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Navigating Financial Hardship with Guests Centsai Financial {Episode 70}
87 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we share our conversation with Dan & Kay of Centsai Financial. They guide us through short and long term financial advice. This topic is relevant for both dificult times of financial hardship, and normal everyday times. We love their advice on avoiding making financial decisions based on external conditions or internal fears/anxiety.
Mentioned in this episode:
Centsai Financial on Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction & Goals
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Episode 70 of Outnumbered the Podcast. We're excited for today's episode because we get to share our conversation with Dan and Kay of Sensei Financial. In this particularly shaky time of ours that we're in, finances can be
00:00:17
Speaker
a very big concern. And so we reached out to ask Dan and Kay to help discuss this conversation with us. And they shared such helpful information that we are just delighted to be able to share this conversation with you.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Origin of Sensei Financial
00:01:02
Speaker
All right, so Dan and Kay, we are so excited to have you with us. And I'm going to ask, I'm gonna try to pronounce, make sure I pronounce this correctly, so I'm not saying it wrong the whole episode. Are we seeing Sensei Financial? Woo hoo, yes. Might be the first person in the history of the world to say it right, first time, that's impressive. Totally get it, I get it. Come on.
00:01:26
Speaker
When I was a little kid, I was in karate. And so, you know, that's your sensei is your instructor. And so that's what pops to my mind. So that's like, are there comparisons between sensei and sensei?
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, that was totally what we were going for, the plan words. So since it's financial teacher, then it was sent, sensei. So we're trying to be clever, but sometimes it just goes right over people's heads most of the time. Since choosing business name has not been our forte, but luckily on the other side, we teach some good stuff so people can give us help later on. All right, very awesome.
Importance of Financial Discussions
00:02:08
Speaker
So we are delighted to have you with us today. And we can't wait to learn more about you and your business and for you to share it with our audience too, especially at a time right now when finances are pretty important in what's going on in the world.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much for having us. We're really excited to be talking about it, especially now. You know, finances are always an important subject, especially in family and parenting. But right now, it's kind of put a magnifying glass on everything that we've all been doing. And it's kind of the reckonings kind of come in if we haven't been doing the right things. And if we have, we could be in a good spot and prepare to take advantage of the opportunities of becoming the future.
00:02:50
Speaker
Oh, I love that, the magnifying glass. Yeah, maybe that's why so many of us are uncomfortable. Gotta change some things. Okay, so we usually start off our guest episodes by asking our guests to share a little bit of a humor segment or poignant parenting moment for
Parenting Anecdote
00:03:05
Speaker
us. Do you guys have something you can share with us?
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, I have the Michaela said I have to share this because it may only be funny to us but we have an 18 month old daughter named Lucy and she is kind of in that talking copycat stage and anyone who's a parent knows has had an 18 month old knows exactly what that's like. But we're trying to establish routines and habits for her because we've noticed that helps her do better kind of day to day and
00:03:34
Speaker
So right after we prepare to go to bed, we start to clean up and we have a cleanup song. And this is the first time that we're signing on a podcast. The cleanup song, clean up, clean up, everybody, do you share? So after a couple nights of this, we said, okay, let's go clean up. And then Lucy goes, he, ho, he, ho, he, ho. And we're like, I don't know how this connects to the seven dwarves. I just, you know,
00:03:58
Speaker
I like kind of the hi-ho, hi-ho. So we go marching off he-ho, he-ho to our bedroom every night to go clean a room. And it's, you know, if anybody had a camera in our house, I'm sure it would look pretty comical, but we've just been laughing at ourselves as we he-ho and clean up for 10 minutes every night.
00:04:17
Speaker
That's so cute. And she's probably going to, in her mind, develop her own lyrics. And then as a mom, she'll go to sing and they'll be like, what are you singing? Well, this is what we sing in my house. That's totally true. To find out at age 10 that Ella Meno is four letters novel. That's pretty awesome.
Life in Provo & Community
00:04:36
Speaker
So you have Lucy and she's 18 months old. Tell us about the rest of your family.
