What would you do if three major home repairs fell in your lap all at once? Can you think of a possible plan of action easily, or would this kind of life event paralyze you financially? Today, Jackie comes on the podcast to share about this happening to her family. Jackie is a mom of three who works in medical sales. She's always budgeted in some form and has used the Debt Free Mom template for a little over a year. Let's hear her story.
This season on the podcast we are sharing stories of either covering unexpected expenses that have already happened in the past or answering questions that people have, things coming up that they would like to cover.
So Jackie wants to share about several unexpected expenses that kind of came all at the same time, and she's been using the pay period budget for about a year and a half now. So, Jackie, before you started pay period budgeting in March of 2022, can you just tell me maybe a few examples or kind of what your approach would have been or how you would've felt about unexpected expenses, especially bigger ones.
I think that before 2022, well we did always have some sort of emergency savings account and like we always had a bucket of money there. But it was kind of like a do not spend, under no circumstances will we ever touch this money. It is, you know, just like. There in case there is a natural disaster.
I don't know, like
the very worst happened.
The very worst. Your car explodes inside of the road and you're in like North Dakota and you have to buy a car. Right. Like something awful. And then we, as far as budgeting went, I know you didn't ask really that, but we used like an Excel spreadsheet and we had just put like where we spent our money, we didn't really put like food or groceries or other, you know, we didn't have it categorized.
So things would just get like jumbled. So it'd be like, oh, we spent $2,500 this month. Cool. Yeah. Like moving on. And it was just like like what did we get for it? Yeah. So there's no, like, we couldn't hold ourselves accountable. And I think that that kind of plays into like holding ourselves accountable for using the emergency money too.
Because like we could easily just like pull from it and be like, well we had to cover our stuff. Everything was just stuff. And so before I would imagine what we would've done is either we would've used credit cards and paid them off. Like we never carried a balance. So, probably would've opened up like a 0% Discover card. We have done that multiple times for expenses or for things. My husband has a classic car and if he wants to do a large project on it, that's how we've handled that because that kind of like controls his spending on it versus using cash because if you know anything about cars, there's scope creep and it's terrible.
So, it, it'll start out as like a little project and then it gets bigger. But that's kind of how we have handled most of our unexpected expenses in the past, I would say is opening up some sort of a 0% card or using our emergency savings.
Okay. And then you shared that you started using the pay period budget template in March of 2022.
Can you talk about why you switched to it and then also what your pay schedule is to see if other listeners can relate to the way that both of your pay schedules are organized?
Yeah. So we switched I think I found you through some.
Yeah, yeah. For those listening. Jackie and I live like, what, 25 minutes away from each other?
Yeah. Yep.
So I think I found you through somebody else like shared your thing and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then I was like, oh, I think that we could probably implicate that. And at the time I think you only had like the free one available. And then you had the $9 and I was like, well, if I'm gonna do one, I wanna at least support her 'cause I'm not just gonna do the free thing.
She put all this effort into it, like I. I mean, $9 gets you like two cups of coffee. Like, let's, let's, you know, like whatever. And I was like, we can try it. And if it doesn't work for me, like nine bucks is not a long investment. Yeah. And the, honestly, like the hardest part about like doing the starting was inputting all of our crap. Like when everything was due. Like, I mean, I had, we had charges for like streaming services that I didn't even know that we had. Which now I hear those like rocket money commercials. Yeah. And I'm like, well, I know all my streaming services. Yeah. So, No one's taking my money from me.
When I, when I see those commercials, I'm like, I can't. I like, especially when they're like, oh, did you realize that you had three Netflix accounts or something? And I'm like, how is that happening? I, I, I see it and I'm like, I can help. Lemme help you.
That's literally what I think too. Every time I'm like, well, clearly they don't budget. Yeah. So, honestly, I stumbled across your Instagram.
I was like, I'm gonna do it. So when we first started Matt and I, my husband and I had the same fees, like pay schedule. So we were both paid every other Friday. Okay. Or really Thursday, you know? Yeah. And so it was super easy to input, like every single, it was very, it all made sense.
And so what we did as a unit is we split a lot of our bills. So like our mortgage, we pay every two weeks to make it even so. Almost identical, so we could just spend evenly all the time. Yeah. Well, in January of 2023, late January my husband got let go from his job and he took a different job in March.
Now he got severance, so like we never lost pay. Sure. So we were for very, very fortunate that he had severance the whole time and he actually ended up having a month where he was paid twice. Okay. From both companies. So that was really nice. But now he's paid once a month, which I know a lot of, like your local listeners probably have stock.
Yes. Paid one a month.
And it's interesting 'cause it's like at the end of the month and it's not always the exact same day.
Yep.
It's the same date, but not the same day. Which is, could be really tricky if you were just budgeting haphazardly. Yeah. So I think that that is something that has been really helpful with this schedule.
So when he took the new job, we had to sit down, we sat down with two computers, like and pulled up on like, 'cause we have it on Google Sheets . And so we could both look at it. And I looked at our active, what we were doing right now. And he looked at the one going forward or vice versa.
And then we decided how to move our bills around. So we moved like where our mortgage and our car payments and our insurance and a lot of our re and our daycare we have three kids, but we have one that's still in childcare full-time. Okay. And so we pay that now. We used to pay it every other week and now we pay it on his when he's paid.
Sure. Because that pay period, we have like a huge influx of discretionary income. Sure. So
it was really, so your columns, your columns are still biweekly and then you're just planning for his once a month in the pay period that it falls? Correct.
Okay. And kind of unfortunately, or fortunately, I get a commission check once a month.
But it always falls when his paycheck is.
Okay. So it's very heavy on one pay period.
