[00:00:19] Andrew: Hey guys, welcome back to dead bytomorrow. I know it's been a little bit between episodes Daniel and I have beenhaving exciting times with our lives. And by that, I mean, Daniel has, and Ilike to pretend so welcome back to another episode this week, we're going to becovering money and it's kind of a scary subject for most people.

It's actually a chapter from our book, the atypical moneyguide. We try and keep it a little bit lighter and less. whatever that is whenpeople think budgets and whatnot, but uh, let's see how this goes. So Danielmoney, it's a hard topic to talk about for most people. Where do you want tojump off on this?

[00:00:54] Daniel: Yeah, money's kind of funny. Cause Ifeel like it's one of those things that it was a little bit of a taboo subject.People don't like to talk too much. There, their finances, what they make, allthat sort of stuff, unless they're doing really, really well. And then I feellike that's, all they want to talk about.

But yeah, I feel like it's a tough, it's a tough subject tocover gracefully. And I was telling you earlier, it's a little bit ironic to dothis episode right now because it's, I think. In terms of finances, Hillary andI are, our savings is probably at an all time low at the moment, but it's becausewe've gotten to experience some of the big major life things that you typicallyput rainy day funds away for.

And some of those types of deals and Hillary and I. All right.I'm not going to love Hillary into this. If she, she probably has a totally

[00:01:45] Daniel: different perspective, but I have alittle bit of a different mindset when it comes to just squirreling away, largeamounts of money. And this year, this past, maybe two years has shown some ofthe pros to that mindset.

And also maybe some of the cons. And so this is anything wesay. You're going to have to take with a grain of salt because I'm coming froma, maybe a different spot than other, other listeners might be. I've got somedebt but have really good credit, have a solid well-paying job that I'm notnecessarily concerned about losing.

So those are things to keep in mind. If any of those factorsare different for you. Some of what we talk about may not completely apply, butthis past year, To kind of lay out some of the money situations that we've gonethrough. We have had a kid, so that's lots of medical bills and, and fun stuffthere.

And I can talk about some some ways to approach medical billshere in a sec. Sold and then bought a house. And then in that house had to do aremodel of the bathroom because it didn't exist. And then after doing theremodel, the bathroom found out that our house had mold and so had tocompletely gut the kitchen, do an unexpected kitchen remodel.

And so all of that. Oh, and we bought a car getting ready forthe baby and all of that happened in the course of a year. Right. And, and sothose are things that you maybe hope happen spread out, you know, maybe threeyears in between each of those different types of events. So you can get a,build your savings back up to take those hits.

And so we did not have the chance to do that, but. What we diddo is take advantage of a few different things that I'll talk about that, youknow, maybe people listening to the episode are aware of. Maybe they're not,and maybe this can help you, if you are concerned about, you know, your moneysituation and are wondering how you could make it through a tough situationlike that.

Or maybe you're trying to make a move, but you don't feel likeyou're in the financial place to do it yet. So I'll start out with. Kind of thefirst thing that happened and I'll break out the things that we did to stayfinancially, you know, in the black, where we're not in crazy amounts of debtand we're not, you know, struggling to eat every month.

So the first thing we did was buy a car and. Buying the car. weactually put a little bit of money down. We actually had some money saved upand you know, we bought a used car. We did all the haggling sort of stuff andwe didn't pay with cash. we did finance the car and that's, I know for somepeople it's new.

But for us, we just took the mindset of we're going to get acar that is really high quality. We knew we were going to be having a kid soonand we didn't want something where we were going to have to be taken it backinto the shop over and over and over again. And so that's been a good decision.We love our car it's been, really reliable.

We haven't had extra expenses beyond just that monthly paymentfor. Then the next thing that we did was decide to sell our current house andbuy a new house so that we could be closer to friends, which that's a wholedifferent episode and have more space for having our baby cause we knew we werepregnant at the time we bought the house.

So the thing that let us do that was using a 401k. hopefully,and this is something from our money chapter. Hopefully if you're working, yourcompany offers a 401k and offers a match, and one piece of advice is at leastput in the amount that you need to get the company matched, because that isquite literally free money.

