The Personal Finance Podcast - Get Rid of Your Debt Once and For All with Chris Browning

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Starting point is 00:00:56 Save the Everyday with Amazon On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk to Chris Browning about how to slash your credit card debt. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking to Chris Browning about his journey to get out of high interest debt. If you guys have any questions, hit me up on Instagram or TikTok at Master Money Co. and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player, you love listening to this podcast soon. If you want to help out the show, leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Now, today we're going to be talking to Chris Browning about his journey to get out of debt. And Chris is the host of popcorn finance. And if you've never heard of popcorn finance, it is one of my favorite podcasts that are out there. And it's a shorter form award-winning podcast where he talks about all different types of personal finance subjects. And today what we're going to do is we're going to walk through Chris's journey through credit card debt. And I want a lot of people to understand that this story, what I love about this story, is that you can take action steps, the same steps Chris took to get yourself out of debt. If you're in debt, this is one of the things where I think you could take step by step, learn from his story exactly what he did because he took all the right steps and all the right approaches. Once he realized that he was in debt and he really needed to do something about it, he talks through what steps he took to get out of debt as fast as he possibly could.

Starting point is 00:02:44 And now he's building incredible wealth for himself and his family over time. So he's in the wealth building journey now after he paid off that debt. So this is something that I'm so excited to share with you guys. A lot of folks have a lot of questions about debt. So this is going to be a fantastic example for you to listen through exactly what Chris did. And you can mimic these steps, step by step. So I'm so excited to share this valuable episode with you. So without further ado, let's welcome Chris to the Personal Finance Podcast.

Starting point is 00:03:12 So Chris, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. Chris, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Andrew. I appreciate the invite. Thank you so much for coming on. We are so excited to have you. And I've been listening to your podcast for a few years now. I remember I think I found it when you were on episode 40 or 45. And it was one of my favorite podcasts. And one of the coolest thing is Chris is the host of popcorn finance. And it's one of the most actionable shows, I think, that are out there because you almost condense all the information down into bite-sized chunks that you can actually go and take and utilize. And that's one of the things I love most about this. So first of all, what's it like to have the best voice in podcast?

Starting point is 00:03:47 You know what? Honestly, I don't even think about it. People tell me it and I appreciate the compliment. Honestly, it didn't sound like anything in my head. But I will say that it did make it very hard to whisper in high school. Teachers could always hear me no matter what I was saying. I'm sure it stood out and everybody knew who it was whispering too when you were doing that. That's amazing.

Starting point is 00:04:06 So you have an incredible journey. And one of the coolest things I love about your journey is that you had to claw your way out of debt. And now you're at a point in time where you're really truly building wealth. And one of my favorite things about your journey is I think it's really actionable. And it's a step-by-step journey that you did a lot of things right when you went across and tried to get out of debt. So today I want to talk about kind of the steps that people can take to get out of debt by utilizing your story. Because I think it's so incredibly powerful to actually hear your story. So tell us a little bit about your journey and then how you kind of got into debt.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Yeah, you know, it was one of those things where my debt kind of, it grew on its own, not on its own. I was doing it. It grew, but I didn't really know what was happening. You kind of like, you just become blind to it because you're just not paying attention. You know things aren't going right. You're like, I know I'm spending money, right? And I know it's not in my bank account. I'm spending it using a credit card. So obviously I'm building up debt, but you just kind of push it in the back of your mind. And we really got kicked off was when my wife and I got married. So we both were, you know, I was living with a roommate at the time. She was living with her family. We were planning on getting married. So we're like, oh, you know, let's start the process. So we're going around looking at different venues, you know, caterers, photographer, all this stuff. We had zero money. Like I spent the only money I had saved on a ring. After that, I had nothing in savings.

Starting point is 00:05:22 She had nothing in savings. And our families weren't really in a position to pay for anything. You know, they helped with a few things that they could, but they weren't like, oh, yeah, don't worry. We'll pay for the whole thing. So we decided, we don't, we'll just build the wedding we want, even though family had offered to, you know, have it in their backyard or things that would have been 100% free. He said, no, you can't do that. That's not how it has to be.