Yes. Yes. So I don't know, like what we would've, like, it would've been mental gymnastics to get all of our bills paid if we didn't have a system that was visually laid out for us. Yeah. And like if you're on the fence about pay period budget, or you're not sure if like it's gonna work for you, my urgence to you would be that the visual aspect of it is so helpful. Like even if you don't like recording all of your pay all like all of your purchases. Yeah just knowing when you're paid and when your bills are coming out is just visually so reassuring to know. Like I can tell you in January of next year, like when my bills are due. Yeah. And that's awesome. Like that mental relief, like that mom math isn't there. Like that space is open for groceries or something else.
Yeah. And I think a lot of times people think that when it comes to identifying extra money to, that is available towards their goals, that it's very retroactive.
That you just have to wait and see, like you wait and look at your bank account and once you feel like you've covered all your bills, then you can look at your bank account and decide to put money in your goals. And the, the visual, the mapping out of the pay period budget allows you to see it preemptively where you can look forward and like I can tell, and I'm sure you can do the same thing, we both could probably say like, pull up our budget and be like, yeah, in this specific pay period, I can put this specific amount into a goal, even if it's four pay periods from now.
Yeah. So we treat our goals almost like a bill. So our goals are at the bottom of our budget. Yeah. Intentionally because I don't wanna see them 'cause I'll spend money, automatically, like we automatically transfer it out whenever gets paid. And it's like whatever the total is, we transfer it to Ally, we're Chase bankers that's where our deposits go. But we chose to do Ally because Carly convinced us that the return on interest rate, that yes, that 4% was gonna make me money.
And it, I mean, we've been there for six months and I think we've made like, $800.
Yeah, I was gonna say, it's like people don't realize it's like hundreds of dollars.
And my husband was like, I don't wanna have two bank accounts. And I was like, well, we can just try it and if it's awful, we can switch. And he was like, maybe we should put everything there.
And like, we've been putting more and more money there every time.
We've convinced him.
It's so funny too like a sidebar is we are really huge soccer fans and so we've been listening to some podcasts about the Women's World Cup and Ally is the biggest supporter of women's sports.
Oh, that's awesome.
So yeah. So they put the most dollars of any company towards women's sports.
That's amazing.
And 50% of their, yeah, 50% of their advertising budget goes there. So bank at Ally and support women.
Yeah. Yeah. There's just another reason. And if, if anybody needed any extra reasons, there you go.
I, I like heard it and I was like, that is awesome too.
But yeah. So,
That's how, so, When you switched, now you have the visual layout, which you said you like the most, is being able to kind of see where everything is gonna go before your money actually arrives. So that was what, about 18 months ago? March 2020... 2022? Right? March, 2022. Yeah. To now would be about 18 months.
So now what made you wanna come on and share? What has happened recently that honestly, as before we started recording, as we were talking, I was like, okay, our lives sound very similar because we also feel like we've just been, we went from kind of smooth sailing, like, yeah, I got my budget down, I got my income, I know what we're doing.
I know, you know, I thought I knew where our money was gonna go. And then within the last two or three months, it's just been like, our money hasn't gone anywhere that I expected it to go. So share a little bit about like this summer. What's been your story of working through some of those things?
Sure. So we had like three things that involved, like three kind of different methods of using our money, which I think was kind of interesting, which is really what I felt like I wanted to share because it wasn't just one big thing, it was three different things that we handled three different ways.
And it's interesting because I don't know, like I was telling Carly before we started recording, like I don't know if I would've ha how we would've handled them before. And I don't know if I would've had the mental space to handle them as easily as we did. But so in the last four months, our HVAC went out, we had to get new garage doors, and our lawnmower engine exploded, like straight up, like there was like a fire in our,
I was gonna say were there like actual flames?
I don't know. He came like running in and he's like, the lawnmower exploded. And I'm like, are you alive? Like, what happens? So I think the, so we ordered garage doors first. Now our garage faces north, and so we get a lot of like snow and ice in the winter, like we are in the Midwest and like, it's very windy.
We don't have a, like we have neighbors, but we have a lot of openness. We have a no houses across from us. We have a golf course. And so we get a lot of wind in the front of our home. Sure. And I think, I think it was like April or March where we had a big ice storm. Yep. And we couldn't get the garage doors to come up and my husband like pulled them really hard or something and somehow in that it broke our garage door.
And so we've been manually opening and closing, like we ordered a new unit and it did not fix our garage door. And so we've been manually like opening and closing it since then. And so we decided, I don't know, like eight weeks ago to order new garage doors. And that cost was significantly more than I originally intended.
And we did get multiple quotes. We decided to go with a more expensive option because we like the look and we liked a lot of the features and it is our home. And we do use our garage door every day. And, you know, we have a lot of assets in our garage that we wanna protect. And to us it was money worth spending. It just still hurt a little. Yeah. And so we paid for the garage doors in like two installments and we were able to cashflow it from a couple of, like, I get a commission check once a month, so from a couple commission checks and like a couple, like moving some of our discretionary income around.
We were able to like, cover that without going into savings and anything like that. But like it still took up like our extra money. You know, that we could have like, maybe done like a like. A surprise, like St. Louis trip with our kids. Or something like that. So that was kind of like, totally fine, but yeah, a little stressful.
Yeah. It's always nice when you don't have to pull from savings, but there's always still the, this is what I would have done with the money if I didn't have to do it this way. Which still hurts. Not, not, not as much as withdrawing from savings, but I think it is still like, it's a little bit of missed expectations or kind of like resetting expectations when before the garage door is broke, you know, you could have like, oh, like this month we can do X, Y, and Z, and then all of that goes away and it all goes to a garage door instead. And you're like, well, that's not at all what I expected. But it's kind of that silver lining of like, at least we can cover it, even though we are not loving that we have to use it this way.
And then so we order the garage doors and then our lawnmower exploded, basically. And so we went through like, kind of like a mental gymnastics about like what to do with that. Whether to buy a new one or buy like a new engine or whatnot. And I think that he said that it was like $700 for new engine and that's kind of what we did.
We looked at buying a whole new one and that was like $2,200, but that just like, wasn't really necessary.
So how close together did these two things happen? Like from the lawnmower and the garage door replacement? Three days. Okay. So like no time. There were no, no additional paychecks coming or anything?