So if your company matches, 4% one 40. Put in 4% and you justgave yourself a salary, raise a 4%. Maybe you don't see it right now, butthat's going to be your money someday. And the nice thing about a 401k loan isyou can actually use that right now for something like buying a house. So theway the 401k loan works is you can take out up to half of whatever vestedbalance you have in your 401k, and you can get that money.

And if you're using. To buy a house. You can take that moneyfor the down payment for the closing costs. And you set up the terms for yourloan to pay yourself back into that 401k. And when you do that, you don't runinto tax penalties. You don't run into early withdrawal penalties, you'retaking kind of out of, out of your paycheck money to payback that 401k, thereis an interest rate on it, but the interest also goes.

So the biggest disadvantage is let's say you have $40,000 inyour 401k. You take out $20,000 to help with your closing costs. And then thenext month the stock market just goes up like crazy. Well, obviously your, yourportfolio is half the size that it was, and you don't realize all of thosegains. It's a little bit of a risk, but if you're in a housing market likethat, Not that big of a deal because houses are also going up like crazy.

So you're still kind of getting a return on that money. So thatis how we were able to sort of make that happen with the house and then nothave to spend a crazy amount of money. And then we took some of the money thatwe had from that 401k loan and some of the money we didn't have to use fromsavings for closing costs.

And they've rolled that into remodeling a bathroom and. Buyinga house that needed a bathroom remodel immediately. What that let us do was getinto a neighborhood that otherwise we maybe couldn't have afforded to get into,because it was a little bit of a fixer-upper. But again, we use that 401k loan,having a little bit of money saved, got into a great house where we immediatelygot to do remodel and up the value of the house.

And then we ran into the kitchen remodel. And that was not funbecause we had to dip into some of our personal savings and we actually had todo a personal loan to cover the full cost of that kitchen remodel. So we had todo a personal loan, which we could do because we had good credit. And the otherthing we did to soften that blow a little bit, something we've done before,which is opening up a credit card that has a no interest rate for kind of anintroductory period.

So I think it was like 15. On this credit card, there were nointerest fees. And so that was kind of like having a loan as well. We just knewwe have to pay that credit card back before that time. But we can put stuff onthat card and kind of help, you know, stay balanced. And then you know, thatkind of helps us with our, our operating expenses leading into having thekitchen.

And having a baby. So having the baby again, another big cost,but what we did plan for that is use an HSA. So health savings account. Again,if that's offered through your work, you should 100% contribute to it.Especially if your company contributes things to it, you should use it becausethat is an account that reduces your taxable income.

If you put enough money in it, it can actually start to earninterest kind of like a 401k or. You don't get taxed on that. If you're usingit for medical expenses, even when you pull money out, you're not gettingtaxes, a triple tax advantage account. And so we made sure we put enough asideto cover the healthcare bills for pregnancy with the HSA.

So I know I just talked about a ton of little tips, littlestrategies, different accounts. I'm sorry, Andrew. I think I just, you know,went on a model log for like 10 minutes. So I'm going to pause here. Let youjump in with some.

[00:09:04] Andrew: there's a couple points I want tobring up with what Daniel talked about and. Hopefully you're still listeningbecause that's kind of the point is some of the stuff that he mentioned, 401kand HSA credit card with a no interest. It's usually called a no APR for acertain period of time. These things are those. Those are the jargon. Those arethe words. That people hear and say, oh, this doesn't apply to me right nowbecause I'm not adult enough.

I have bills to pay. I don't have enough money. All of these differentthings that those kinds of words trigger in a large majority of the population,including me. It still takes me like legit. Moment to go, Hey, don't turn awaybecause you heard financial jargon. you are educated enough. You know, theimportance of this, you can.

Take the we'll call it suffering the boredom of looking intodoing this and taking care of business, even though it's not fun. Cause none ofthis is fun. So let's, let's be honest finances and doing them right. And beingsmart about them is almost never fun because spending money on things you wantis a lot more fun.

Not worrying about the future is a lot easier than worryingabout the future.

These are really easy, basic stuff that Daniel's talking about.A 401k. Yeah. It's got numbers in it. And if you're like Andrew and numbersscare you it's really not that scary. I don't even know what 401k stands forstill.

But what you need to know if you're not going to do your ownresearch on this is that is something that is important and you should be doingit no matter what walk of life you're coming from. Even if you don't have a jobthat offers you a 401k, you need to be, you know, rocking an IRA or some.

form of that tax-free investment account.

