Finances, Frugality & More with Joel and Matt from How to Money

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and thirty two, we think, which is hairing in mid February. Today. We are really excited because we have some great guests. We have Joel and Matt from How to Money. Longtime listeners know that Sarah and I both listen to the How to Money podcast. I was a guest on it last spring, and so we've gotten to know Joel and Matt over the past year or so, and we thought it would be awesome to have of these two gentlemen on the program. They're both dads, they're both doing multiple gigs in their podcast and their their main jobs as well, so We're looking forward to hearing from them about their work and life and what they have going on in some money tips as well. Yeah, I don't think Laura and I have that many correct me if I'm wrong, Laura, Like, I don't think we have that many overlap podcasts. But I think we both came to this one independently, or maybe I heard about it from you. I don't know, but I listen on nearly every week and I know that you really enjoy it as well, so we thought a crossover episode would be really fun. Although I think this isn't a mash up. This is a best of both worlds episode with them guests. That's yes, exactly exactly. And one of the things that listeners of How to Money know is that they always drink a craft beer or we'll find out do they really drink a craft beer if they're recording at nine in the morning, But they drink at craft beer during the episode because it symbolizes something that they are willing to spend money on now, even as they're saving for the future. They always ask their guess what their craft beer equivalent is? You I did, I want to ask you, though, what what is your What is your craft equivalent. Well, I couldn't really come up with one, and I think that might be because I am not as frugal as I on plenty of things, nor Matt. But I will never deny myself the stationary supplies that I truly want. You guys all know that I do not skimp on childcare, as we'll discuss in a very soon upcoming episode. And I'm really not frugal at all with travel. I'm very conscious about what we spend on travel, but no one in looking at the numbers or what we do would consider it frugal, so I feel it's worth it. Yeah. No, those are all great things to spend money on. And I mean really like something like stationary, you're probably not going hog wild. No, no, even if you're like, quote unquote hog wild, And I'm not actually like because honestly, I don't like clutter. So you know, it's not like I'm always accumulating a bunch of stuff that I'm not using. I'm pretty reasonable about it. Even if you feel like you're being extravagant and doing like I don't know too, two hundred dollars halls in the year, Well, that's two hundred dollars, which is not nothing, but like you know, you could do a lot worse if your your guilty pleasure was designer handbags or yeah, true, well, or even just if you chose to spend a slightly bit more on housing, that would easily get that two hundred dollars haul. In perspective, I mean, it's really about some of the big things, getting the big things right. And then and I don't even know that it's two hundred to be honest, I should look back. I know that I do tend to order the lovely Habuni chi box each year, and that's that's usual about one hundred dollars. That's my biggest indulgence. And then when I travel, so combining the two, I do like to see if there's a fun, fancy stationary store, and I may spend like twenty or thirty bucks buying fun Japanese or Korean station I don't have to remember that one I found in New York. I was just turned a corner and found this great Japanese store. It was like a department store, so they had more than just stationary. But I definitely looked at the stationary part for a while, and I bought a bunch of tiny notebooks, which we've discussed. I have a thing for tiny notebooks, which I then don't use because I never think my thoughts are good enough to put in the tiny special notebooks. Oh all love, your thoughts are good enough, I promise. So what is I'm dying to know? What is your craft beer equivalent? Well, so, since I was on the show, they asked me this question, but they asked it in the context of time. What am I willing to put time into that other people might find ridiculous? And my answer was singing. I mean, I'm not that great singer. I can carry a tune, I can sing harmony, I can sight read, or I can be in a auditioned ensemble. But I'm certainly never going to be a professional singer. But I enjoy it so much, and so I sing in my church choir, which meets Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. Thursday nights generally from about seven to nine thirty. Sunday mornings, I'm there from nine to about eleven fifteen, and then there are other concerts too a couple of year. And so when I was recording How To Money, I was on that way. I joked that I wasn't going to join them in the craft beer consumption because I was on my way that evening to a rehearsal for Mahler's was a second symphony I was singing out in New Jersey. And again, this is something so kind of ridiculous for you know, you got a lot of other stuff going on in life too, with kids and work and whatever else to make time to go sing in a production of the symphony out in New Jersey. But kind of thing that I enjoy doing. So I'm willing to put time into it. And so that was my answer. Cool, I love it. That's great. All right, Well, I'm very excited to hear what Joela Matt have to say. And yeah, I want to hear about their craft beer, which is actually craft Bear. All right, we'll be right back with Joel and Matt. Well, Sarah and I are here with our buddies Joel and Matt from the How to Money podcast. So can you guys introduce yourselves to our listeners. Yeah, my name is Matt, I co host How to Money here with Joel, And would you like to hear like a quick little bio, real quick? Sure you can do that. So I used to work in the advertising industry as a designer, and I've been self employed for the past twelve years or so, and so I also manage a few investment properties. And now Joel and I, yeah, we started the podcast, which we've been doing for the past couple of years. Yeah, I'm Joel and Matt and I were best buddies. We've been best buddies for like a decade now. And yeah, I've been in the money media space for like thirteen years. I've been obsessed with talk radio since I was a kid. I used to literally fall asleep at night listening to my favorite talk radio host and so just it's kind of nerdy, but the nerd it's my favorite medium. And I think podcasting is now just the best fruition of what talk radio used to be. And so yeah, I mean we're having fun Creton the Show and listening to other podcasts and just love kind of the medium of podcasts and what it's become. Yeah, it's a fun space. And you guys both have pretty young families too, in some cases very young children both of you. So, So what's what are what are your kids ages? Yeah, so I've got three kiddo's. I've got a six year old and a four year old girls, and then I've got a four month old little boy named Ezra, and so yeah, we're just it's a ton of fun also, Laura, and as you guys know, I mean, it's also a big endeavor. So that's actually almost exactly our age spacing. And we're now almost eight, almost six and two. So yeah, actually it's even more fun now. So that yeah, young kids are they're fun, but it is a lot of work. So Eeddie, I've got