No. No. But I mean, like, we borrowed a, his grandpa, grandpa's lawnmower, like we could have made due if we had really wanted to or you know, like pulled from savings or something. But like why? Yeah. And there wasn't like, our lawnmowers only like five years old. Okay. There's really nothing wrong with it, you know?
Yeah. Like it's the situations like why are we replacing it? Why would we spend the money? Like, should we respend the money? And you know, honestly, probably like if we didn't have, if we hadn't have just done the garage doors, we probably would've bought a new lawn mower 'cause why not? Like, that's just kind of like how we typically have done things.
And I kind of think previous to budgeting this way, we might have even still bought a new lawnmower. Okay. And just been like, oh, well, we'll just pull from savings and it'll be fine 'cause it's what we want. Sure. More like the not long-term goal, but like short-term, like, "this is what we want, we're gonna do it." Type of thought process. So then, so we ordered these garage doors like eight weeks ago and they just came like as we're recording, like last Thursday, so August 24th. Okay. So that was like a very long time. Yes. Well, on August 2nd. Second, first. First or second, our HVAC went out. Like we came home, or I think actually like Matt was working from home and I came home like, I work in medical sales, so I'm not home all day .
I'm like, it's hot. And he's like, yeah, I felt like it was hot, but I thought maybe it was just like really hot outside. 'cause in his office, like we don't have blinds on the windows. Uhhuh, so sometimes it's hot. No, it was 85 degrees in our house. Hot. Like,
oh my word.
Not just like, but the fan was still blowing.
So there was still like airflow flow.
Yeah.
But like it was hot. Yeah. And I was like, maybe you should call an HVAC company. And he is like, okay. And like we knew in our minds, like it, it had been on the table and like this, like we were thinking about replacing our HVAC in like September, October. Like we had been like, like emotionally setting money aside, you know, like kind of like, okay, we're gonna do this.
It's, yeah, it's coming. We just weren't quite there yet. We had gotten quotes already, so like at least we knew. Like that part of the legwork was done because our home was built in 2004 so our HVAC was original, so it was like, you know, 18 years old or something. Yep. 19 years old. I don't dunno. I can't do math. And so it went out. We had them come and service it. The guys like, you really need a new unit. And we're like, cool, thanks. Yeah. And he's like, it is not like if we have another heat wave, you're not gonna make it through. Like, I can guarantee you, you are like, this is it, you know, we paid the like $200 to get it fixed for the week or whatever.
Yeah. So that was like a Tuesday. At Tuesday or Wednesday I think. I don't know. And then on Friday I like, we were talking and I was like, can we just order it? Like, yeah. I don't want, I don't wanna be in a situation where it's,
Where the house is 90 degrees and you have little kids?
Yes. And we're going, we're packing them up to go to like my in-laws, which would be fine. Like we could do it, but like, Why? Yeah. Like we, we need to take care of our home and ourselves, right? Like, and we can and we have the money. Yeah. Like we can do it. It just is not fun. Yes. So we made the decision to do it. They came and they installed it like the next week. And the way that we decided to pay for that was different from the other two.
So we decided to pay for half of our HVAC upfront in cash. And then we financed the other part because we could do it for 0%. And to us, it made more sense to do part of it and 0% because the, the monthly payment was very achievable in our budget. It's like $300. It was not hard for us to cover that.
And with it being 0%, like we're gonna make more, leaving that money in our savings account Yep. At the 4%. Than we would paying it all like, yeah. All like now if we, it wasn't 0%, like it would've been a different story but for us, this was the best.
Yeah, it felt the best to us. Yeah. We had, I think like a year and a half ago we had a large medical bill and same kind of thing.
I mean, you can al you can pretty much always do a 0% payment plan on medical stuff. And that was our exact same thought process was, it was like, I think it was like $3,000 and I was like, I have $3,000. I can pay $3,000, but also it's 0% interest, and I would rather have that $3000 sitting there than. Send it all to this medical bill and then a month from now have a large expense that I can't do 0% interest on and wish that I still had that money.
So we ended up doing the same thing as I just did a 0%. I was also like very annoyed with them because I offered to like pay in full a lot of times you can get like 20% off if you pay in full, you know, offer cash or something. And I offered like several different things and they were like, Nope, this is just the amount you have to pay.
And I was like, well then I'm not paying you $3,000 today. So yeah, I did the same thing. And then I think I ended up like, once it got down to like the total balance was like less than a thousand, then I just paid it off. But it was just nice to have that flexibility and keep, like you said, keep the cash in my pocket so that if something else also happens, then I still have some options.
And as you know, lots of things seem to happen at the same time.
Yes. Just 'cause one thing happens doesn't mean the second thing is not gonna happen.
Yeah. So that's just kind of like, What happened to us and like we really like haven't experienced a lot of hard family expenses at one time that weren't like a vacation or like a new car.
Like things that were like kind of fun. Like this was fun, right? I mean, my garage doors are really pretty. Yeah. And my is really quiet and my house is cold. Like it's not that fun. Although last week I was so grateful, like the Lord really provided by having ours go out before,
I was gonna say it was brutal here last week.
I know. And then today it was like 57 when I got up I was like, nice 60 degrees swing.
Yeah, I know. In like six days. I mean, when we, so we moved on Saturday and Friday. Saturday was our big move, but Friday we kind of started taking things over and it was just like every time you open the door, you feel like you're hit with like a physical wall of humidity.
It was terrible.
Bryant got off the bus on like Thursday and he was like, he looked like he had gotten out the swimming pool.
Yes. And I was like, oh yeah. I mean, it was like my kids mentioned something like, I'm sweating and I'm not even running or whatever. And I'm like, it's just if you walk outside, you're just, your body is just gonna sweat.
Because if you don't live in the Midwest, we suddenly were living in a dishwasher.
Yes. For four days.