Super important. This doesn't necessarily apply to biggerearners. There's a limit of like $175,000 a year salary. You can't do things ina 401k. And if you're one of those people that's listening to this, you arestill supposed to be doing stuff, but you need to probably go talk to afinancial advisor for reals because they will help you do a backdoor IRA orfigure out some stuff to get you into this, because it's that important.

Now, if you are not. Making that 150, $175,000 or whatever thenumber is. I don't even know the exact number, but if you're not making thatkind of money, you need to be rocking out one of these 401k IRA accounts,because they are just so, so important. If you are living on beans and toast,that is better than going out once a month to get through.

With that money going to your IRA or your 401k. So if you don'twant to look into it, if you are scared of these words, go talk to your HRmanager, go talk to somebody at your bank and say, I do not have this thingthat I heard about on a podcast. And I would like this thing, and you can justtrust us, just do it and be done listen to what they're going to tell you to doand do it.

And it is the single most important thing you can do with yourmoney. That said HSA is a really great getting that match from your company isliterally free money. You should not throw that opportunity away because yeah,you don't get the pay. You know, you might take 3% out of your paycheck, but Imean, honestly, you're probably gonna lose that 3% to Texas anyways, if youwere to take it.

So you're not really changing anything on your usable incomeone way or another. So there's my little pedestal. What Daniel was talkingabout, concerned. Scary. It's really, really important to do that.

[00:12:25] Andrew: Let's jump into something related towhat Daniel also said about buying things and dating. And I actually have kindof different. So to say philosophies, when it comes to money, I'm not a hugesaver and it's just not something I really go in for. Generally, I'm trying tofocus on increased income.

That said Daniel has a wife and a kid. I am solely responsiblefor myself. So my ability to take risks are a little bit more elevated thansomebody who has people relying on them. So take that with this perspective.So, to me, Being afraid to open a credit card is insane. And I know we haveemployees at plans, internet that do not have credit cards.

And it blows my mind. I know people personally who still do nothave credit cards personally, I can't imagine a reason. You don't have a creditcard. you should have a credit card. You don't have to use it if you don't wantto, if you are terrified of debt, which you shouldn't be I for one, I'm not abig Dave Ramsey fan.

I know we had Sean on Dr. Kinzer and he and his wife are reallybig Ramsey fans and it's actually done really Well, for them. That said, Ipersonally do not believe in that kind of thing. I think certain people doapproach that direction, that non debt, the high saving the high budgeting.That's a great way for some people, but I think most people would benefitbetter from a more open mindset to debt and.

You know, building your credit and kind of being preparedbecause you can do like what Daniel did and you can save up a fair bit of moneyand in case something comes along, you know, hopefully you have the cash tocover it. But even like Daniel talked about in those situations, sometimes eventhe cash you've saved up.

And I think Daniel and Hillary saved up a fair amount of cash,like a lot more than most people probably do on a regular basis. They still hadto dip into personal loans and credit cards to. Cover everything they needed.Now, Danny already has credit cards. He's not, you know, not one of thesepeople that doesn't have them, but what I'm saying is that ability that he hadto go leverage other debt and credit to continue doing things he needed to dothat comes because he's been building credit and he's had a credit card foryears now.

And I think that's really important. One, especially if you'rea low income earner and. You know, if you've ever had to take a paycheckadvance or anything like that, that shouldn't be something you need to bedoing. You need to have a credit card to cover those kinds of expenses thatyou're paying off.

When that second paycheck kits, you need to have a credit cardis a all function because it's really handy. And if all else comes crashingdown on you, you can declare bankruptcy and that credit card has gone. And youknow, your credit's wrecked. There's a whole lot of bad things and you reallydon't want to do that.

But ultimately, if it's your survival versus bankruptcy I'dmuch rather you have the option to declare bankruptcy and get a bunch of debt,you know, cleared off of your name, then go starve yourself to death. So if youdon't have a credit card and you're not doing your 401k, those are reallyimportant.

Things do not be afraid of debt. Don't be afraid of creditcards. They're totally dangerous things, but just like anything dangerous. It'show you use it and how you approach it. And it's, it just takes a certainmindset and discipline. So there's my 2 cents on that. What about you, Daniel?What do you feel about credit cards?