Eddie, Clover, Dottie and Weston, so I've got four kids. I am not looking to join your five like you have, Laura. But yeah, they're amazing kids. My wife Kate and I, yeah, we love them. And you guys, your your sons were born. They're both babies. They're born, you said two days apart that. Yeah, we've got a lot of flak for it's pretty ridiculous, right, and we think that we do way too much together already, and apparently seeving children is on that list. Yeah, so people are assuming that we texted each other or you know, pre planned it. That is not the case, I can say, but it is really cool that we've got literally, you know, our first he's got three girls. I've got two girls, and then our latest editions are boys, and they were born two days apart the last final kids or boys. I will say, I mean, I'll readily admit that Kate and I were on the fence of as to whether or not we're going to have that fourth child, so surprise, and now we have to be best friends for the rest of our lives. And your your your wives and kids all hang out too, right, Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, well, I mean, so we I mean, Joe mentioned that we've been best friends from close to a decade, and so we met, yeah, close to ten years ago, basically in the neighborhood. We live like seven blocks away from each other. Yeah, well we did then as well, but we've both moved several times since then, but we still live just a few blocks from each other because we love our community so much, our neighborhood, and we you know, you buy somewhere, you start putting down roots, you start meeting the folks in the neighborhood, and you realize that, man, I could really see myself here for a while. And yeah, we're lucky enough that our Obviously we're best buds, but our wives are literally best friends as well. We go on vacations together. We actually we just booked our summer trip. We're gonna go. We skipped it last year because last year was really busy for us, but we know we booked a summer beach trip. I'm looking forward to that. That's gonna be great. And when you work together and your friends, you have to I think we've had realize that you have to be really intentional about maintaining that friendship because it can be really hard as you work together and you're you know, recording podcasts and coming up with show topics and responding to emails and all the other things that come alongside of that. You have to prioritize the friendship and that you can't just focus on the work. And so, yeah, this beach trip is something that we look forward to and every once in a while, even though we drink beer while we're recording the show, we have to have a beer just for beer's sake, you know, I associate it with work, right exactly. I don't like my beer anymore. Yeah. We actually opened up this episode by discussing what our craft beer equivalent is because we know that that's always discussed on your show, But inquiring minds want to know, do you really really drink a beer while you're recording? Oh yeah, what time of day are you recording? I mean, Sarah and I almost always recorded like nine thirty in the morning. Oh okay, well that would not work for us. Yeah as well, I think it would be frowned upon if we're cracking craft beers at nine thirty. I think there's one episode that we didn't have a beer on it, and it was because that's the guests true had to record in the morning, and so we did. We blocked it off and we had cold brew coffee instead. But yeah, no, we really drink a beer on every episode. And we're really fortunate that there's a lot of great breweries out there, and a lot of our listeners have sent us to some awesome beers throughout the months that we've gotten to taste. We've got to try beers that we never would have been able to try otherwise. So yeah, we usually record typically after the kids are in bed at start around eight pm, and so yeah, that's just kind of the way that we're able to do the thing that we love and not eat into family time. Also, well, we definitely want to get to that topic. How did you decide to start the podcast together though, Because I mean, like you said, you were buddies and then you know that that doesn't automatically translate to, hey, we should start a podcast. We should be in business together, right, So what happened there to Well, so anytime Jill and I would hang out, we found that we would end up talking about like money and stuff like whether it be investing or real estate. That was a lot of our early conversations was about real estate because we're both looking to buy investment properties, kind of around the beginning of our friendship. But yeah, we would get together, we'd talk about personal finance, and we would always have a beer. And so, with Joel having been in radio forever, yeah, a podcast is a natural sort of extension of that. And so I think you're kind of kicking the idea around a little bit. I was like, dude, let's you know what do we talk about every time we get together? And he's like money. I was like, that's right, So let's let's find a way to talk about personal finance in a way that's interesting to folks out there because most of I mean money, money sucks for the most part, right, Like, people don't like talking about money is something that isn't fun, and so we're like, Okay, we need to talk about it in a way that's interesting, that feels approachable, that's not intimidating. And that was basically the Yeah, that was the culmination of the show. Yeah, it really was. He's exactly right, there is there's this apprehension for most people to talk about money with their friends, with their peers, with their coworkers, with their family, and because we don't talk about it, it leads to a lot of money strife. And if we can talk about it well and we can make it approachable, relatable, fun, have a beer while we're doing it, then we hope that it helps other people feel comfortable talking about money with the people that they love the most and then also taking some action to you know, get their money in order so that they can live a more fulfilling life. Yeah, and I will say too, I mean, a big reason why we have the beer on the show is because a lot of the personal advice that's out there focuses on deprivation. It's about, Okay, how can I cut back, like, what are ways that we're going to sacrifice and feel the pain make our lives stink? And a lot of times those kind of sacrifices don't add up to anything that just will make a dent in your budget or in your expenses. And so having a beer is a way for us to focus on the important things saving for retirement. But at the same time, we're still prioritizing things that matter to us now, like enjoying ourselves, you know, while having a you know, while we're podcasting, having a nice craft beer. So that's really cool. And we just heard from you that you do the recording at eight pm after the kids go to bed. What are your schedules look like? I mean, what, what's a day in the life of jol and Matt. Well, it's a very exciting. I'm surprised we don't have similar to mine, like other hits in the morning. Yeah, school, there's exactly. Yeah, I'm surprised we don't have a reality television show and cameras following us around because it is so exciting. But typically, yeah, it is. It's I try to wake up at six am just so I can have thirty minutes to myself to shower, have coffee, do some reading before the hecticness of the day begins and the kids start to wake up and stuff. And so every morning