And then, and then it broke. And now like you said, like, I mean we had the windows open last night. Now it's like in the evening, in the like low sixties. And it is like, how did that happen four days ago? They just had to torture us. Okay. So I'm curious to know as those things have happened now and you've taken care of them, which I love how you described different options for taking care of different things.
'cause not only are there multiple ways to fix one problem, but it also, as you hit multiple problems within a small window of time, the way that you have to approach, like problem number three is different than if that was the only problem, right? Because then we kind of start having to triage what we're doing and what kind of money we're holding onto.
I'm curious if as you've taken care of any of the, or all of those, if it made you kind of look to the future and maybe adjust anything for, oh, well what if this happened again? Like, do you have plans to refill your savings? Like, what are, what's now looking forward now that those three things are handled in the short term?
Did you have any thoughts about long term?
No. Okay. Honestly, like we haven't really, I haven't really thought about it yet. As you're asking this question, I was like, trying to think about it. We kind of, we have a pretty robust emergency savings. Like, I feel very comfortable with it. I mean, honestly, like our major next goal is to save more money for travel.
Okay. We have some big travel goals in the next two years. Our youngest is two and a half, yeah. And , we're getting close to potty training him. And once he's potty trained, we're like itching to go on some more Yes. More bigger trips with him, you know?
Yeah. As you know, like there's pros and cons to the potty trained.
Yeah. But like it. It is nice to not travel with like a giant box of diapers or having to like immediately run somewhere and grab diapers once you arrive.
And I feel like, just like emotionally, they're like older at that stage. Yeah. And so, and he can tell me what he needs more.
Yeah. And so like, I just feel like it's a big landmark. So I think as far as savings, I can't foresee personally very many more like big house goals. Like I think that that's a lie. I'm lying to you. We do have one big, we have two big house goals coming up in the spring. Just kidding. We are saving currently, I forgot.
We have a big home improvement goal. We're saving for a new deck. Okay. So coinciding with all of this, I totally forgot 'cause we've been saving for, for so long. That it's just like part of, remember when I told you I had that money at the bottom of my budget? You it at the bottom? Yep. That I forget about like, we have a whole line item of deck.
Yep. And so every time I get paid, like we get paid, we put money into this debt savings. And so in the spring, our goal is, To replace our deck and our goal is to cash flow that entirely, and we're not going to do it until we can cover it completely in cash. Yeah. So I don't know how many people have replaced a deck, but it is grossly expensive.
Yeah. And we have, like, we live on a golf course, so we kind of have like, not like we have to make it super nice, but like we can't just like, we have to have,
it's, it's publicly visible.
Yeah. And we have to have a professional do it. We have to pull all the right permits, like it's, and in previous homes that we've owned, we lived in the country and we could kind of, we could D I Y a lot more than we can in this house.
So, yeah, that's gonna be a big deal. So I guess that's our next big savings.
Yeah. What, what I love about that answer is that that means that in the process of having to cover these unexpected things, you didn't have a moment of like, oh, now I see why I should have done this with savings or whatever.
'cause sometimes that happens where people, you know, I can talk about having an emergency fund until you're, until I'm blue in the face, and then people are like, oh yeah, that sounds good, whatever. And it's not until something happens to them that they're like, oh, here's why we need to have cash set aside in advance.
But the fact that it, that you didn't have a moment like that of like, oh, I, I think this is clarifying some things about why we need to change X, y, or Z. Means that in the, you know, before those things happened, that you did set yourselves up well to be able to handle an unexpected expense even when you didn't know what it was, how much it would be, or, you know, when it would happen.
Because I think, I mean, I feel similar too of like, as these moves and vehicles and all these things have happened back to back as is my primary feeling has just been grateful that the savings was there and that the options were there. And that, you know, I think you mentioned the post I did either like last night or this morning about not feeling bad about using savings.
I think that, that, that gratitude can help with that. Where I'm like, I, I would love to not have to use the savings at all, but at the same time, I'm so grateful that we set it aside before we had any idea that any of this was gonna come our way. Because even if we end up doing, taking different approaches to each of the different expenses, we at least had options.
Like there was at least the ability to like sit down, like you talked about, like you and your husband sitting down and kind of deciding how you were gonna cover each one. And like Kyle and I have been able to do the same. And without any of the emergency fund or without discretionary a gap between your income and expenses, the options are very, very limited.
And often they're limited to borrowing.
And I think a really good point too is like Matt and I have always had made pretty good money, but we haven't always been really good about saving or intentional about saving, like it wasn't really until we started having kids that we were like, oh, we really should be, you know, like doing this.
'cause it was always like, oh, well we have really good credit. We have like, we could always have a credit card, we could always do this. And honestly, like, it wasn't, I mean, we were probably married five years before we had more than a thousand dollars in our savings and. We've been married 12 years now just about and that's okay.
Yeah. And you know, it's kind of like, I kind of think of the emergency savings as like saving like your 4 0 1 k or or I R A, whatever you're doing. It's okay to start when you start. Just start. Yeah. Because like, there's gonna be a time where you need the money. And we started it because like, I think we were talking about having kids and I was like, well, what if we need money for something with you know, like a kid, like now we have other people. Yeah. It's not just me. Yeah. You like, I can't just like not work and or, you know, like, not like not have money. Like you gotta feed somebody else.
It's just like, it's just one of those things that it's hard to do. I think it's an emergency savings is only hard to do because you have to really think about your future self, not your current self. Yeah. And in so much of today it's like now, now, now like. Oh, I want Starbucks. Like I can order it on the app and go pick it up in three minutes. Like it's instant. And savings isn't, and planning isn't instant and it's hard to like switch.
Yeah. It's so, and I think what's important is exactly what you just said, to realize that that future you is still you. So when we think about savings, we're like, oh, but I'm so limited. And it's like, well, do you wanna limit yourself a little bit now or do you wanna limit yourself a lot later because they're both you. So like you are going to be limited in one way or the other. But it is, like you said, it's so hard to picture what will I, what may I need six months from now versus what I can see right in front of my face.