Starting point is 00:05:42 So long story short, over the course of the wedding planning process, we ended up spending about $16,000, which is not a ton of money compared to how much weddings cost these days. But at the time, it was a lot, especially when you have $0. And that was kind of what started the snowball, because we started getting comfortable using the credit cards to pay for everything. And we hadn't ever managed money together. we weren't really great at communicating about money.

Starting point is 00:06:08 And so those habits just carried over into the marriage to where, you know, we had to buy furniture. You didn't have any money, put on a credit card. You know, we had some unexpected school expenses pop up from a wife that she forgot about that came in. We had some medical bills that popped up. And all these little things kind of just snowballed along with us just not really talking at all about our spending. So we're both, you know, using the credit card at the same time, thinking the other person's making a payment when they really didn't. And it just built up. So over the course of about, I say like the.

Starting point is 00:06:35 first four years of our marriage, this cycle was just continually building up. And it got to a point where I finally was like, maybe I should take a look at what's going on. Maybe I should finally just kind of sit down and just bring all the statements together and check the balances. And that's when I realized we had about $27,000 of credit card debt. And we really weren't making a lot of money. I'd say we were maybe making, I don't know, combined taking home, $45,000 to $50,000 in Southern California, which is nothing. And so that's kind of. the start and the, I guess the buildup of our debt. And that is one of the most difficult things because it sounds like you had debt on different

Starting point is 00:07:13 cards and different things like that. So when it's spread out like that, a lot of people can lose track as to, you know, how much they're actually building up in debt. So you did the smart thing eventually is you figured out, hey, I got to combine all these, figure out how much debt I actually have and then, you know, go and take care of this. Was there a certain point where you had an aha moment that you knew you were digging yourself into a hole, like, where you're starting to get stressed out and feeling like, oh, maybe I should actually check on this? Or was there something with, you know, you just kind of figured maybe I should actually, you know, add up these numbers and then go from there.

Starting point is 00:07:40 You know, it's one of those things where even when you're ignoring a problem, you still know the problems there. Like you're pushing it to the back of your mind, but it's still there. It's still kind of that little reminder like in the back like, you know, I probably should be checking in on this. I know we have some credit card dead. And I think it was just over time me being like, I can't ignore this anymore. I can't keep pushing it to the back and saying, you know, oh, I have all this. I'm busy at work. We have these other things going on. So that was what really finally just I convinced myself essentially to be like, let's look at this. And when I sat down and looked at all the statements together, it was a surprise, but not a surprise. It was one of those things where I knew,

Starting point is 00:08:14 I roughly knew a ballpark figure, but then seeing it like concrete, like here it is, this is the number. That's when it really kind of hit home for me. That makes complete sense. And so you were saying that you had about $45,000 in income coming in, which like you said in Southern California is tough to live on. And so when you had that $45,000 coming in, what were your expenses during that time? Do you remember what your expenses were? I can remember roughly because a little while, you know, it's like a little more close to a decade now at this point from that point in time. But I'd say we were, our rent was pretty low because we were renting from a family member. So they had a small property behind their home that we rented. It was a tiny house, basically.

Starting point is 00:08:50 So it's a little 400 square foot home. And I think we're paying like 800 bucks a month. And then, you know, I had a car, by the both me and my wife had a car payment that we were making, you know, then insurance and food after that. We didn't really have much expenses outside of that. But, you know, your typical everyday expenses. we were what we were going to handle them. Absolutely. So you didn't have a ton of cash left over to start paying down this debt. So what steps did you actually take to start climbing out of debt? I mean, the biggest thing was kind of just acknowledging like, all right, look, this is where I'm at, right? I got to do something. I got to make some type of change. So when we sat down, I made our

Starting point is 00:09:21 first budget and I said, you know, here, I asked my wife to come over. Like, let's look at the Excel spreadsheet I put together and just these are all of our expenses. How much money do we have left over? And we had a little bit. There's a little bit of room, even though, you know, We weren't making a ton of money, but we were really spending most of our money on, like, food and going out and things like that, all the excess we had. So it felt like we had no money, but there was still a little bit there. And so my first thing was, all right, let's try to strip this budget down to the bare minimum. We looked at the past, like, a few months of how we've been spending money, and then it was very obvious where it was going. So I said, hey, what if we just cut all this out?