I'm helping the kids get ready, you know, making breakfast while my wife takes care of our four month old, and I'm you know, getting them dressed and getting getting out the door, dropping them off at school. Oftentimes when especially when it's not brutally cold, I'm popping them on the bike and we're hopping and we take our bikes. We drop the kids off at school on the bikes. And so, yeah, so that's kind of what the morning looks like. And then I head into work and I'm at my day job most of the day from you know, nine to five basically, and then you know, I bike home, have dinner, and then most nights try to be home and hang out with my wife. But there are some nights and nights we podcast or a night that I have to prioritize working on stuff for the podcast. But it I try to confine all that kind of stuff two hours that don't conflict with family time. And in particular, sometimes I can hang out with my wife from you know, after I put the kids to bed from like seven thirty to nine, and then she's tired, ready to go to bed, and that's a perfect time for me to get a little bit of work done before I go to bed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to repeat all that because honestly, like we had similar, similar schedules based on recording and you know, our kids go to the same school. So like Joel, you know that it's about focusing on the things that we want to do. And so, like Joel mentioned biking, and for me, that's a huge priority. It's also the only way we're going to get any sort of workout in whatsoever with how crazy things are. Yeah, it is true. The biking is the only thing that like accelerates my heart rate and gets me going and it gives me any sort of exercise. But as far I mean as far as work, you know, like that's something interesting as well, because we've seen that sort of evolve over time now that we're kind of doing the podcast on the side. So being so employed, I've had the luxury lately of being able to kind of like ramp down photography a little bit. And by doing that, well, first of all, it's been necessary because like Joel's been in the spoken word space for forever. Whereas being a photographer, there's a lot that I've needed to learn, even though I've been interested in personal finance and investing there, I feel like the past two years for me, it's kind of been a crash course and we're at least I'm kind of brushing up on some of the things that we're talking about. And so for me, being self employed has been fantastic because being able to kind of ramp that, you know, slow down photography while building the podcast up, that has been crucial. You know, It's been necessary for me to be able to maintain some balance with my family, with my personal life while also trying to essentially, you know, juggle to jobs at once. That sounds great. We're going to go right back to this topic of balance and you know how we prioritize our time. Right after the sad break, Hey listeners, the new year is about growth and change. Got lots of resolutions, many people looking to do big new things in their lives. And if you're a business owner looking to grow your business, LinkedIn can help you find the right hires that can set you up for a strong year. LinkedIn jobs screens candidates with the hard and soft skills you're looking for so you can hire the right person fast, things like collaboration, creativity, adaptability. LinkedIn looks beyond the work skills and puts your job post in front of qualified candidates who match your business requirements perfectly. 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And I had a question that I definitely, I just can't resist diving down this pathway, although I don't know if it was in our notes. That's okay, both of your wives have chosen to stay home as the kids are young, and is that How has that decision arrived upon? And do see that changing at any point? I mean, and to you know, give this a little bit of perspective. Most of our audience is working women, so a lot of them struggle kind of with that choice. And since you guys are very conscious from a financial point of view, I was just wondering how played into and no disrespect what's whoever, because I think that one of the messages that we've put across is absolutely it's fine to choose to stay home if that's what you want to do. So if that's just kind of how things evolved, then that's great. But I just be curious to kind of hear how that evolved. Yeah, So I'll get a little personal here for me. You know, growing up, my mom always wanted to stay at home, and I just remember that being topic of discussion frequently in the house that she and my dad would talk about that she wanted to stay home and because of some financial decisions, it just wasn't possible, and so I remember that being really really hard for her, And so I knew as Emily and I got married that more than anything, I wanted her to be able to choose whether whether she wanted to stay at home or not. I just wanted her to be able to have the choice. And at the same time, I'm working in radio, which is not a super high paying profession. So I knew that I needed to figure something else out in order to make that at least a possibility, whether she wanted to or not. And so rental properties were kind of that tool for me. So I started investing in rental properties, buying a new one every two years, and that accelerated our ability. It kind of acted as part time income so that she had the freedom to choose when we did have our first kid, and so for a while she continued to work, and then, you know, especially once baby number two came, it just she wanted to stay home. And it also seemed to make more sense from a financial perspective. I think most people find once kid number two comes, and oftentimes, especially if you have a third kid, financially it does tend to make more sense for a lot of people for one of the partners to stay at home. Oh yeah, And so sometimes I think our central thesis tends to argue against that sometimes. But yes, every individual situation is different, and I think that if someone wants to stay home and that's where their values are and that's where their choices, then more power to them. If the family, you know, figures out a way for that to work and meet everybody's financial goals. Yes, and so much of that depends right on what the income is too, and also the cost of childcare where you live and everything. All the all the numbers that we're seeing these days are just how inflated the cost of childcare are becoming. It's getting way more expensive to drop your kids off at a daycare, and and so that is one thing that does need to be considered. But more than anything, I think people should prioritize what is it you want to do, and if you want to continue working, then that is what you should aim for. And I think you can find the money for that, And I think you can find the money to stay at home. It just takes intentional living and then cutting back in the areas that are going to help you to be able to make that a reality. Yeah. I love that you only get one life, so right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, So I mean, similar to that, Kate was working with me in our in our photography company, and we kind of did things backwards a little bit, so like maybe this wasn't at the time the most financially wise thing to do, but we started with what we wanted our life to look like, and then we just did it. So basically, we knew that we wanted her to stay at