Right. Like six months ago, you definitely didn't think you were gonna be moving and buying a new van. Not at all. I could almost guarantee that you were gonna keep that van for three more years at least.
Yeah. Yeah, and, and like loved where we lived and we were like, oh, we're so settled. And then like, I mean, life can just hit you and it doesn't matter how well planned you are.
Doesn't matter at all. No. And it's just like life is like laughing at you. Yeah six months ago, God was like, yeah, enjoy the little house for now because things are coming.
And I have too, in what you were saying with, you know, before you had kids, you had always had the money to cover things and stuff.
I, I know that this is maybe an unpopular opinion. I have so much compassion for people with high incomes because I, the work that I do with the custom budgets is, there is no shortage of financial problems for people with high incomes, and, and I know it's easy for people who maybe have average or lower than average to be like, to look at people who have higher incomes and be like, stop complaining.
Like, what's your problem? I have seen time and time again, like the high, those high incomes are hard to manage and I, I, like I say that very sincerely because you, you have this feeling of cash flowing in, so it it feels like you shouldn't need to manage it that much, right? Like that, it'll, it'll just kind of fall into place that we assume that we'll get to a point where like, once my paycheck reaches this size, I'm almost I am, I am gonna avoid all crises, right?
Like that something can come my way and I'll just be able to handle it, and that's simply not the case. And so then what people get into is it, it adds, it compounds because not only do they have the high income and the lack of managing it well, but then when something comes their way, they also are embarrassed that there would be a financial problem while they have a well paying job.
So then a lot of times people end up digging further into a hole to avoid the appearance of having any sort of difficulty with their finances. So, so I mean, custom budget after custom budget, like it is, it is common for me to have like, well into six figure income clients come with six figure debt and a razor thin margin between their income and expenses and absolutely no savings.
Like that is, that is a very typical client for me. And I think it's just important to say that if anybody is listening who has a high income and is basically embarrassed that the, their finances are kind of a mess. That it is, that I, I have a lot of compassion for that because it is hard, it is hard to manage a high income.
Well, it's very hard too, if you have, like, you look at your budget and you're like, oh, well I'm gonna have $4,000 left over this month. Yep. You know, it's very hard to be like, I should budget. Yeah. But if you only have $200, you're like, oh, I definitely need to like put my nose to the paper. Yeah. But then that $4,000, like you could easily be eating out every night, and there it's gone.
And so then it's not, it's not about what they it's not about what they're losing or interest that they're being charged or something, but it's the opportunity cost of what that money could have done.
Correct. I mean, I think that we probably lost out on lots of savings by eating out too much you know, but like, it, it, it is what it is and like you can't get caught up in that. Like, you can always do better. It doesn't matter. Like Yeah. Hindsight's 20/20, whatever, like I could have driven a car a year longer or something too like, okay, sure. But at the end of it, like, I'm happy with where we are and I'm happy with the financial maturity that I have now. Yeah. And I, one thing that I have learned, and Matt and I talk about this almost weekly, is that we want to make sure that our children understand like, how to budget, how much things cost, like you know, I mean, how to save, like, just be aware because as a society, I feel like, at least for myself, like I don't feel like my parents did an awesome job of talking about it.
And it wasn't intentional by any means, but, and school doesn't talk about it. No. You know, and so I think as, like as parents, that's something that I really wanna try to provide my children with is the you know, at a very young age, like, hey, the tooth fairy gave you $5. You now have to put two of those dollars into your savings account.
And you can spend the $3 like Yep. And that's normal for them now, you know, like that, I want that to be normal.
I think it's hard to, I, you know, I feel like, I felt like we always grew up with this idea of like, oh, 10% always goes into your savings. But then there was a, a big lack of clarity on one, what to do with the other 90%.
But two, like what we've talked about at the beginning of this episode of do I use the savings? What do I use it for? And it was, what is that for? It was a sense of like, put 10% into savings and never, ever touch it in your whole life. And so then it's like, why, why? So I think that's if, if I had to guess, that's why a lot of people our age probably then didn't put money in savings because it's like, well if I'm supposed to put it 10% away and never touch it, then I'm basically losing it, right?
Like I'm just like, it goes away and I don't get to do anything with it, which sounds so much worse than being able to use it. So then we use it. But if we can teach our kids like some specific examples, especially from their own life of things that are happening in our family of like, this is why we save, so that in these situations we can make sure we still take care of our family.
Then it clicks, I think, in a lot bigger way. And also just even helping them with their own little, you know, if there's a big Lego set that is really expensive, like, okay, it's gonna take a while, but we're gonna commit, we're gonna, you know, follow through with your plan and six months from now you can then buy that Lego set.
So helping them with that, like delayed gratification of when the money comes in, it can stay with you for a while and then you can buy something with it later.
I just feel like that's just one of those areas that like, as a person, like I feel like there's so much room for improvement from an education standpoint.
Like if I could have told my 25 year old newly married self, like, Hey, take all that money that you guys got for your wedding and invest it in the stock market. Don't Yes. Spend it on a honeymoon, like or whatever, you know,
like, yeah. I, yeah, because I, I mean, we don't, I, I had, I don't know about you, I had like a consumer ed class in high school.
But a lot of what I remember of it is like, we re, we learned how to write a check. I remember that. And then it was like really unrealistic little illustrations of like, we would go to the computer lab and like plan out buying our first house or something, but the numbers were all just like completely arbitrary.
Like they had no connection as a 16 year old mean anything. How is this supposed to impact my life at all? And also the assumption was like, It was all predicated on the fact that you're earning enough money to buy a house, right? So then we're all just sitting there like, Ooh, what house do we wanna buy? And whatever. And it's like, how about we teach like the foundational money skills that are needed to equip someone to buy a house? 'cause I like with buying a house, there are mortgage experts and there are real estate experts that can help you. That was probably one of the processes that I, in, that I on my own, tried to learn the most because I just relied on experts.