Starting point is 00:09:57 Like, we're not going to go out to eat. We're not going to go take any trips. We're not going to do anything extra. We're just going to focus on paying down this day. how much money can we put towards this. And that's where the planning started. It didn't go great. Like it wasn't successful for a few months, but that's kind of our starting process for figuring out what we needed to do. Awesome. So then you started to cut out some of these things. And the big thing I want people to understand here is Chris had credit card debt. So within credit card debt, this is high

Starting point is 00:10:22 interest debt. So this is, and Chris realized this, this is an emergency. This is something where he really needs to pay this down as fast as possible. So he starts off by cutting out some expenses that he has in his everyday budget. And then did you do anything to say increase your income over time to maybe have some additional dollars that you could put towards paying down that debt? Yeah, I would say that was the biggest thing that made a difference for us because I've tried numerous side hustles. I've sold things on eBay. I've done Amazon, you know, shipping where you know, the FBI fulfilled by Amazon where you go to the store in the clearance section and buy a bunch of cheap stuff and sell it on Amazon. I've done food delivery. They're like postmates and DoorDash. I've done all the side hustle in

Starting point is 00:10:57 effort to try to get out of debt. And I would say the thing that made the most significant impact in that debt was me working to increase my income in my day job because those other things brought in some money and I'm sure you know there's people out there who wildly successful at those things I'm not discounting them but on a casual basis when you're just trying them out doing them when you have free time you can make some money but it's not like life changing money at least for me and so for me the stress of all that debt is something I thought about at work all the time I was constantly reminded of it I would sit at my desk and be like what do I need to do to make more money because this is not going away. And like you said, it's high interest debt. So it's costing a lot of

Starting point is 00:11:33 money just to have this debt sitting there every single month. So one of the biggest things I did was I'm going to try to invest in my career as much as I can. And so I went on a mission to try to figure out how I can make myself as marketable as possible. So I started joining professional organizations. At the time, I ran a payroll department. And so I went to our local, like, they called it, I forgot what it was. It's like this, I worked for a school district at the time. So there's this organization for people who worked in the business sector of school districts. And so they had annual conferences. So I joined that and I got like a co-chair position.

Starting point is 00:12:07 And I would go and I would help them plan the conference. And then I would help them find speakers. And so then I began to network and know more people. And that was stuff I could just put on my resume. Hey, look, I was a coach chair, even though I was really kind of just going to meetings and talking and, you know, saying, hey, I think this would be a good topic to cover. It wasn't a big lift on my part, but it looks very impressive on a resume. And I started to do these things.

Starting point is 00:12:26 I would talk to other departments within the organization. to learn more about what they did and get more involved in the different processes. And I started could be included in interview panels. I got to come and help plan with HR and how we should be changing some more processes. And all these things were small little pieces that at the time I didn't think too much about. But when you lay it all out on a resume, it looked really impressive. And then I was able to use that to flip that into a much better paying position. And I absolutely love that because that is the biggest thing that we talk about in this podcast as well is the first thing you need to be doing specifically is you can only cut back so much.

Starting point is 00:12:58 So once you figure out what you're cutting back, increasing your income is the most powerful accelerant to starting to build wealth than anything, especially if you're trying to get out of debt because you want to try to increase your income as much as you possibly can. And the first place to do that is exactly how you did it at your day job by increasing your skills and showing how valuable you are so that you can increase that income over time. So that's one of the most incredible things. And I love that as well because you're doing all the right steps that you really should be doing to actually get to that point to pay off that debt.