home with the kids. It's a goal of hers, it's something she wanted to do. I was all for that because you know, I wasn't going to say, all right, well you can't do that because of X reason. And so when the time came and it got too hard for us to juggle, so we kind of juggled. Gee. She did both for about a year. But then for her, she I mean, we knew that, okay, once kid number two came along, we don't want to go through that again. For her, it was difficult, and so we just we just pulled the plug and we said, all right, well, from now on, you're not working, and we adjusted our life to conform to the new financial constraints that we had basically, and so we knew what we wanted our life to look like at home, which meant, uh, you know, Kate being there with the kids and taking more of a role at home, and so we basically made sure that the decisions we made allowed for that to happen. So I'm curious speaking about these decisions because there's there's some aspect of the financial independence, retire early fire movement whatever. Some of these people it seems like families are cost centers and so they don't want to put you know, so it's a choice to have a bigger family, which both of you have elected to do. It is then, you know, a choice to spend time with them, which it sounds from both of you talking about your schedules that you're prioritizing versus say, you know, taking on a different job that would require more hours, or a side hustle that would take you away all weekend or something like that. Both of those decisions, though, mean that you probably reach financial independence later. So I'm curious what your timeline is for that as you are building up wealth, and how you weighed that choice that some of these financial moves slow the process considerably. Well, Matt and I were friends with a lot of people in the fire movement and the folks that want to essentially be able to retire by the age of forty, some by the age of thirty five or even thirty. Some are going crazy, like straight out of school. They're living in a van, but not like the gross kind, like the living in a conversion van. The Instagram van. Yeah, yeah, Instagram like the sexy van, not the nothing down by the river, right, And so yeah, we're friends with a lot of those people, But we also don't hook line and thinker buy into the movement. I think they're the quest for financial independence and for a high savings rate should be should is something we should all aim for, and I think it is more achievable than most people give it credit for. I think there are a lot of poor money choices that a lot of Americans make, and so we want to help people just think a little more intentionally and then also know the strategies around being able to save and invest better. But the goal of retiring and not working anytime soon is not something that's on my radar. The goal for me is to have enough money in investment accounts in cash flow for my rental properties. And to be able to choose what it is that I want to do with my days and that will for I assume, for a long period of time. I'm in my mid thirties now, but I want to work for the next thirty years at something that I enjoy and if it is helping people with their money, dispensing financial advice, and encouraging people to continue along that path, but I can choose what that looks like, then that's what matters to me. And so I want to make sure that I'm in the position to be able to do that and not be beholden to anyone or have to go get a job because you know, things with the podcast aren't working out as well as I had hoped or anything like that. I think that's that's what it means to me. It's not necessarily bagging work in the next few years or anything. Yeah, Joel and I aren't great guests on you Know Fire podcast because a lot of times it's like, wha is okay? Rights? Yea? I completely agree with Joel and that being financially independent, what it gives you is options, right. It gives you the option to say no to something that you don't want to do. It gives you the option to, you know, devote more time to your family because, like like Joel, I enjoy work. It's you know, when you can see the work that you do as a way that you're contributing to society, as a way that you're providing value. When you can make that connection, you can feel really good about the work that you can do and the work that you're you've maybe even feel called to do. And aside from that, like a traditional job, it lends itself for me at least, like it lends itself to the kind of lifestyle that I want to live currently and that we are living right Like we've got kids that are in school. They love their school, they love their community. We've got tons of between me and Joel. I don't know how many kids there are on the two streets between us, but there are a lot. Yeah, you should see Halloween around here. And so traveling the world, like becoming financially independent, traveling the world and world schooling or you know, homeschooling. For for us, that is not something I want to do, Like homeschooling does not sound very fun to me. But more power to the people that do prioritize that and want that. That's great for sure, but for me that's not a priority. And you know, kind of sticking to the more quote unquote traditional American life where we have a regular job and you know, that's what we're kind of subscribing to. But what I'm not going to subscribe to is a job, you know, that keep me working, you know, late into the night every single day, that keeps me working on the weekends. That's been part of my shift of getting out of photography a little bit is because it required being on site on location, and a lot of times I didn't have control over those dates. And so when you do something like podcasting, it allows for a tremendous amount of flexibility. Sure, and so looking towards the kind of work that gives the kind of flexibility that you're looking for, I think that's what's incredible. And that's the kind of options that financial independence can give you. I want to say too, we don't always get to make the choice for ourselves, and often we think, well, I'm going to keep working until I'm sixty five, or I'm going to keep working until I'm seventy. I love what I do until it doesn't matter. But the company you work for could have financial issues, you might get laid off. There are all sorts of things. And I'm particularly in an industry that's prone to layoffs or you know, losing my job, and so I'm I'm keenly aware of that fact. Also, when I was a kid, my dad got laid off from a job and just hasn't been able to find work at the same level for the rest of his life. And so seeing that, knowing that that is a real possibility. As you get older, you might encounter health issues that you weren't expecting, and so there are all sorts of things that we don't get to decide for ourselves. And so planning ahead and being thoughtful and having a high savings rate, you know, as soon as possible, so that you can plan for that potential of who knows what's around the band. I think that's really important too. Yeah, Well, with that, I would love to pivot to some of our money conversations because we want to make sure that we get some of you guys's expertise on that to our listeners here. But first you do a segment occasionally Frugal versus Cheap, which Sarah's probably more frugal. I'm just cheap. I mean, honestly, I don't think I'm really necessarily all that frugal or cheap, she said to