But budgeting, like, we need to do that for ourselves before any of the other things can happen. And that's, that's just not taught.
I mean, the craziest thing about buying a home, like the literal craziest thing is you go and you apply for a mortgage and they're like, here's a $900,000 mortgage. And you're like, that monthly payment is more than I make a month.
Yes, exactly.
Or like, that's exactly all of my money. Everyone like, what are you thinking?
Right. Yeah. Because they're, and that's, that's the big disconnect too, is that people think the bank is answering the question, "how much can I afford?" And it's like, no, you need to decide how much you can afford.
Yes. And then they will tell you like, they are highly incentivized to loan you way more money than you can afford. Yes. And so you need to know what your budget is on your own decision, not what they Yeah. I think we were, we were approved for something that was like, the monthly payment was like, I wanna say 60% of our take home pay or something.
Yeah. And it's like, what calculations are you using to come up with this?
Like, cool. But like, then how would I afford food?
Right, exactly. It's like, you can live there and do nothing else. Don't go anywhere. Don't own a car, don't have kids.
I mean, well we, we bought this house in December of 2019, so like interest rates were still low. There weren't a lot of houses on the market. It was like pre covid. Yeah. And weird to think about pre covid time,
I know, feels like a hundred years ago.
So we bought this house like pre Covid, and we were like between,
like we had some requirements, whatever, and we're between like three houses and this is, this home needed updating, but it was like the least expensive. And I was like, I would rather buy the least expensive house that needs changes Yeah. Than the most expensive house that needs nothing because I can choose the updates. This most expensive house over here, I can't afford to do any of the updates. Yep. Like, I can't even afford to buy paint.
It's like, how much do I wanna be locked into versus how much do I wanna get to decide when and how much and if I make the updates is it makes a huge difference on your monthly budget to do that.
And that's like when we were, I was told you that we bought a new car like this year for my husband. And we went back to the, to your budget and we put it in for like, we did an amortization table, obviously for paying it off 'cause that's the very first thing that you do when you go to buy a car.
Yep. And then we put it in for like the next forever long Yeah. You know, to see just like what it would look like. Yeah. And it was like, we were like, oh, okay. Like we can definitely do this. Yes. But like very easily it could have been. Nope. Yeah. Like we were fine either way. We just wanted to like make sure before we even committed to buying the vehicle, you know, and pre March, 2022, Jackie would not have done that. Yeah. And so that's like, you know, like circling way back to the beginning of this discussion, like that's definitely something in my whole decision making process that has changed since we started using the pay period budget is that if I'm gonna take on a new expense, I'm going to put it into the expense before I even swipe the card.
What it prevents is that people get into one of two problems is either they buy a car that they can't afford, that if they would've had this tool and put the numbers in, they would see that it doesn't work. But I also feel like there are things that people can do that they choose not to do out of fear that the money won't be there. Where if they had a tool like this and could see, like you said, you put it in and you're like, yep, it works. Especially with a car, like I think a lot of times what happens is that in their. The way that they present themselves to other people, social media or whatever. We act like we're so excited to buy a new car because it's like new and everybody's gonna applaud you and whatever. But then internally, people are really afraid of making the payment and covering it and stuff.
And if we have a tool that can help us make those decisions with real numbers, then we can be like, like what you said, where you walk into the purchase confident because you're like, we know that this is not going to have, you know, detriments to the rest of our budget. So then you get to just be excited and not be afraid.
Yeah. I'm not having to reduce my grocery budget by $200 or $300 a month because of your car.
Yeah. 'cause of my car that's a huge game changer for not just the little things. And that's why I think people think that it's nice to just say that a budget is not restrictive.
And people are like, yeah, but it is. And I'm like, it's really, really not, because it will help you be aware of what's actually available and it'll free up your decisions so that you don't go into a decision with fear or regret or frustration or whatever. And you can go into it with confidence.
So even if the, you know, even if the car payment is smaller than the person who would, who never budgeted at all, I would rather have a small payment and a lack of fear than a, a really, really nice car and stress every single month about making the payment. And that's where the budget is not restrictive. It's freeing.
It's just another tool that you have to make an educated decision. Yeah. And. You, I wrote down that I was gonna tell you one thing. When you were talking about high versus like lower incomes or something . One of the choices that like our family has made is to do travel sports. Like I know that's a decision like you guys made to not do Yeah. Because like you have four kids and like doing it with four kids is very expensive. And I have three kids. Doing three kids will be very expensive. But like to us it was important, like both my husband and I did it. Like we want that for our kids, whatever.
Yeah. This weekend we had a travel soccer game in Springfield. And, but like, like we my in-laws, it was their wedding anniversary, their 40th wedding anniversary last weekend. And so for their present, we bought them dinner out. So that used up all of our restaurant budget uhhuh. So this weekend for soccer, we had to bring all of our food.
But like I knew that ahead of time. Yeah. That was like a, like when my husband and I decided to buy them food, I was like, okay, well next weekend we'll just pack our lunch for soccer. Like, we pretty much always do that, but like this weekend I was just like, we have to do it because it's on the budget, but like I have all of our like, travel, soccer and swim stuff, like put in there you know, like budgeted. And I know like when Evelyn has a soccer tournament, she's gonna want like a tournament sweatshirt. And my gosh, those things are like $90.
Oh my gosh.
Like, no lie. I don't know who decides. It's like 40% of the shirt goes back to the host club or something. Okay. It's like a big profit maker for the team, so like, whatever. Yeah. But like, they were expensive, so I let her get like one tournament, one fall in one spring sweatshirt. Yep. We're going this weekend to Iowa for a tournaments, her first away tournament, which is expensive. Like we have to do two nights in a hotel. Yada, yada, yada. We have a travel budget for that, you know? I, we planned ahead a few months ago. We, we know it's coming and I already put in there like tournament sweatshirt, like $90. Yeah. You know, it's, it's like those little things too, like, it's not just like, yes, like travel sports are expensive, but like, I know even in like, or you know, November what our expenses are gonna be for that, which is, I don't know, it just goes back to like, I feel very empowered in my decision making process for everything, even like from Starbucks runs to tournaments and buying a car like all of it, I know what I'm doing.