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Starting point is 00:16:13 I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advice, creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IDPrivatewealth.com. One big piece of this, as you're going through this process and you're trying to pay off this debt, you said, you know, you're at your desk and you're thinking about it all the time while you're at work, and, you know, it'd be the same way for me, too. It would be something that just stresses a lot of people out. So one thing I want to kind of touch on is the psychology behind debt as well. So was there

Starting point is 00:16:47 ever a point where you just felt like this debt was too daunting to overcome and this is just extremely difficult and you didn't really know what to do? Every single day. I don't think there was a day that went by where I wasn't just feeling overwhelmed. And that was probably the biggest catalyst for keeping me going because it just the overwhelm I had never let me forget about it, which probably wasn't a healthy thing to be thinking about as much as I was. But so often I felt like the number was insurmountable. When I look back on it, you know, 27,000. I've heard people with much higher amounts of debt who've paid them off than I ever had. But when I was making so little, it was, you know, half of my annual income that was going towards, it would be sitting in debt. And so when you make those payments,

Starting point is 00:17:27 you're making progress. But it was just such a small drop I would see every single month that I felt like you were just spinning my wheels. Like I was just sitting there. And there's many times where it just like, is it worth it? Like, what am I doing the right thing? Is this, you know, all the doubt creeps into your mind. And I think it's so easy to get overwhelmed, which I felt many, many times over the two and a half years it took us to pay this off. Absolutely. It's one of the things that once you kind of start to make progress and start to see that progress, I think it's one of the coolest things where you can kind of start to feel a little bit of that relief over time because you say, hey, I'm making a little bit of progress here. So what was the biggest? So the biggest

Starting point is 00:18:01 accelerator was most likely increasing your income. How big of an impact did that have? And how much did you increase your income over that time? So you could have those extra dollars to pay down that debt. It was pretty significant. I'd say while I was at my first job I had while we're paying off debt, I was there for maybe about three years. And during that three years, my salary maybe went from, I don't know, we'll say, like in the mid-30s to maybe the low 40s. It wasn't a significant change from just sitting there because I was working at a school district.

Starting point is 00:18:28 You're on a set pay schedule. They're not going to just say, hey, you know what? You don't have a great job this year. Here's a 20% raise. That's never going to happen. But when I started putting in the work and kind of networking and building up my resume, when I use that information, I was able to get into a job where my pay jumped about 20 grand.

Starting point is 00:18:43 I went from around the low 40s to like the mid-60s with that one job change, which was, it blew my mind. I was like, I'm doing basically the same thing. Like, my responsibilities didn't really change all that much from one job to the next. But I was like, oh, I was just being underpaid for the amount of hours in time I was putting into this job. And that by far, I mean, as you can imagine, made the biggest change for us. I mean, because obviously after a while, expenses started to change. Like, we had to move from our smaller place. They had to, you know, it wasn't going to be available for us anymore.

Starting point is 00:19:13 So some of our expenses did go up with that, but at the same time, I was able to earn enough to offset that, plus be able to accelerate our debt, pay that a little bit more. I love that. And I was in a similar situation as you as well. When I started off, I started to make about $30,000 a year at my first job, I remember. And I remember that first promotion, like working so hard to get that first promotion. And the difference was something like the same, about $20,000, $25,000. And every promotion I got after that was like, I can't believe that I'm getting paid this much more to do a similar job. I'm just kind of acquiring the skills over time. It's actually amazing. once you think about it. And it solves a lot of problems for you financially once you start doing that because it helps you get out of a lot of these situations, which is really interesting as well. So how long did it take you to finally pay off that debt? I'd say in total it was about two and a half years. So it was, I think it was around January of 2017, I believe, when I made that final debt payment. So we started sometime around 2015 when we really got serious about paying it down. I love that. So you worked hard throughout those two and a half years.