00:04:41
Speaker
Well, that's basically our family. So it's just Dan and I and our 18 month old right now. And so we're in the new phase of life. We've been married about three years and we're based in Provo, Utah and loving all the weather lately and being outdoors and
00:05:00
Speaker
just taken on life. It's been really great. Yeah, we join the outdoors on our 10 walks a day to stay sane. It has been nice to be surrounded by such beautiful scenery and warming up. We were just talking before the podcast started about how Utah is really growing and
00:05:20
Speaker
We're excited to be kind of part of the community here and taking part in all the entrepreneurial activities that are going on. We're both avid readers. We both read a lot and enjoy the outdoors. That's pretty much what we spend most of our time doing when we're not talking to people about how to make their money lives better.
00:05:36
Speaker
Sounds pretty great to me. Reading is my favorite way to spend an afternoon for sure. And you guys are definitely heading into some great weather in Utah. Like we were talking before, I spent some time in Utah for school, and spring in Utah is gorgeous. So I am envious because our spring just ended. I know. I know. I'll just have hot forever. Yes.
Financial Guidance Approach
00:05:58
Speaker
Okay, so obviously you guys talk about finances. So we want to hear just some basic level stuff, what you do. You talk to two couples, parents, right? Other families about the how-to of their finances. Share some more about this with us. How did you guys start? What's the passion behind this? And how do you help others?
00:06:18
Speaker
Oh man, that's like so many questions in one. Let's see. I guess we'll start with kind of the how-to and why we decided to do it in a how-to format. And part of that comes from our journey, which I'll let Dan share that part. But another part, once we figured out our journey part, we sent out a survey to couples all over the world.
00:06:43
Speaker
nation, I guess. Not world. We're not that big. But just asking, what is your number one question in personal finance? And that was the only question in the survey. We didn't try to prompt anything. And almost every single question we got back was something about how. That they like, we know that we're supposed to budget. We know that we need to get out of debt. We know we need to live within our means. We know we need to invest while we're young. We've heard all of these things a billion times.
00:07:10
Speaker
But how do we actually do that? And especially because personal finance is so behavioral, it's really hard to just when you're grasping at strings to figure out all that nitty gritty. So that's really what we've geared our whole course to right now. It's an online course self-paced that couples can take on their own time and learn how to answer all of those questions.
Personal Finance Journey
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, and our journey was kind of sponsored by Coca-Cola. Our journey was started by kind of going down a similar path of how do we do these things, especially in starting on our family. And then we kind of realized we started providing more people and realized, hey, you know, just because we get older doesn't mean we automatically figure this out. And we often put in kind of makeshift band-aids or makeshift systems that
00:08:06
Speaker
do well enough, but don't really allow us to thrive in our personal finances and allow us to really progress in and do it together. There's always kind of something in the back of our mind when it comes to money that we feel uncomfortable about.
00:08:20
Speaker
And the thing for us that we felt uncomfortable about was $20,000 of debt that I had accumulated in a very short period of time and was on track to double that amount of debt every six months. And we had been taught our whole lives to keep a budget, like Michaela said, to live within our means.
00:08:42
Speaker
But we didn't have any tools that a lot showed us how to do that. There's nobody we're accountable to for our money. That's why all of us make sometimes some time financial decisions.
00:08:53
Speaker
And so how we did that, we had to go figure out on our own. And there is so much information on Money Online and so many books, it was really difficult to get a clear, concise, step-by-step program that would answer every single one of our questions. And so we didn't go out and actually said, hey, let's teach people about money. We just started answering our own questions, developed a program, started sharing it with our friends, and it kind of just went from there.
00:09:19
Speaker
Wow, there's so much good stuff here. Yeah, so yeah, I love what you said about, you know, you don't you don't necessarily know how to manage money as you as you get older, like I have
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, I read a lot in the news about how so many older people are just kind of struggling financially. And that's, you know, that's kind of heartbreaking to think about, you know, our grandparents' generation, our parents' generation struggling financially.
Customizing Financial Programs
00:09:49
Speaker
And, you know, we look at that and we're like, well, man, I don't want to be in that position when I'm, I'm, you know, that age, but how, right? Again, the big question, how, how do we get there? How do we do that?