Do you have a favorite or think anybody out there shouldn'thave a credit card?

[00:15:35] Daniel: I definitely think there are peoplethat shouldn't have credit cards, but all of that. To good habits, selfrestraint those types of things. Cause I mean the danger about a credit card isyou can rack up a lot of debt really quickly. And if you aren't paying thingsback in a timely manner, you will get wrecked on the interest rate and it endsup costing.

Any, anything you put on there ends up costing you much, much,much more than it would have otherwise. And so that's a grain of salt. When itcomes to credit cards is really do what you can to make sure that you're notlate on payments, that you're able to pay things off because most of them, theinterest rates, like, I don't know, like 20% or something insane.

So you, you really want to avoid that That's the ideal. Andthen if, if you. More money and you know, you're not going to be able to pay itoff, doing something like a personal loan. You're going to have a much lowerinterest rate, you know, be aggressive about your time period that you'repaying it back so that you're not paying a lot of interest and, and all of thatfun stuff.

And you're able to do that again, like Andrew saying, if you'vehad good credit, but you know that you are not going to have the self that youneed. Not go to Starbucks every single day, not hit the mall and buy moreclothes every single weekend. And having an envelope of cash is the thing thatkeeps you from doing that.

And, and that's your budget then? Definitely do that instead.

[00:17:01] Andrew: Absolutely.

Yeah.

[00:17:03] Daniel: I do use them. My favorite is probablythe chase Sapphire reserve because it's pretty focused on. Really high rewardsfor dining. And so I use it a lot when eating out and then it has really goodtravel perks and benefits.

So that's my.

[00:17:21] Andrew: I like it. And that's actually apretty good one too. I think I used the Southwest rapid rewards the most, butthat's because I like travel. So there you go. There's a cut. There's a couple,if you hit either of us up, because you're like, Hey, I want a credit card,please. Holler. We will send you a referral link and get us some points.

Get you some points. It's a great time.

[00:17:42] Andrew: that all said, I want to shift to. Themaybe more fun to talk about. It's hard to talk about these kinds of things arenot even hard to talk about. It's hard for some people to listen to that kindof stuff. So your brain might have turned to mush already in the last 10minutes.

If that's the case. I'm sorry. Pause it. And get a, drink, acoffee. And we're going to talk about something a little more fun and that'sokay. So forgive me, Daniel. I might go on a monologue now, this is somethingthat has really bugged me about a lot of people I come into contact with. Andfor those listening, some of you might be in this and I'm sorry for calling outlike this, but a lot of people are embarrassed to have more than one job, morethan one source of income.

And I don't understand that your free time is not that. Uh,These people who can't make ends meet or who need more money or want moremoney, and you're not willing to pick up that second job in the evenings.You're not willing to do that side hustle work on the weekends, you know, waittables, even on the weeknights.

That is a weird, consistent mindset. I come across where peopleare like, Well, I've got my eight to five job and that's it. And they just needto pay me more. And then I'll be better. No, you need to quit being lazy. Youneed to go get that second job. And I'm saying this with experience, so I knowDaniel kind of talked through what he does.

So I'll give you a little background on what my income lookslike. So obviously I work for planes internet again, or currently wherever youwant to put that. And they pay me. Along with that. I have a little marketingagency and I don't make a ton of money, maybe like 800 bucks a month, but Ibuild websites, do marketing, that kind of thing.

And that comes in, I've got the little t-shirt website andeight honestly probably still operates close to negative depending on the month,but I probably get two or three sales for t-shirts, you know, every month. Andit generates probably a hundred, 150. Uh, Along with that, I will pick uplittle side projects if someone's doing anything.

Or if there's something that I can do for money on the weekendsor the week nights, I'll do that. Then obviously we have the writing and thebook stuff, which generates very little income especially right now, sincewe've been pushing it. But, you know, it's, it's there, there's, there's allthese different things you can do to make extra money.

And if I rented that point where I was like, Hey, I really needto make a couple hundred extra bucks or something. There's waiting tables. Youknow, people are hiring all over the place you go work at McDonald's it doesn'tmatter. So if you were one of those people who is afraid to get your handsdirty in your, so to say personal time, you, there's nothing else to say toyou, but stop and get your head out of your butt and get going because you needto make that cash.