Starting point is 00:20:13 years to finally get that $27,000. And a lot of people, you know, it would draw down even longer, but you focused your time on increasing your income, cutting that back so that you could get that paid off, which I absolutely love. So this is one of the biggest questions that we get a lot when people are starting to try to pay down debt is when do you know when to start investing your dollars. Now, I know on Popcorn Finance, you talk about investing all the time. And that's one of the most important things to start building wealth. So as you're paying down your debt, or should you start investing when you're paying down your debt? Or should you wait until you actually have that debt paid off. You know, that's a question I get asked a lot. And I think good reason, because most

Starting point is 00:20:46 people have debt and a lot of people know that they also need to be investing. And it's a hard balance to strike. And it was something that I was not good at. Throughout the whole journey, I didn't really invest at all. And I do regret that. I'm looking back on that all that time where, when I wasn't investing because we were, you know, I was putting on my money on my credit card, all my expenses on my credit card. And then after that didn't really invest. If you have like high interest debt, like the credit card debt was big. It was like, that was cost to be a lot of money every month. So it made sense to put my efforts there because, you know, you're not going to out earn, you know, 20 plus percent interest on your credit card in the stock market. It's pretty difficult

Starting point is 00:21:19 to do on any type of consistent basis. So if you're in that situation, I think it's a good idea to put as much of your effort into that because you're saving yourself money in the long run by cutting out as much of that interest charges as you can. But if you're someone who has a lower interest, like, you know, if you have maybe a student loan that the rate's not too crazy or car loan or home loan, things like that. If you're in those situations, I think it's a great idea to split your time between the two. You have money going to both investing and towards your debt because when you comes to investing time is your best friend. The more time your money has to sit there and work for you and grow without you doing anything, the better. So if you can give yourself the opportunity to take

Starting point is 00:21:54 advantage of that, even while you're paying down debt. You may not have a ton of money. I'm not saying you have to have $20,000 free every month to put towards something. But maybe you have an extra $100 a month that you could put towards your 401k plan or an IRA. It's so important to do that when you can because you'll thank yourself later. Like, am I in my mid-30s now? I wish, you know, 25-year-old Chris would have been putting a little something away for retirement because I've been in a better position now. So if you can do that for yourself, you're in a situation where you're a little bit younger

Starting point is 00:22:22 and you can avoid some of the mistakes I did. We're just waiting to invest at all. I say, do yourself a favor. Put something in there because it's going to make all the difference. I absolutely agree as well. And that's the biggest thing is separating high interest debt from low interest debt, anywhere, you know, between 5, 6 percent interest rate. If it's below that, you can start to really.

Starting point is 00:22:39 invest those dollars. And as much as you can possibly get, um, and start investing those dollars. As we know, if you're investing in something, maybe like an index fund or something along those lines, depending on how you adjust for inflation, it's, you know, somewhere between 7 to 10% rate of return historically. So there's a lot of things that you can do where you can come out on top, just by investing those dollars, especially when you're paying down debt. If you do a lot of calculations, we've done some in the past on this podcast as well, where you do those calculations, mathematically you're going to come out on top if you're investing and paying down debt at the same time. So I love that as well. So what are some of your favorite investment? So, so what are some of your favorite

Starting point is 00:23:09 investment. So once you started to invest, what are some of your favorite investments to actually build wealth over time? You know, for me, I'm all about keeping it simple. I don't really want to spend a ton of time thinking about investing. There's some people who enjoy it and I'm like, hey, I got no problem. If you're someone who's really into it and you love diving into this and this is the thing that brings you joy, go forward. I'm not someone who wants to just be sitting at my computer, you know, multiple times a day checking in on stuff. So if you're like me and you like it, to keep things simple. I love just a very basic index fund strategy. I'll invest in an index fund that invests across the whole stock market. I have a little bit of bonds, a mutual fund that does some bonds funds and

Starting point is 00:23:47 things like that. And then I'm done. And I just let it sit there. And that to me, that's, I feel like the most practical thing to do. And I think for most people, that's the most realistic way to go about this, because we all have very complicated lives. You got family got to take care of. You got a job to go to. You got errands or you got to cook. You got to do so much stuff. And then for or someone to be like, now I need you to, you know, set aside a few hours every week to work on your investment strategy and, you know, checking on your portfolio. That's a big ask for a lot of families to try to think about. So I love doing something very simple, like an automated, it came right out of my paycheck at work, didn't even have to think about it. And it's just done. And it's