00:10:01
Speaker
So that's, yeah, that's really, really neat to say that. And then again, like I have a question. So it seems like,
00:10:09
Speaker
like you said, money and finances are such a personal thing. So how could you develop a program that would like answer everybody's individual? How is there really enough commonality that you guys like pitch pitch a program to us tell us how one program can can help so many people with so many different individual financial
00:10:31
Speaker
pictures or profiles. Yeah. Such a good question. And, and honestly, I think that's why there's such a lack of how to information because nobody wants to say this is the way to do it because there's so many ways. And so our, our kind of philosophy has not been, this is the only way and it's no, every single person needs to do this. And if you do anything else, you're going to end up on the streets or whatever. There are multiple ways, but
00:11:01
Speaker
But what we found is to show a way helps people because it's just like if you're learning anything. If you don't have any example, most information just goes right over your head. So having someone sit down and say, these are the budgeting categories. These are some things that maybe you haven't thought about and how to tweak those things to your lifestyle. Or another thing that we teach is
00:11:26
Speaker
what we call the financial roadmap, which is basically the order of steps of when should I invest? A lot of financial questions or financial trade-offs would be better for me to invest my money or buy a house. Would it be better for me to save money in a bank account for an emergency? Or would it be better to buy a bunch of food for this economic crisis? Whatever.
00:11:50
Speaker
There are lots of trade-off questions. And so what we've done is put those in a roadmap and then helped by giving some customizable steps to insert into that
Financial Frameworks Advice
00:12:02
Speaker
roadmap. So obviously, when you decide to have kids, it's going to be different for other people. So that would be a customizable step or going to school, going to get a master's degree or
00:12:13
Speaker
other further education might be a customizable step. So we definitely give them the framework and then we show them what other things you can insert into that plan to make it more personal for you.
00:12:26
Speaker
It's really well said. Yeah, I think basically what we do, and like Mikael said, there are so many ways. I mean, I heard a quote recently that's really stuck with me. Eventually, all advice cancels itself out. So there's going to be somebody who tells you to do one thing, and there's going to be somebody who tells you the exact opposite thing. It's just how the world works. And there's going to be examples of success on both sides of that coin.
00:12:49
Speaker
But we do know that this is a way that works. And what we found is most people don't even have a clear path in that in and of itself. And so having a framework that you can then adjust and have the tools to know how to adjust at your individual position is how we've structured our program to really be the most effective and then also allow you the freedom and the customizability you need based on your situation because we can't and we don't know everything that you're facing in your life.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, I love that, the customizable aspect of it. And I think sometimes, well, probably most times the biggest struggle in fixing finances or really any aspect of our life is just the starting, right? So you're giving people these tools to just get started and maybe six months down the road, they'll go, okay, I love this aspect and this aspect, but I'm going to tweak this part because I don't really like this. And so I'm going to do that a little bit differently. I was just thinking about that in
00:13:48
Speaker
like how we teach ourselves to eat healthy, right? You know, like most of us go to college and then we eat a bunch of garbage and then we feel like garbage. And then we're like, oh, there was something to those vegetables my mom forced me to eat. So we tweak it a little bit and then we realized, okay, well, I actually don't do so well with a lot of dairy or I do better with more this or that, whatever. So I love that aspect of
00:14:11
Speaker
of approaching finances that no one can tell you exactly how to do it best for you, but you have to get started, get a little advice and then run with it and see where you need to make tweaks in the future.
00:14:22
Speaker
Absolutely. There's, I mean, just kind of like, I do believe that there's a point where everyone needs, you know, needs God in their lives. There's, there's a point there that comes in everyone's life where they need financial direction and they need financial structure. And I don't think those are two are the exact same thing, but, but you know, eventually we all need some help, even if we feel like we're doing okay now. And
00:14:43
Speaker
you know that a good question also i think to ask is what what do i not know right now that i should know that if i did not would would really change or improve my situation in a positive way yeah and to that sometimes you don't know what you don't know like that is half the battle i think and that's when
00:15:02
Speaker
Books or courses or things like that really help because it opens your mind to you i've never been taught this i've never thought of it this way and we've had some people who have you know tried. Ten different budgeting things and i think it's just not for me and i throw it out the window and then i take a course they like.
00:15:19
Speaker
Wow, there were just these tiny little tweaks. We were so close, but we didn't know that those were the tweaks we needed. Now, this is so much easier and we love it so much more. I do think sometimes just getting out there and learning helps you to even decide what tweaks you need to make.