spending money I have. I have like palpitations when I'm getting more frugal. You're getting frugal, and I'm trying to relax. But we we'd love to hear first what is the cheapest thing either of you have ever done, and maybe a smart frugal meat move you've made in the past week or so. Okay, So I feel like I'm cheap in a lot of ways, but I've never done like a huge purchase where I'm like, oh my gosh, I totally shot myself on the foot to where it ended up costing me, you know, way more money down the road. But one thing I can think of is one thing I can think of right now is my glasses. I haven't had an eye exam in maybe over ten years. We are talking to a doctor here, man, I know, I know, I feel kind of terrible confessing this, but but yeah, it's been a minute. And when I do get glasses, I go with one of the cheaper online retailers. I don't know if you've heard of Zenny, but they're pretty much the most affordable nine dollar glasses. I spent a little bit more like way to disrupt that industry, but like, that's one way that an anytime I mentioned that to friends, they are like, wait, what, you haven't had your eyes checked? I'm like, no, I see pretty good. So for now, that's uh, maybe that might be a way where it does end up, you know, costing me way more down the road, but hopefully I will get my eyes checked here sooner than later. Yeah, preventive healthcare is generally a good idea. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, So I probably the cheapest thing I've done that my wife continually brings up is in our last house, which became a rental house, I put in some new ceiling fans but in our bedrooms. But they were like on sale, like thirty five bucks or something like that. It was ridiculous, but they were these ceiling fans with the tiniest blades and they were and they really went no exactly they were meant to be in like a tiny laundry room or something like that, and I was like, oh God, I got some cheap ceiling fans. This is great. But ultimately they didn't do anything, they didn't move any air, and so they were worthless. So I had to go up. I had to rip them out and put some new ones in that and so that that's just that's me. I think I've learned over time to buy things based on value as opposed to just ultimate cheapness, because I've made way too many of those pitfalls missteps and then had to rip something out and do it again because I was too cheap in the beginning. Yeah. Wow, I like that. I feel like that's like, well, I've generally learned to ignore sales for the most part, which I guess sounds very anti frugal. But the things that just I've bought and then never use, then it's like, I mean, I'd rather biseling it full price and use it to death because I bought it because I actually wanted it and loved it, then have bought something because it had an appealing looking price tag. Yeah. Yeah, there's was there for sure. Yeah. I know, you guys had Gene Chatsky on the show, and she Yeah, I think she refuses to buy things on sale that I don't. I won't go that far, but I totally understand that that mindset, like because you don't want to be deceived because it's cheaper. I got to get overly influenced by it all the time. I'm trying to train myself, like, don't look at the price tag. Yeah, don't look at the color of the price tag. If it's red, it doesn't matter. I'm you know, shopping in a store where I know the general price range. Like you've decided that that's an okay price range, right, Like, you know, so you're not going to find something that's like ten thousand dollars in Banana republicers. You know, it's just like there's only a range. And so if you're okay with the range, like probably you don't need to look at the prison Let go yes, go ahead. And so what about some small financial goals? I mean, so the topic of personal finance often seems a little bit overwhelming. It's like, oh, I'm, you know, trying to save this huge number for retirement or what are what are some small moves our listeners could make in the next week or two, maybe the next month that you think would have a big impact on their financial health. Lur, I think the best thing that folks can start doing is tracking their their spending if they're not already doing that. Right, This actually makes me think of you because after we had you on our show when we're talking about time, I totally nerded out and started tracking my my hours, tracking my time, and it has made a massive difference in how I view my days. Right, That's totally a Laura Vandercamp disciple. Now I really am. I use an app calls by where I can just I've got these preset categories and I can switch between different activities throughout the day. But in the same way, if you don't know where your time's going, right, you don't know basically how you're spending your day. The same thing is true with your money. If you're not tracking your money, you're going to get to the end of the month, you're gonna get to the end of the year. Hopefully you're not going to get to the end of your lifetime. And you know without knowing what you spent your money on. And so using different the simple apps out there like Mint, you can just plug your accounts up to that or if you want to take it a step further, looking at why nab, which is you need a budget, but using some simple apps to start seeing what you're actually spending your money on, and that can help you to realize that, man, maybe I am spending way too much on this thing that it doesn't at all rise to the surface. Like if you were to ask me what do you value and this object or you know, this service doesn't rise, you know, up up to the top of the list. But then you see your budget and you see that that's up there, Well, then it's time to kind of re evaluate and see what it is that you know, what do I actually want to spend my money on. Yeah, if you want to make money changes, but you don't know where your money is currently going, it's really hard to actually do it. So yeah, tracking is huge. And then I think like a couple big moves that you could make, for instance, like this Saturday, you could sit down and you could do two things that would save you a ton of money, probably over one thousand dollars a year and potentially multiple thousands of dollars a year just this Saturday. And I think the two things that we would encourage you to do is one to change your cell phone provider. If most people are paying way way too much for cell phone service and it's super simple now to switch. And so there are a lot of great companies out there. I don't want to just mention one, but there's Mint Mobile, there's Visible, There's all sorts of different discount cell phone provider companies. And people assume they're going to get way less, that their service is going to be trash if they switch over, and that's just not the case. Most of these discount providers use the same networks that from the big guys. They're renting space from the t Mobiles and the Veridons of this world. And so if you would change your cell phone plan, you could save one hundred dollars a month or more. And another thing I think we would say is to rea shop your insurance, whether you're if you're a homeowner in particular, and your car insurance. Those are big moves that you can make, and there are simple ways to do it now. There's a website called policy Genius and they will help you shop those rates. It's kind of in this murky area where it's been hard to reshop your rates online, but you can look to someone