Starting point is 00:24:23 been very successful. I have no complaints about it. It's just something that I love to incorporate because I don't have the time, nor do I want to spend all my time overly thinking about this. And I talk about it all the time. Exactly. That is what we teach on here, too, is what we call it index and chill where you just, you know, you can automate your money. It's, it's my favorite thing. You don't have to think about it. You can just put it into either a total stock market index fund or an S&P 500 index fund and you can just let it ride. I mean, over the course of time, you can see some of those returns. You can Google the returns of these funds and see what they've done historically. There's a very long time horizon for a lot of these. So it's one of the easiest

Starting point is 00:24:56 things that you can do because you want to focus your time on, you know, growing your income and doing these other things so that you can actually get more money to start investing and really retire that much sooner. So I want to switch gears here a little bit. it because you're also the host of another podcast called This Is Awkward. And I love that show as well because you guys worked through a lot of awkward money situations on that show. And it's one of the greatest ideas for a podcast I've heard in a while. So I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, what was the most awkward situation that you've ever had to work through on that show? Oh, you know, I had it really think about this. I was digging through the archives. Like, we talk about something

Starting point is 00:25:26 different every couple of weeks. But the one that stood out to me, it was episode 21. It was someone who wrote in her and her husband or I got the time her and her fiance were going to get married and they agreed on oh this is the type of ring that she wanted and he you know expressed like hey you know I'm all in for but I just can't afford all of it how do you feel about splitting the cost and so they agreed on that 50 50 but the problem was that he took his half out of their joint savings account she was paying from her own personal account but he took his half from their joint savings account so she said she said effectively I paid for three quarters of this ring because half of that money in a joint account was mine. And so now she's in this position where their money,

Starting point is 00:26:07 I mean, they're married. It's been about four months and he hasn't put the money back into the account, into the savings account like he said. He was like, oh, don't worry, I'll, you know, I'll replenish it. He never did. And so they had that conversation about that. And that's what she was kind of dreading because she said, when she brought it up, he got really defensive. And then she found out he had a bunch of other dead. And to me, that overall was like, that's all, that was a lot to take in. Because I couldn't imagine being in that situation. and how awkward that must be for her to have to be like, hey, you know, I know you said you pay for half the ring, but you kind of took it from half of my money. What are we going to do about this?

Starting point is 00:26:40 That's by far one of the more awkward ones I could think of. That is extremely awkward because I don't know what the rule is now. It used to be like one month salary you pay for the ring and now there's the rules where it's much more now for a lot of people. So that is one of the most awkward situations as well just to have that conversation and to find out there's more debt involved after you actually have that conversation, which is crazy. So I want to switch gears to some of the questions that we ask a lot of guests here, Chris, because I think some of these are really interesting and people love hearing the answers to some of these. So the first one is a simple one.

Starting point is 00:27:09 So what are some of the best books that you've read recently? It could be personal finance, business, or anything else. Oh, you know, I was going back and forth on what book I wanted to mention. You know, I could go the geeky Star Wars route. I got really, during the pandemic, I got into this huge Star Wars binge where I read like 25 Star Wars books and watch all the stuff. but I'm not going to go that route. I'll stick with the personal finance world. Actually, it's kind of blurry in the background behind me,

Starting point is 00:27:32 but there's a book called Cashing Out. It's by Julian and Kirsten Saunders. It's a great one. I think it by Richard Regular. And I loved it because they're kind of like challenging the status quo when it comes to how we think about our careers and our work lives. And I love reading stuff that kind of challenges how I think about things because I don't want to just keep thinking the same thing just because someone told me

Starting point is 00:27:52 or I've learned that 10 years ago. I want to be constantly revisiting the things that I, I believe are the way I should be living my life and say, hey, maybe there is a better way to do this and I've just been ignoring it. I didn't know about it. And one of the cool things that they mentioned in there is a thing called the 15 year plan to quit your job. And basically break it up into five chunks where through each like, you know, one third part of your career, you're working on different things. You know, first you're working on building up and saving your money. And kind of like what I mentioned about how I was like really trying to work hard