00:15:40
Speaker
that, and you guys are examples of this, I mean, even starting this podcast, like, you know, you come together in your amazing sewing community, and I'm sure there's so many examples of what we're talking about, even in sewing, of just like, hey, here's how you can do this in an easier way, or whatever that may be. I'm definitely not a sewing expert, so I should stop talking about it.
00:16:01
Speaker
It helps to have that community around you and people that are, we're all trying to figure this out together and having something that helps take you a couple steps ahead is always going to put you in a better position. Yeah, that is so true.
Practical Financial Stability Tips
00:16:20
Speaker
So let's narrow down the focus to short term, to right now, at this time that we're in right now.
00:16:28
Speaker
It's kind of an economically difficult time for a lot of people. And so people are struggling and needing financial advice, maybe more than ever. So can you help us out? What are some specifics that we can apply right now to help us get through this time? So let's talk the short term. We don't know how long this is going to last, but what can we do right now? Good question.
00:16:56
Speaker
Number one thing I would say is definitely stockpiling cash, which sounds kind of like hoarding under the bed, which we're not saying that, but just really trying not to overspend and
00:17:13
Speaker
having that six-month emergency fund or if you don't have that in the bank working towards building that, that will give you so much peace of mind just knowing that you're not going to have to take out of your investments. You're not going to have to make any rash decisions. You are going to be okay at least for a time. And then also if you have already lost your job or if you think you might be losing a job,
00:17:40
Speaker
having that emergency fund for sure will help. And then just tweaking your budget a little bit, which nobody likes this part of budgeting. Even us, we are normally actually big advocates of talking about how budgeting doesn't have to be this
00:17:54
Speaker
you know, really tight rice and beans approach, but you can budget and live a really nice lifestyle on a budget. But in this scenario, it may be more of a go back to that bare bones approach and really understanding what needs are. It's really comes down to shelter, transportation, food, and
00:18:16
Speaker
Let's see the last one. Self care. Yeah. So I think those things are just like really when you come down to what matters, it's a lot more simple than all these other things. And in some ways, it's really nice because we're maybe not driving as much or we're not going out to eat as much or we're not going to the movies. So you may already be spending less because of the nature of the situation, but being really intentional about that and setting
00:18:44
Speaker
your budget if you do need to go down to more of that bare budget approach? Yeah, we don't know. I really wish we could just say, hey, we're going to turn the economy back on tomorrow and everything's just going to go back to normal. And that's not what's going to happen. And I think eventually things will get back to a better place, even better than where they were before. But how long that's going to take and what that's going to look like, nobody can really predict or tell you.
00:19:11
Speaker
And so being prepared for the uncertainty of it, stockpiling cash, making sure you have that six month emergency fund, holding off on like really, really life changing decisions unless you have a really strong financial foundation like buying a home and things like that until we work on.
00:19:29
Speaker
It's more solid footing as a country, I think is a really wise approach. And understanding where every dollar is going. Now is the time if you haven't been budgeting or used to budget, you kind of have slacked off or whatever that may be.
00:19:45
Speaker
Now is the time to get something back in place, especially as you come out of this. It doesn't mean tracking every receipt, it doesn't mean using a spreadsheet. There's tons of free online tools like mid.com that you can go in and track all of your spending that has bank rate security and that's going to allow you to really know exactly what's happening so you can be in complete control. In a time where it feels like so much is out of our control, something really smart to be in control of is your money.
00:20:13
Speaker
I love that advice. I think, so this is a little background of me. I am a budgeting failure in past years as well, but I have made a lot of progress in recent times. And so I can definitely identify with that fear of, I just don't know how to do it. I do it wrong. And I don't like the restriction, that sort of thing. But like you say, in a time when we can't control a lot, one thing we can control is our spending. We really can. There might be some fixed expenses that we can't really do much about like a mortgage or
00:20:41
Speaker
or whatever, but you can get really creative. And if you haven't needed a budget before now, this is a great chance to hop on, right? And decide, okay, it's time to really look at our finances. And I have loved seeing that we're not spending as much as like, oh, look at this.
00:20:58
Speaker
This was on accident. But at the same time, I worry about the movies opening back up and then still being worried about job security, but still having more opportunity to spend. That frightens me a little bit, both for me and for others, because we're going to have to be a little bit cautious. So I love that advice.