And it's just ridiculous for people. I choose to sit on thecouch and watch Netflix whenever they need a second job. So there's my rantthat said Daniel, any comments? Any disagreeances?

[00:20:20] Daniel: Well, yeah. If you're struggling toget by with your current job, pretty sure. Like, I think when it comes to.Budgets, there are really two aspects and it's either controlling your expensesso that your expenses go down, which I think is what a lot of people think ofwhen you think about a budget. And that's pretty important because I thinkthere are things in nearly all of our lives that we could reduce expense on a.

You know, w we, we could do without. Right. And that's easierbecause tomorrow you could say, all right, I'm spending $150 a week on eatingout and getting drinks, and you could stop doing that tomorrow and basicallyget that money back in your budget. So I think that's why there's a lot offocus on it, but I agree that it is also important to focus on The income,cause that's the other aspect of your budget. If you increase your income, thenyour, you can increase your budget and you can save more and spend more and allthat sort of stuff. And there are situations where tomorrow you could probablypick up a side gig, but it sort of just depends on where you're at.

Like for me, that makes zero sense to do right now because Ihave a wife and kid and my income is good and there's, there's no excuse. tonot be able to balance a budget based on the income that I have. So picking upa side hustle would just be enabling bad spending habits and reducing time withmy family.

So I think it just depends on where you're at and what, whatyour situation looks like.

[00:21:55] Andrew: Well, absolutely. And you've, you'vegot a newborn and you've got a wife and what's important about Daniel'ssituation compared to mine is he's in the two income household. That goesreally far on a lot of expenses. So you, maybe you are in a two-incomehousehold. That's great. You might not need to do as much. Site effort to makeends meet or to increase your net income net worth spend time with those peopleyou love, because that is worthwhile. like.

in the end, we're not here to make money. We are here to liveand money just helps enable us to live a little bit better, a little bit moresmoothly, and it's important, but it is.

What we're here for, but that said, if you, if you're single ormaybe you do have two incomes, but uh, it's still not cutting it. You, yougotta pull those blinders off and get your hands dirty. So,

[00:22:45] Andrew: Okay. Since we don't have story time,Daniel, let me ask you what you do with your budget. And if there's anythinginteresting when you're budgeting that you think is kind of fun to share.

[00:22:55] Daniel: Yeah. I don't know if it's, if it'sfun to share, but I do think something that Hillary and I do with our budgetthat is important. Again, maybe it's not where everybody is at, but I wouldencourage you to consider this, especially if you're listening in you're inAmerica, because of how wealthy we are here as a country.

You may not feel that personally and maybe that doesn't applyto you personally, but It probably does. so something that Hillary and Idefinitely devote resources to on a monthly basis is giving, given to, toothers and to causes and things like that. And I'm, don't want to go into likecrazy specifics or really make it about me because that sort of removes some ofthe point of that.

But I, again, That if you're setting down a budget, if you'relooking at what expenses are it's, it's worth trying to see where you couldsacrifice a little bit for the benefit of others. That might be less fortunate.And again, it depends on the situation and the scenario that you're in. But forus, that's something that's been really meaningful, really worthwhile.

And if you're not completely. Altruistic. I mean, there, thereis tax benefit to it as well. So I'll throw that out there. Hopefully that'snot the reason why it's happening, but if you're if you are giving I would sayalso keep that in mind because you know, it lets you maybe give a little bitmore if you're, if you're taking care of what you need to on the taxes side ofthings.

So that's something, I, I just think that a lot of people at.And the walk of life that we're in could benefit from and think about a littlebit more. And that's my, my plug or my, maybe that's my challenge. That's kindof the challenge for the week is thinking about ways that you can be a littlebit more generous with some of your resources, whether it's a regular monthlything, or just being willing to do the deal where you, you know, you pay itforward and line at the coffee shop.

Like you just tell them, Hey, get the person's order. That'sbehind you. You know, you cheers and walk away and it makes that person's day alittle bit better.

[00:24:54] Andrew: No, absolutely. But it feels good. Andit's something I'm terrible at honestly, but I'm with you. It feels good.

[00:25:00] Daniel: Yeah. How about you, Andrew?

