldn't. Just lunch, right?

Yeah. You should be getting your dinner lunch. You should be getting your free stuff, not buying stuff. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, but you'll still eat dinner at home. And then I have to cook food for myself and the kids. Well, you know,

Again, you guys will figure out the exact number when you take the program. Right. This is, I'm trying to be a little more conservative on numbers just so we can figure out our debt payoff strategy. Guys, it's a new year and you need to make your money work for you. You can do exactly what I literally do right now and put my money in the best high yield savings account. So far.

I get a 4.6% yield on my money and I also took advantage of the bonus of up to $250 when I signed up. You can start 2024 off amazing by. doing the same by going to the link in the description below. Should have an extra, let's call it $800 a month. That's our lovely little extra money. Nothing in savings. Zero dollars in savings. Only have $100. Well, we do have money in savings.

What? I've been just set up auto savings of $200 a week. And how much is in there? $400. Right. How much is in retirement? Nothing. Okay.

It's irresponsible as apparent. How much is in retirement? You don't make any money, so $0. Okay, very irresponsible as a parent. I've gone in the rant multiple times. I feel like I don't need to anymore, but blah, blah, blah, blah. Essentially your kids will have to take care of you for retirement because they'll feel morally responsible too and you're putting McDonald's over that.

So, yeah. Okay, you have $400 in there. So first month, let's put $100, $800 aside that puts $1,000 in savings. Usually we don't want to start doing things until we get one month of emergency fund, but even still, man. also one takes five months takes over five months to get a one month emergency fund yeah what one thing you did miss in here what was the trace credit card was that this is the current balance on my card so the monthly payment is based off of this i thought you said it was because this was after it went up

sorry i thought it went down from 5200 to 2,446 No, that was the car repairs like just recently. What are we doing? It's going to take five months to get a one month emergency fund before we can even start tackling our debt. But then it's going to take, I know, and then it's going to take six months to pay off the Freedom card. And it'll take one month to pay off the Apple card.

So that's seven months to pay off the credit cards. And the He lock, that's going to take. That's insanity. That's going to take 40 months, 40 death months. And we've got to pay off the car, which is at a 9% horrible rate. I could definitely refinance that. Not with your credit score?

No, it's $7.50 now. Really? After I got the HELOC, yeah, I shot up. Even with your current credit card balances? Yeah. Okay. And then it'll take 26 months to pay. But your balance will still be the same regardless.

Yeah. And then 26 months to pay off the Toyota. So this is a what? Five six year process. Five six year process. So if you can bring in any $500, it accelerates this about 33% if you can. And then, yes,

You're talking about going and getting another job, pegging a ham and cheese for your dinner in between. Sure, if you do that, that's great. Listen, if you double this to an extra $1,600 a month net, I mean, that takes it down from six years to three years. Three years to sacrifice is nothing. The kids are going to be five. They barely remember anything around then anyway.

They're starting to form their memories. So, I mean, that's great. Then they'll only know a life of their parents not being stressed about finances. So let's just say that worst-case scenario with a problem. bunch of sacrifice it takes three years to pay off all the bad debt obviously mortgage rollouting set and paying off that month of payment tells paid off um but everything else we're taking care of as quick as possible say it takes three years that's nothing three years in the remainder of your life 25 26 it's nothing it'll fly by so quick you guys have such

great potential in your life such a great life left to live as a couple and for your kids and to bring another kid in this world. There is a lot of potential here. And man, if it's a sacrifice for three years, it is so worth it. So it's going to be a little harder for you to figure out potential income situations. But if you can, again, I'm happy to gift you a certification to help at least kickstart that. You'll have to take the education, but that's a good way to kickstart.

Which will be good for work for home stuff. But then you, if you can work just a few extra shifts, you know, at a different job, or at that job if you can. I don't know what's available, but even if it's at an other job a couple nights a week, if we can bring this from an extra $800 a month to $1,600 a month for three years,

which I think will be the worst case scenario if you bring in $1,600. Yeah. In like a month and a half or so, I'll be traveling all around Houston to different nectars, different stores. What should I do with the mileage money? Put it towards gas.

But you don't spend $0.62 a month. violent gas. Right, right, right, right. Well, if there's anything extra, just put it in the whatever method you're going towards. Okay. Yeah. If anything extra, just include that as you're getting towards that doubling the $800

goal. Okay. Yeah. But also, remember, this is also taking an account maintenance on your car. It's taking account a lot of things. Yeah. There's going to be expenses that pop up the more miles you put on your car. A car that's already needed a massive repair.

Yeah. And it's 2005? 2009. 9. Even though it's a reliable car. Yeah, there's bearing noise in the transmission. Yeah. It's aging.

Is there any budget? Did you put any budget in there for like other things that might come up? Like needs. I don't know. One thing that comes to the top of mind right now is that we like desperately need a hard water softener. It's like ruining everything in my house. My toilets.

My toilets. Well, typically that's what we put the toilet paper fun in this conversation. because this conversation, it would take hours for us to, you and I, to all sit down here and come up with an actual line-by-line budget. So we do the total paper fund, which covers like, it shouldn't be $200 a month goes to total paper. That's not what it is. It's those extra things.

It's going to be a little bit of a cushion where some of it goes to the next month to cover a larger expense, you know, and it just kind of rolls over. And then as you're going through the program, you're going to get an actual line-by-line budget that you build, and the only way for you to actually do a budget that you stick to, you need to build it. You need to build it.

Not someone else built it for you. You need to go through your and figure it out. You're going to do it together. Because if you guys do not approach this together, it's not going to work. Okay. Okay. Sacrifice, man. Go, yeah, sure.

You can make it last six years. Or you can go bring in an extra 800 bucks a month net, make it last three years. Bring it even more together and it'll go even quicker. So it's up to you guys, what you do from here. But you need a budget. Can't go out to you anymore. Can't do all that.

It's a temporary sacrifice. You're going to be in your mid. 20s by then and just follow the 50 30 20 50% on needs which is easy to fit with your mortgage 30% on wants and 20% is good enough for your investments at that point max out your workplace retirement accounts and if you do that open up brokerages you can do moo-moo like i do you can do anything and everything from there that's where the fun conversations start that's where the fun conversations start until then it's the pain in the conversation which is this so any final thoughts me either of you

I don't do you? No. Okay, so you said five, you said zero for your financial score. Let's figure out your financial score. Spending in a budget, when we're making payday advances and we only have $100 in our checking account, it's harder for me to get $Vity or higher than $2.

Debt is not, HILOC's not great, but it's not the worst of the worst debt, but it's really not good either. So probably a two out of ten there, emergency fund. You have $400 now, so I'll give you I'll give you one. Retirement, there's nothing at all? Nothing.

Zero. Real estate is good. There might be a 401k somewhere. Great. The Helac brings it down, so it's going to be about a four-outenity. It would be higher. You keep saying that. Is that, should I have just kept the credit card debt?

We would have had to approach that situation in that moment, man. I don't know. But that doesn't all of a sudden make the Helac good. True. If we sat down in that moment, we could have figured out different solutions and brainstormed. I don't know what you looked like at that point. I don't know where your income was, I don't know where your spending was. If your spending maintained this in any way whatsoever,

the amount that you spent on going out to eat would have covered those credit card bills. Hammer Financial Score, 2 out of 10. Make sure to check out all the resources linked in the description below as they are what I use, or would use in specific situations, including the best budgeting program in the history of the internet. Thanks to all of our Patreon producers for making this episode possible.

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