00:21:16
Speaker
Okay, so moving on, we're gonna switch it a little bit now and just ask about looking into the future. So let's say we're three, four, five years down the road. What can we do now to make sure that this doesn't ruin us for the future, for the long haul?
00:21:30
Speaker
Yeah. I think the biggest thing is, and we kind of mentioned it in the short term decisions, but making rash decisions now will definitely hurt you. I'm here. It's like, even if right now you spend a lot or you, your budget, you know, isn't perfect that you can recover from more, even a job loss, you know, for a few months you could recover from, but if you take all your money out of your investments or you buy a house when you're not prepared,
00:21:56
Speaker
to buy a house and you just see these low interest rates and see that you could just throw all your money into a down payment real quick. Those things in four or five years, you'll be like, dang it, why should I do that? So I think just trying to keep our heads on and have a plan as much as we can because I know it's a very emotional time and it's easy to get
00:22:20
Speaker
scared and want to do something about it. But if we can limit those things, that is really going to help us long-term. Yeah, I think it's a great question because we are going to come out of this. Three, four, five years, we are going to be out of this. Where you're at then is going to be impacted by the decisions you make today.
00:22:43
Speaker
We're not saying don't go buy a home. We're not saying don't go invest right now. What we are saying is if you weren't prepared to do those things before this happened, or you weren't in a good financial spot before this happened, it probably means you're not in a good spot to do it now.
00:22:59
Speaker
It's really easy to start feeling the high flow. Everything's on sale. The economy is taking house prices are going super low. And if you are in a financial position to buy a house, great, take advantage of that. Or if you are in a position to take advantage of those low stock prices, awesome. But if you still have a bunch of consumer debt and you don't have a six month emergency fund,
00:23:22
Speaker
In our opinion, you're not yet ready to do those things. And you should wait and you should create yourself a position before you do those things. And so just being wise and don't be rash and securing today so you could build tomorrow is the right course of action at this time.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yeah. And we like to say this quote that we don't make financial decisions based on external circumstances. And I feel like that definitely applies today in that way of like, that doesn't mean you just go crazy because if you're
00:23:57
Speaker
making decisions based on what's going on around you or what the Jones are doing or whatever, any of those things, it gets really hard to stick with your plans. So just knowing, okay, I may have to make some adjustments, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to throw everything out the window and do something that will really hurt me for five years down the road. Yeah. And with that quote, you know, take advantage of you prepared.
00:24:23
Speaker
And those external circumstances are in your favor, go ahead, but don't react, be proactive. Yeah, I love that. And also it sounds like what you're saying is don't make financial decisions out of fear, right? Or out of anxiety. If you had prepared ahead of time and that was your plan anyway, go for it. And if not, then stick the course, right? Be cautious and we'll come out of this. That's great. I love that advice.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah. So it sounds like your advice is don't make this financial decisions based on external advice or events and then don't make financial decisions based on internal anxiety and fears and retail therapy, right? I love retail therapy.
00:25:11
Speaker
But then, so then you guys are saying what your program is, it's kind of like a formula on how to, you know, just make smart financial decisions. Is that correct?
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's essentially what we teach is here's how to prepare for when things in the world go south so that you can take advantage of the opportunities that come out of that. And I think this is so interesting to me because you see this all the time whenever we have a recession or a crash or a mini crash or a correction, everyone's like, oh my gosh, now's the time to jump in. And you start to feel this anxiety, like am I missing out on something?
00:25:50
Speaker
And you don't need to feel that. If you've prepared during the good times, when those times happen, you'll know exactly what to do to take advantage of them instead of scrambling to put money into the stock market or buy a rental property or whatever that thing may be that now seems like all of a sudden a good opportunity.
00:26:06
Speaker
Happened in meeting that money six months later. Yes. And it didn't go as planned. And so having the whole plan in the forefront before those things happen is really the key to situations. And if you're sitting in the middle of COVID going, man, I'm not in the financial position. I wish that I was. Now is the time to put yourself in that situation. So when the next thing happens, and hopefully it's not a worldwide pandemic, you'll be ready to take advantage of it.
Lessons from Financial Crises
00:26:36
Speaker
Okay, that is such good advice and that's the direction we want to head next. So you guys are parents now 18 months into this journey and we're wondering what are you doing to prepare your little girl and how should we be preparing our children for future financial crises in their lives?