Starting point is 00:28:21 to network and grow my resume. They're like, make yourself more marketable, learn, reach out to other departments, grow with. you do, grow who you are, develop your own skill set, and then use that to move to the second phase, which is, you know, applying for those jobs that maybe are a little bit of a stretch for you. Maybe it's, you know, I don't know if I'm qualified, but going forward and finding those opportunities where you can increase your earnings. And then lastly, you know, really thinking about your future, what it is that you want and what do you already know at this point that you get used to either maybe you want to work for yourself, but if you don't want to, how can you

Starting point is 00:28:52 roll that into maybe a career you like more? And so I just really liked the concept of really critically thinking about the way you look at your career versus like, all right, I got to find a good job, find this path, and I'm going to do this for the next 40 years versus, you know what, let me be very strategic. I'll build that base. And then let me figure out what I really want to do if I'm not happy with where I'm at. I love that book as well. I can vouch for that as well. We're going to link that book up in the show notes. But I love the three chunks, the 15 year rule. That was one of my favorite things in that book because it's almost like having three, five year plans to get to financial independence. And I think that's very attainable for people when you break it up

Starting point is 00:29:24 into those three, five-year plans. Because for a lot of people, they think financial independence is daunting, especially if you're trying to pursue fire or something like that and you want to retire early, it's a daunting task. But having those three chunks and breaking it up, you can actually see the progress that you're making and seeing if you're on track as well. And I love the way they break that out. It's one of the coolest things in that book as well.

Starting point is 00:29:42 So here's a little bit of a deeper question. So this is what I like to ask people as well. So what part of your work makes you come alive? Oh, I didn't really sit and think about this on, too. I was like, what do I really? enjoy and when I really think about it I'd say I love just like learning and learning like the ends and outs of things and that's why sometimes it takes me forever to like put together a podcast episode because I start going down the rabbit hole of you know you learn about one thing

Starting point is 00:30:08 it's like well I can learn about this this other part a little bit more that's connected and you start you know just going you know I'm spending three hours to talk about something for two minutes but what I really like is the way I think about like the like my way I understand things kind of like a map right there's like this map with but bunch of missing pieces. And there's some stuff I know. I like, okay, I know that's right over there. I know how that works, but I don't know all maybe all the surrounding concepts or things that branch off of that. And so I love when I'm able to branch together pieces of information that I kind of know. I know these two things and you find that joining thing that ties them together

Starting point is 00:30:42 and really helps you understand it in the deeper way. That's what really brings me joy is like really understanding something. Oh, that's how that works. And that's why we do things this way. that stuff always really kind of draws me in. So I had to think about it. I hadn't never really thought about it, but that really is something that brings me joy when I work on a day-to-day basis. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:31:01 And that is one of my favorite things about what we do as well, because you can really deep dive and figure out stuff. Like people have said to me, like, why don't you go get a researcher? You spend so many hours doing that. Like, no way. This is the part where, like, I thrive in,

Starting point is 00:31:11 is doing this part. So it's one of my favorite things as well because it's just, it's one of those things where you just, you find so many different rabbit holes. And what I love to do, especially in the personal finance space, is find those loopholes

Starting point is 00:31:21 that like nobody really talks about and being able to pull those out. It's one of the coolest things. Once you find that, it's the biggest dopamine rush ever. I love that part of it as well. So we're going to get even deeper here. So what do you want people to remember about you? Man, you really made me think with these questions here. That's a really hard one for me. I'm probably saying that with all these questions, but it's always hard because for me, I'm someone, I get very anxious at times. You know, you get these feelings like overwhelmed and you're thinking about, you know, how people perceive you. And so that one was really hard to be like, how do I want people? people to remember who I am. And I think what I came to was it's really about I want people to just

Starting point is 00:31:58 see me as a kind person. That's kind of what I'm going for. Like, there's someone who's not going to judge you if you come to me with an issue. Someone who kind of understands and is not too caught up in me trying to be the expert that I can't acknowledge my faults and understand where you're coming from and not forgetting where I've been and all the mistakes that I've clearly made them. We've discussed on this podcast. So for me, I always want to be someone who's, you know, approachable, and understanding and someone can come to me and say, hey, this is what I'm dealing with, and know that I will hear them out