And you have a tool that it can easily, like, it's not cumbersome to try and work something in.
It's like, oh, she wants to get this, let me just quick jump into the November pay periods, make room for it and then you can go into it. Because I, I mean, how many times have we all seen or been the kid or been the parent in that situation where they're like at the tournament and there's a sweatshirt and the kid really wants it and the parents are like, no, it's too expensive or whatever.
And it's not that we don't have that money, it's that we just feel strain in our finances in general. So we feel like this unexpected expense, even if it is a sweatshirt, is gonna like somehow push us over the edge or something. So having a tool that makes room for those little things allows us to decide our yeses and nos in advance and then be able to move forward without feeling guilt or stress about them.
Honestly the very first time, like if the very first time I felt really good about doing pay period, budget, if I'm being honest, was last a year ago right now last September. 'cause we started doing your budget and we started saving every month for or twice a month, I guess, for property taxes. It used to always be a scramble for property taxes. Like the month before we'd be like, oh yeah. And like we'd pull for savings or something. And now we like put the money away, you know, every single month. And that was like the very first thing we started was last, that first March. And then I just wrote the check today. 'cause ours are due like September. Yep. Something.
Same.
I have to mail it like the first, I think. Yeah, it's like the fifth. But I think that that was the very first big purchase. Not that that's a purchase, but like, yeah.
I don't know. First payment that you were able to kind of plan for.
Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. And, and that makes a big difference because like you've said before, it's not that you never couldn't take care of it in the past, but the way that you started taking care of it now changes the way you feel about it, even though it's the same, essentially the same expense.
If I could just make every single person I know, like, budget this way, they would just feel like you have a lot more control. Like when I have a friend that's like, oh, I feel like I have no money. And I'm like, but why do you feel that way? And they're like, well, I don't have a lot of extra money at the end of the month. And I'm like, okay, well where are you spending your money? And they're like, well, I have this, this, this, this, this. And I'm like, okay, well, where did you eat dinner this week? Yeah. And they're like, well, I,
I think it was you that within the past couple weeks you said you were like talking to a group of moms where one of 'em was kind of like, "well, come on. Like, you make enough to go do this."
Yes. Yeah. And I mean, I get that often like our, like they were wanting to go do something, and she was like, yeah, don't you make enough money to like go somewhere? And I was like, yeah, but it doesn't fit my goals.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It,
it, it wasn't that I couldn't do it. And I can do it, but like, I didn't wanna go spend, I think it was like going to dinner with them or something, and I was just like, I, I ate beforehand and like went for a couple drinks. Yeah. I was like, I don't wanna spend $50 on a meal when I could have used that $50 to achieve this. Yeah. And, and it's just that, like I now know that. And like, I can make the decision. And even like my husband used to when he was in the office all the time, he would go out to eat. Like I would tell him he could go out, you know, like we discussed like two days a week. One or two days a week. And he'd be like, okay. And he got like one to four days a week.
And I'm like, you're spending like a hundred dollars a week eating out. And he's like, so, and I'm like, But that's a lot of like, that's fine if that's what you wanna do. Yeah. But then you're not eating out as a family. Right. Like it's either you by yourself or all of us doing one meal. Yeah. And like your choice.
Yeah. And then, and I think, I think once you have a tool where you can see the numbers clearer then you have the ability, like the conversation that you just described between you and your friends is like, you have a really clear list of your priorities. And so you see where dinner out fits in your personal priority list.
And then you've made the decision like, oh, I actually have a lot of things that are higher priority than that. And so it makes it easier, even if it's not easy or you know, you don't want to necessarily, but it's still like even in, you know, my, my short-term self wants to say yes to every dinner out with all of my friends all the time, but I have a clear idea of what my long-term priorities are.
And so I'm gonna choose those over this one today. You know, it doesn't have to be all the time, but just today.
And I think that because I said no, we actually ended up doing happy hour at a friend's house. And like all of our kids came and it was like way more fun than like Yeah. I think it would've been just like going to a restaurant.
You're having a good influence.
It's just one of those situations where like, yes, I can say yes and like I do like my job, I get to do a lot of dinners out. So like I do eat out a lot. Yep. So I don't feel like personally like I have to ever eat out. Yeah. Where I know, like my husband, he likes to eat out.
Yep. Because he doesn't like really get that chance. Right. Yeah, sure. So like what I've been doing though is when I have a work dinner, I'll order myself an appetizer. Like I'll eat like a salad and an appetizer, uhhuh, and then I order a meal and take it home.
Take it home and share some, yeah. Yeah. It's not my, yeah.
I appreciate this so much because I, I have so many similar conversations to what you're describing where people are more thinking about it in the hypothetical, like, what if my HVAC went out? What if I needed this?
So I love that. I don't, I don't love that these things happen to you, but I love that once it happened that you were willing to come share about it. Yeah. So that other people can be like, oh, there are options for taking care of it. And if this would happen to me too.
Well, you had one on your last season where they had to, maybe they had to switch their budget or they were setting up their budget and they were paid differently.
Something And that you were talking about like pay schedules. Yeah. And it was right around the time that Matt got laid off and was looking for a new job and he switched pay schedules and it like empowered me to stick with the pay period budget, yeah. And adjust how we were spending. Are, you know, like reoccurring bills.
Sure. So if I can tell like what we did Yeah. A little bit and it can help somebody like understand like, it's really okay to finance something for 0%. Yeah. It's really okay to have unexpected expenses. It's really okay to buy the new garage doors because they're pretty Yeah. And spend a little bit more money because it's what you want.
Like Yeah. You work hard for your money, you can spend it. Yeah. Like I give you the power to do what makes you happy, but like do it within the confines of like what you can afford.
Have the have the pleasure of the purchase without the regret of the cost. Right. Yeah. That's great. That should be your tagline.