locally who is an independent agent and you can call them and they will help shop for you, or you can call a company like Policy Genius and they will help shop for you. But literally, those are two things you can do on this coming weekend and you can save potentially thousands of dollars a year, which helped get your E fund started, which is another one of those really huge things that most people don't have that they really need. Yeah, most folks are living paycheck to paycheck, right, Like regardless if I mean, you might making six figures, but the same folks who are making six figures a lot of times are living paycheck to paycheck because they've just inflated their lifestyle as well. Right, And so you know, there's been studies. There's a new study out that says that if you can set aside two four hundred and sixty seven dollars like that number specifically seems to have a massive impact across the on for individuals to be able to just to be able to handle sort of these unforeseen emergencies that come up. And so anytime you can, you know, get a little more margin in your in your life. We had an episode earlier this year about margin time margin, but also you know margin when it comes to your money, you're going to be in just such such a better place. Right, You're gonna have so much more confidence. You're gonna be able to make decisions without the fear that you're gonna, you know, have your card declined or bounce a check, that sort of thing. And Yeah, so, like Joel said, shopping your insurance and then taking that money, putting that into making sure that you have a funded emergency fund. Those those, just a few of those things can can go a long way in helping individuals to feel better about their personal finances. I love it. I do not want to end this episode without talking a little bit about kids and allowances and how you guys handled that, because I personally don't feel like I have that well figured out as a how to best teach my children about money. And my little backstory is that I honestly feel like I am only becoming wise about money in the last couple of years, and I'm going to turn forty this year, so I would like my children to learn before that. So what are your best strategies for helping kids learn the value of money and how to manage it? Yeah, I think making it kind of more. This might sound freaky to people, like like in everyday conversation thing where it's just in the little things I think bringing it up or and my girls just tend to ask me about it. I don't know whether it's just because I talk about it way too much or not, but yeah, I think there's all sorts of just like little conversations you can have and be open about how you're spending your money and what you're prioritizing in Like, for instance, there's a we're going on a trip to Disney coming up next month, which not my idea, but we're doing it, and I'm really excited to see the looks on my girl's faces. But my wife and I were talking about, oh my gosh, they're going to want to spend so much money, they're going to be so into it, and I just have to say no, no, no the whole time. And that was a little bit depressing, and so, Okay, how do we start talking about that with them now? And one thing that we did is we had a little like hot chocolate stand at our at our house, and so teaching my daughter about how she can work in order to make money and then how that money is going to go towards the things that she wants to buy. When we're at Disney, and obviously we'll contribute some of the money to you know, she didn't make hundreds of dollars at this say, I say, that probably didn't go quite far enough to cover Disney. But but it's it's that correlation. It's more than anything, helping our kids understand that when they will do some work, it can correlate to income, which can correlate to funding the things that they ultimately want. And so, yeah, another thing like we would for a while, we took my kids to the dollar store and they would buy like the cheapest stuff and it would break so quickly, and so we stopped doing that because it was just, hey, let's talk about more long term things that you're interested in and planning ahead for this Disney tr and then actually taking some action to do some work in order to help them raise money to plan for it. Yeah, that was kind of one way we're able to talk about it and just try to, yeah, help help them make that correlation, because I think, more than anything, you want your kids to understand that, and I think sometimes allowances can get in the way of that because it's just handing a kid money, and when you do that, then I think you're not helping your kid make that correlation that's so important for the rest of their lives because that's how they end up getting money for the rest of their lives, is through the work that they do. Yeah, totally, Yeah, we don't do allowances as well. I think for for kids our age, making that connection between work and money, like that's the number one goal. And then over time you can kind of take it to you know, as kids get older, then I think you can tackle the subjects of like investing right and so like, hey, if you leave your money in you know, the bank of Daddy, well you will earn this much money every month, and helping them to see that, right. So that's a concept I think is pretty difficult with a six year old, but maybe with a ten year old or a twelve year old, that's definitely something that they should be able to grasp. And I think actually doing it like that, like doing it yourself and not going with an you know, an actual bank, because banks they have all you know, they've got the different accounts for kids, and they do pay a higher interest, but it's still so small and so it's not very exciting to get exactly and so doing that yourself to where maybe you're even matching, you know, like a more of like a four to one k style. But anyway that you can take some of these principles that we experience in our day to day lives, you know, out in the real world and start implementing them at home is going to be a tremendous help for them to understand this concept so that when the time does come for them to enroll in employer you know, sponsored retirement plan, they're like, oh, just like just like we did with ours exactly, Just like with my first car, every dollar I put a side towards saving for that vehicle. That's what Mom and Dad they you know, they matched it dollar for dollar. So again that's hard to do with with kids our age, But for me, I think one of the most difficult things has been distinguishing the difference between chores that we do at home because you're part of the family versus jobs and that you know, that's just like Joel said that it's an ongoing conversation where we're basically constantly being asked like if I do this, do I get paid? And it's like okay, quick, huddle, Kate, what do you think about this? Exactly and so a lot of these things we haven't thought through and so it's it just requires communication and making sure that we stick with it. Yeah, what about the tough questions though? I mean, I don't know if your kids are old enough to be asking things like what do you make? You know? Or are are we rich? There's one? Yeah, so how do you how do you answer things like that? Well, I mean, so that's not a question that my kids have asked, I guess or not not not yet. But I think if they were to ask that, I would say that like like or even specific to like if they're asking how much, like