[00:25:01] Andrew: Well, Since you got to throw achallenge out, we're going to double dip on the challenges. Cause mine willalso be my sort of challenge . That's something that I think is pretty cool andit definitely didn't make it into the book. So, uh, exclusive content on thepodcast, baby. if you're on social media, you've probably seen an ad for thisapp called true bill and I've seen it over and over again.

And I. I'm like everybody else, if someone's trying to sell mesomething, my first reaction is no, you can't trick me into getting that thingthat you want me to get, because I am an independent human and I will not fallfor your sales, many shenanigans. It's basically a backfire effect where wehate it.

When people sell stuff to a site caveat there. And as far as Iknow, true bill, isn't doing anything for a podcast. So this is purely,Andrew's really dig this thing. So I got the app and plugged it into my bankaccount who knows maybe one day they're going to steal all my money.

And that would be a unfortunate, but it's. And why I think thisis so cool and so important for a lot of people, listening is budgeting andfiguring out where your money goes is really kind of difficult. Like it takestime and effort and a lot of dedication to tracking. And if you go look atPearson's law, where, what is measured grows and what is measured and recorded.

Grows exponentially that specifically applies to money. So ifyou are measuring where your money is going, when it's coming in, what you'respending it on and you're tracking that kind of thing, it's really important.That's really how you get your finances under control. This app does it foryou. It tells you, Hey, here's all the information daily.

Here's all the information we. And it kind of goes through andbe like, Hey, you spent this much money. You were over your limit on not evenlimit. It's just like, Hey, you spend a bunch of money. So I'll get alertsperiodically. It's like, Hey, we saw a weirdly large transaction was what doyou do? And usually it's something justified, but uh, it just depends.

So it's kind of cool. Personally, I'm really bad at trackingwhat I'm doing with my money. And so Amazon and I, you know, it's Christmasevery week. One of the coolest things about this app has been, it's like, Hey,into the month, it's like, Hey Andrew, you spent a lot of money on Amazon andit keeps me conscientious of what I'm doing because those little purchases tome, they don't really track in my head if something's under $20, I'm just like,oh great.

I want this thing. And I have a really bad habit of clickingthe buy now button. And

[00:27:20] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:27:20] Andrew: I move on especially digital products.I buy books and audio books all the time. And I don't even think about itbecause I love that kind of stuff. For instance, this came a couple of weeksago. I got my, it was not even a monthly, it was like a weekly thing.

And it was like, Hey, you spent $800 on Amazon. Like, it wasn'texactly judgmental. But to me, myself, I was like, dang the hell am I doing? Ineed to, I need to chill out on Amazon. And I think it was partly, I boughtsome stuff for the house. There's a couple of birthdays that came through,like. Atypical, but still, I didn't realize I'd spent $800 in a week on Amazon.

That's insane. So these birthday parties need to chill. Like Idon't need to be getting that kind of stuff. And I really do think it wasactually, there was a mix of weddings that I'd sent gifts off to. Cause I'm notattending the wedding. There was some birthday parties, you know, all kinds ofstuff, but still something to be conscientious of because before true billwould have said, Hey, you spend 800 bucks.

Someone asked me like, Hey, what did you do with your moneythis week? Are there, I have no idea. You know, went out and got some coffee,went out to eat, you know, probably didn't do too much. Might've spent ahundred bucks a week and that was way off. And that's almost every week. Like Ihave no idea, so true bill really handy for that.

So I highly recommend getting the app, plugging it in. And evenif you're not budgeting, even if you're not doing anything, like we haverecord. This is a great way to just at least know what's happening with yourmoney. And maybe that will inspire you to make better decisions or tell youyou're really good.

And lets you loosen up a little bit and buy somebody ice creamor something.

[00:28:52] Andrew: To everybody listening. Thank you somuch for listening to our podcasts. We have been having a blast doing this, andwe really hope this was informational for you and helps push in the rightdirector. Money is a, it's a tough subject.

we're definitely not professionals. If this is something youreally think you're struggling with or really want help on go find a financialadvisor, go find a friend who's doing really well. Maybe talk to your parents.You never know where you can get good advice, but this is something thataffects all of us and we really should take it more seriously than most of usdo.

hope you guys enjoyedthis, maybe a little bit more dry episode Have a great day and we look forwardto connecting with you soon.

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