There you go. Tagline for this episode for sure.
But yeah, it's like one of those things like if my little story can help like a couple people Yeah. And maybe spark some conversations like even in like your dms with somebody like, oh, okay. I have this coming up. Or like, like your van saga is a great
I mean, it's all great.
Yep. It's all, that's what we've, we've said so many times in our house as a joke, like all when all these terrible things are happening, Kyle's like, oh, it makes good content. It does, but like it still sucks. What I hope people hear from what you're describing too is also anybody who is feeling hesitant about budgeting because again, because of the restriction factor, listening to all the things that you listed that you were able to do because of a budget is like, oh, maybe I would actually be able to do more by planning out my money instead of less.
We have more freedom and more, we're definitely more confident in spending money on things like we just paid for like we have last year and this year we're gonna have a company come put Christmas lights up. Because the risk there of like, My husband getting on a ladder, just it's not worth it to me.
Yeah. We had a friend whose husband fell off like a second story and broke his pelvis and was down for like six months. Yeah. Like, I can't have him do that. No. I have three little kids, like I No, thank you. Yeah. You know, but like I put it in the budget. No problem. Yeah.
Yeah. Like anything like that, like Yeah.
I mean, even going to like Sam's, like I know, I don't know, it's just like any big or small, like it doesn't matter. And I think that that's where I used to get hung up on budgeting is like, I'd be like, oh, this expense is too big to go on the budget or this is too little. Like, who cares about my $6 coffee?
Like, yep. You brought yourself more into like a, almost like a equilibrium where instead of feeling like the little stuff doesn't matter and the big stuff is too hard, you now see that the little stuff does matter and the big stuff is possible.
I honestly like think that the little stuff means more than the big stuff.
I would agree. Like those little tiny micro changes, those micro activities, those micro charges, like those little suckers add up.
Yep, yep. And like co compound compounding works not just in the stock market, it also works in those little habit changes and those little purchases as well.
Yeah, I mean, like if you went to, I mean, I don't get coffee every day maybe, but maybe like once a week if that.
But if you went every day like that is Yep. Half my grocery budget, you know?
Yeah. And even with like, for someone who does go, I think we have an all or nothing idea. It's like if you go every day, it's like, well, I'm not quitting that. That's something that I'm I, that I like. It's like if you go from seven days a week to five days a week, people doubt that that has an impact and it has a huge impact.
if you are hell bent on getting coffee seven days a week and that is the hill you wanna die on, give up, getting your nails done.
Yes. Yep.
Or, or get your hair colored space it out from every eight weeks to every 12 weeks, like Yep.
You know, there's little shifts like that once you see it, I truly believe that like once you see it, like on paper over the span of like the 6, 8, 12 weeks, you could, you play with the numbers, you know, and excel's super easy 'cause you can just hit the back button and it goes back to the original.
Don't be scared. Excel's easy. Yep. Yep. And then like you play with those enough, you can really see like how little micro changes can really positively impact the long term and your bigger goals.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
That goal is to be big, right? Yeah. Like if your goal is to be able to afford coffee seven days a week .That is perfectly fine.
Yeah. Yep. And the the little bit of effort of making it work and making sure that the long-term stuff can still happen then frees you up to then go get the coffee every day without having to just like the decide once idea is like if you planned it out and you decided this is my priority, I worked it into the budget, then go do it.
Yep. It's like the cooking thing. Like every Monday you eat chicken every Yes. Tuesday you eat a beef, every, whatever.
Yep. Nobody needs more active little decisions in their day.
And that's the other thing too, is that I feel like really the budgeting has freed up a lot of my mental space to feel free for everything else.
Yes.
'cause where it used to be, I'd be at the grocery store and I'd honestly be like trying to add my grocery. Like, okay, I know that I only have like this much money left in my checking account. This is all I can spend. I'm so stressed about it. I'd forget to buy like, Bananas. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, and now I like go to the grocery store and I just like buy what I need because like I, I know it's gonna be fine.
Yeah. Because you did just so, yeah. Just a little bit of effort on the front end then opens that for going without stressing.
Yeah, totally. Or you get like your air conditioning bill and it's like $300 instead of like 50 like you thought, you're like, well that's unfortunate, but that's next month and I can adjust these two things and it's good.
Well, thanks Jackie for taking some time outta your morning to come share. I am, I'm very thrilled. Like I said, to share this with other people and also to talk to you face to face.
I feel like we've had tons of interaction in DMs and stuff and so, and book club, and so this is awesome to have a little bit of one-on-one time. I feel there's like a shortlist of people where I would like, I'm like, oh wait, I actually haven't met that person in real life, even though I, I feel like I have. And you're one of 'em.
I think one of my favorite takeaways from Jackie's story is learning to be a problem solver. When it comes to our money, we won't always be able to accurately predict what's going to happen. When we approach our finances in a problem solving way, we can identify the solutions that will work best for our family. And they won't always be the same as what would work best for someone else.
I love how her and her husband worked through each of these problems one at a time, balancing using their savings with using the money available from their regular paychecks and then even strategically using debt. When it comes to the unexpected in your finances, the more you can lean into listing possible solutions, the less you'll feel stuck. One of my favorite things to tell myself in these kinds of situations is "I'm not stuck. I just don't know which door I'm going to walk through yet, but I will." So when you're faced with these things that come out of the blue and are so expensive. Remember that you might feel stuck, but you aren't stuck. There are solutions. They may take creativity. They may take temporary sacrifices and changes to what we thought would happen, but there are ways to get through it and come out on the other side with more experience and ready to face, whatever comes next.
Thanks for listening to the Debt Free Mom Podcast. If you want to join me as a guest on the show, go to dfmpodcast.com. The Debt Free Mom Podcast is hosted by me, Carly Hill, and is produced, edited, and mixed by Kyle Hill. Music for this episode was written by Kyle Hill. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening to join in with every new episode as we grow our confidence and contentment in our personal finances.