how much money do you make? Or diving more into the specifics like I don't think a lot of that is super important, and for me, at least, I don't think I'm going to communicate that to them. I think what's important, at least at this age, is to explain to them that we you know, that we have enough. I guess I want to make sure that we instill financial security and that the moves that we're making and the the decisions that we make are leading to us, you know, not having to worry about money, because we do want the money conversations that we have around the home to not be you know, laden with stress. And so I think that's a lot of times why people don't talk about money when they get you know, they have a significant other, they've got a partner, it's one of the last things that they want to talk about because a lot of times there's so much baggage that comes with, you know, the subject of money. I wonder, you know, I'm just thinking about my own childhood and my parents were very frugal, but they never shared any details. And I don't think you necessarily need to share hard numbers, but I think what I might make an effort to do is to share percentages, like show my kids' piagraphs of like, Okay, this is percentage that we're saving. This is what we're saving for retirement, this is what we're saving for your college, this is what we're spending. And then it would get a sense that like that's normal, because I kind of had this vague idea that it was happening, but not really any scale to it. Oh, they're saving, but like what does that mean? Five twenty percent, forty? Like I think I think when kids are old enough to grasp percentages, I'm going to try to go that route. Yeah. I think that's especially we've talked about that on the show. When you're talking with your friends, it can be really awkward because you know, you might make fifty thousand dollars a year and your friend might make eighty five, and then you're like, well, how much are you contributing to your four to one k? And if they're saying ten and you're like, well, I can't afford to do that, that keeping the conversation centered around percentages can make it a whole lot easier and more effective because you're like, oh, I'm saving ten percent and I'm getting this match. And so I think, yeah, if you talk in percentages with your kids, it can be a big help and help them to understand as opposed to big numbers. And then I think two, when you're talking about Laura in particular, that question of are your kids rich or are we rich? That's such a big question that kids have, and I think it's really important, like Matt said, to communicate that we a financially secure, But on the other side, it is important to kind of talk about how we are wealthy and we live in a wealthy country and what do we need to do well. I think with that knowledge, we have to prioritize service and caring for others that don't have as much. And I think that also is a really really important thing to communicate to your kids. And so much of that is by doing and not just by talking. And so if you can lead your kids in service to others and show them that this is what we do when we have enough, is that we care for others. That to me, that's a huge part of teaching my kids how to handle money well. I love it, love it well. We always end our episodes with what we call our love of the week, which is something that is making our life awesome right now. So Sarah and I could go first, if we want to give you a second to think about it. I can't even find my notes, though, Sarah, what did you have for this with mine? Mine was a book this time, which I frually obtained through our library system. It's called Selene by Peter Heller, and like many of the books I read, I got the recommendation from the Modern Missus Darcy podcast. I love her and this book was just it is so quiet yet so good. The characters were just like delicious, like I want to read it again, and I never want to read things again, so shout out to Selene quiet. So mine is I'll go similarly with that. I have enjoyed been enjoying checking out like photography and art books from the library, because I mean, these things are ridiculously expensive if you're buying them the coffee table books and you only look through them once and then they're kind of sitting there on your coffee table for a year until you think to put them away. So get them from the library and then you can look at this beautiful photography and not actually have to show out the cash that would require for these fancy art books. Nice. I like it. Great, Yeah, so okay, are we gonna I'm gonna triple down here library. But it's I think for a lot of people, listening to audiobooks is something they really want to do, but they don't think about how they can get audiobooks for the Libby app is like my favorite thing. And I've been listening to the Harry Potter series on on the Libby app because I've never read the books, shame shamefully, oh my gosh. And the guy who does the voice narration is incredible. He does every single voice differently, and so Jim Dale, yeah, Jim Dale, He's oh yeah, am Man. And I love those audiobooks. Yes, so I've been listening to those on the Libby app for free. And if you think about, like how much subscription to something like Audible costs, man, Libby trounces Audible for value when it comes to value for sure. Totally for free, I mean, and you can get e books as well. I mean, so we use Libby and get books like you pull them up on your phone, send them to your kindle or send them to the iPad. And yeah, we've totally been ripping through what we've been reading, uh Nathan, great and magical Treehouse, Magic tree House. Yes, so we've been ripping through those left and right. But can read those fast, right, that's probably feel good about myself. I'm like, I read three books. Yeah, it's to read to read three books, and he's hitting it. So that's okay, we're reading about Yes, So my favorite thing of the week, my love of the week. I will say I've mentioned this all the time on our podcast, but Aldi, I don't know if you have all these where you live. Obviously this is money related. I mean, we save a ton of money by going there. We save a ton of money on groceries. Kate's able to feed our family of six now for crazy, crazy cheap. She's an amazing cook. You've got some good looking houseplants from all these Yes, that's what I want to say. Yeah, they recently had some houseplants and they are beautiful, Like we walked in there and they're all different kinds, so there's it's an incredible variety. They look so healthy, and a couple of them are like almost four feet tall. Like these aren't tiny little plants. These are legit, nice, big old houseplants. And Kate's really been getting into It's like she's a houseplant lady now, Like we don't have cats, Like it's the houseplants and they're all over the house now. And so for us to score, we got five of them and there were only thirteen bucks, which normally this is like a little splurge, like we don't go in and just like drop all this money. But it's only thirteen bucks. And these plants are amazing and they're beautiful and they make our house just a better place. Jungly. Yeah, yeah, more judging I am vowing right now. I have been intrigued by Aldi for some time. There is one on my way home from work, like between my work and my house, it's like ten minutes away. I actually never gone in there, and I've heard they have a lot of like good organic stuff too, like because we're definitely very health conscious. But that's great. We buy them Organs motivated for sure. Yeah. The thing is with al THEI is you have to pay for your cart, like you you pop the quarter in, So that's something that kind of wears people out. And if you want to buy a bag or if you want a bag, you have to pay for it as well. So just go and yeah, we bring bags anywhere you go, So take your bag in there, put everything in the bag, and just know that you're gonna have fewer options. But what that means is just fewer decisions that you have to make, less decision fatigue. Well, I might be the kind of person that buys like half my grocer's there and the other habit whole foods because it's like balance perfect. It all comes out in the wash. It sort of averages into a good number. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having us. This is a blast. This has been so much fun. We appreciate the invite. Thank you guys. Well, that was great and now we have our listener question section. So this question was directed to Sarah and it says, how do you handle being the primary parent in a work environment where most people at the same level of seniority have a stay at home or work at home less demanding career spouse. This listener right said, I find that I'm virtually alone at this level of my organization having a spouse with an equally demanding and less flexible career. So she works in finance and her husband is a surgeon. She says, I have lots of excellent childcare and can do some personal stuff from work, but this doesn't fully equalize it. Honestly, finding role models in this arena is tough. I would love to hear success stories if you have guests that are doing it all. I recently went to a roundtable female professionals for college aged women interested in finance, and as is typical, the work life balance question came up. All the other women at the roundtable voice the should have having your spouse be the first to call parent and handle the home front and drop offs and pickups well except me. Great for showing the next generation about breaking gender barriers, of course, but not helpful if you wind up with a spouse who also loves what he or she does and wants to lean into the career. So, Sarah, as a two physician couple, what's your advice? Yeah, I mean, I thought this was a great question, and I definitely put myself in your shoes. I may not be at your level from a seniority perspective, it's sort of hard to equate finance with medicine in some ways, but I will say that at my particular level of leadership now at my institution, I have noticed a similar phenomenon. There are basically no women with families. I looked around at a recent meeting and saw a bunch of men and a couple of women who do not have children. And obviously, similarly to you, I am married to a surgeon, so he is not my house husband. So I feel you. I think we're not entirely alone. I think we're not vocal enough. I think this is one of the reasons that I wanted to start this podcast. And you know, that's not the only audience this podcast is for, but I certainly think we speak to women like you. I do also wonder if there's a guilt or shame component to why we're not more vocal. You know, I don't belong to a physician mommy group, which is that huge women's physician mothering group basically, but I wonder if there is a similar group for financial executives, and if there is, there should be some sort of spin off, like financial women in dual primary career households, because I cannot imagine. I know it's probably not common, but I don't think it's a never phenomenon, and especially as time goes on, it's going to be seen more and more. You did mention working with an executive coach, so I feel like that's probably a fantastic start. You can, you know, work with that person on empowering yourself and you know, figuring out what works. And I think you should give yourself some credit for being the opportunity to be for having the opportunity to be that dissenting voice with those college students who are asking that question, because even if it's not a solution for everyone, they need to hear what you have to say. So I also feel like this is an appropriate time to say that if you are listening to this podcast and the situation applies to you and you feel like you have something to say about it, it it would make a great guest let us know, because it sounds like your voice is very much desired. Yeah, this is something that I know my husband occasionally deals with that. A lot of the people that he works with have spouses or partners who are one hundred percent in charge of the home front. And that's great if you decide that that's what works for you. I mean, obviously I have some flexibility in my career, a lot more probably than a surgeon does. But it does come up because we have this conversation about him saying, well, these people will just throw time at a problem, right that if the client says, let's meet first thing Monday morning, they will leave Sunday afternoon and not think twice about it. If the suddenly wants to go to dinner, well, they're not in charge of any of the pickups or sending us at or home or anything like that to their spouse isn't traveling for work, and so they can do this, and so I mean, we tend not to fight about it so much anymore because this is just the way it is. Well, so what like that's I think you can So I'm wondering if this is also occasionally coming from her husband's perspective that he does have some responsibilities because of who she is, and that he's dealing with the fact that none of his colleagues have that, or very few of them do. And the good news is, I think that if you are very good at what you do, that's its own upside to your career, that's its own distinguishing thing. The ability to throw time at a problem is actually not that distinguishing because we all only have twenty four hours in a day. So I think you can focus on finding the niche that you do best for anyone who's in this situation and really running with that, and then just recognizing that there's some upsides to being in dual big career households. I mean, one obvious one is that you have probably two big incomes, which is helpful for many things in life, and you probably don't spend all of it on outsourcing the things that the two of you are not doing because you are both very fully engaged in your careers, and you can also find ways to work with the sort of rhythms of the careers. I mean, I don't know what sort of flexibility you do have with being able to make up some time on weekends, for instance, So on the weekends when your husband isn't on call, those could be his primary times that he is fully in charge of the kids except for a few family activities you decide to do together, and you can make up some time that maybe you didn't get to do over the week. And obviously you're not going to take out your client for lunch on Saturday or something like that, but there's probably emails you need to get to prepping for the week ahead in terms of planning your priorities, you know, maybe sending some stuff out, working on some documents, doing some strategic thinking about the lump big picture. So those are all things that maybe could be moved to the time when your partner does have some flexibility. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds, and we've been talking with Joel and Matt of how to money, and we will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.