Starting point is 00:32:27 and not throw a bunch of judgment back at them. And I think that's very much who you are now. I think that's one of the best things that actually want to be remembered for because I think it's one of those things that people remember most as well. It almost reminds me of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Starting point is 00:32:40 I'm not sure if you read that book, but it's one of those things that that's how you kind of become memorable. And I know that book has a different end goal, but at the same time, it's one of those things that I think it's absolutely amazing. So I love that. And the last question is,

Starting point is 00:32:51 favorite one to ask people. And we have all different kinds of people on this podcast from, you know, big business owners to people from, you know, personal finance folks to all over the map. And they all have different answers to this question, which I think is so, so incredibly interesting. But what does wealth mean to you? You know, I agree with you. It makes complete sense that when people come on there, they have a bunch of different answers because, I mean, if you go by the textbook definition, you know, wealth is just having a lot of valuable things, basically, right? You're essentially, being rich is like the textbook definition of it. And I think That's why I've had such a maybe a weird relationship with the term in the past because,

Starting point is 00:33:28 you know, I didn't grow up wealthy. I had none of my friends were wealthy. I'm not wealthy. I wouldn't consider myself wealthy in the moment. But I think sometimes I think what people were referring to when we say wealth in most situations, like when we refer to, you know, a billionaire, you know, yeah, that's wealthy. But I think sometimes when we say we want wealth, I think what we're saying is not that we want to have, you know, all the money in the world.

Starting point is 00:33:48 But we want to be, we want to be comfortable. We want to live a life that's not full of. stress and worry around money. We want to be able to live a life where, you know, money is a thing, but it's not a hindrance to what we do. We can live a life, be comfortable. We don't have everything, but we have what we need. And to me, that's kind of what I see as well. Like, I don't need to be, you know, be tasked with the responsibility of having enough money to take care of my great, great grandkids 100 years from now. Like, that's a lot of pressure to take on yourself. But for me, it's like the ability to not stress and worry about money, to know that things are

Starting point is 00:34:21 taken care of and that I can be comfortable and money's not going to stop me or cause me to stay up late at night and I can be at peace. And so for me, that's kind of the wealth that I seek, not, you know, $10 billion, but I'll take $10 billion. Someone wants to give it to me. I'll take it, but I don't need that. Absolutely. It's the thing that we talk about on this podcast all the time is we call building wealth self-care because it reduces that stress. It reduces that anxiety. It actually makes you feel comfortable. And it's one of those things where people get stressed about money. but once you learn about money and how money works, and it's simple on paper, it's harder to execute. But once you learn how it works and you start doing it, it really does reduce that

Starting point is 00:34:58 stress and that anxiety where you only have to think about is it payday or not. You don't really know your money is just operating automatically and you don't have to worry about as much. So I absolutely love that answer. We haven't had that one yet, so I love that as well. So Chris, thank you. This was so much fun. So tell us where can people find out more about you and your podcast and everything else that you're doing. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you again for having me. I really appreciate the invite. You can find me wherever you're listening to this podcast, right now. Just look for popcorn finance.

Starting point is 00:35:21 You'll find me there. Or you can go to popcornfinance.com. And also awkwardpodcast.com. You can find my two podcasts there that I do. This is awkward I do with my host, our co-host, Allison, where we break those situations down together. So yeah, this is the best place to come connect with us. And yeah, we'd love to hear from me.

Starting point is 00:35:37 If you have an awkward story, you want to share it. We'll make you anonymous. So don't worry. We won't share your business with your name and for everyone to know about. Absolutely. And both those podcasts are amazing. I encourage every single person listening to us to go listen to those podcasts. Chris, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:35:49 much for coming on. I truly appreciate it. I know. I appreciate it. It was really great talking

The Personal Finance Podcast - Get Rid of Your Debt Once and For All with Chris Browning

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