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah. I won't pretend that I know everything about parenting being 18 months experienced, but what I do know is I still remember how my parents responded to crises when I was growing up. And I remember my father being laid off after 9-11. I remember us moving to Texas and him being laid off again after a job circumstance wasn't what he quite expected.
00:27:22
Speaker
I'll never forget sitting in a car and him explaining to me, I'm 12 years old. Hey, I've just lost my job again. We've just made this move. It was traumatic for me. But him looking me in the eye and saying, but we have an emergency fund.
00:27:38
Speaker
That was really kind of the only conversation we had about it and he eventually got another job. We were fine. They're fine. But I remember the peace even that instilled in me as as a 12 year old knowing that my parents had prepared. Some of you maybe who may not be as prepared right now who feel that fear. One of the right things to do is to acknowledge it because
00:28:00
Speaker
the greatest thing that your children are going to feel and experience are your example and the atmosphere that was in the home. And if it is one of fear, it's okay to acknowledge that and it's okay to say we weren't prepared. And it's also then okay to say, okay, what are we going to do about it? So your children can also see the example of
00:28:18
Speaker
you working out of that situation and being proactive and not succumbing to the fear. And so that they know that when the crises come in their lives, and they will, they know what to do about it. And they know that the best thing is to be prepared before it happens. And so I think Michaela probably has a thing or two to add to that. But how you act in your example now is the thing that will stick with them in their future life crises.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much I can add, except probably I'll just end up repeating half the things. But I definitely think how we were raised with money affects us today. And so that will be the same with our kids. So we say the term we use in our course, we talk about our financial past is present.
00:29:04
Speaker
and basically just talking about how Dan and I came from very different backgrounds and we're now coming together and how we were raised this money affects how we come into the marriage and just being on the same page as a couple will already do wonders to create that financial
00:29:25
Speaker
environment for your kids. And then depending on the age, you can share more conversations or we're definitely going to help our daughter hopefully learn, you know, how to give and how we should be spending our money and that it's not, not always like scrimp and save, but also if you really want something, how we need to work for it. And, you know, there's definitely tons of stuff I'm sure we could go on forever that would help with repairing our kids for
00:29:53
Speaker
money in general, not just for a crisis, but especially in time of crisis. But I would say start with getting on the same page and that will be huge for regardless of whatever age your kid is. That's a really good point, Michaela. I think just having that emotional connection with your partner or spouse so that you're at least on the same page, even if the situation doesn't look good, we'll provide a lot of stability.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely true. I think in every marriage, the two financial backgrounds that you bring in are completely different and need to be reconciled. And that's probably what can be said about a lot of different things about marriage. And then the future of parenting, you have to decide
00:30:38
Speaker
reconcile them and decide which one you're going to use or take hopefully the best of both and move forward and then yeah yeah so that's that's true of lots of parts of parenting but it's especially good to hear you guys say that about the financial part of parenting as well.
00:30:56
Speaker
I loved how you mentioned just being open with your children. I love that example of talking to your dad. I think that many of us, in generations past, it's probably a lot more common to just have the adult things, the adult like and the child, you know, like the, oh, the finances, that's not a child's matter. We don't share that with the children. And I think that things are changing and parents are being a little bit
00:31:20
Speaker
more open and vulnerable with their kids, which I think is so powerful in the financial aspect because hiding the finances and pretending like everything's all hunky-dory when it's not is probably the worst thing we can do for our children because they never ever see us struggle and they never see us make conscious decisions because something came out of nowhere, right? So I love that your dad sat down and said, hey, yeah, times are tough. This is scary. I lost my job, but you know what? It's going to be okay. And this is why.
00:31:46
Speaker
We prepared, et cetera, et cetera. Otherwise, you might have had your own anxiety you were dealing with and never got resolved or never knew exactly how they had prepared. And that would have sent you off into the world without any ideas for preparation of your own. So I just love that, being open.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good point.
Teaching Children About Money
00:32:05
Speaker
And it's, like you said, it's true. Sometimes we feel like we may not need to talk to our children about money. And our daughter is not at the age that we would necessarily sit down and say, well, it's a teacher about here's how much money we have in the bank account. But just having that atmosphere. And, you know, if you don't feel like you can talk to your children about it, or you don't know necessarily how to go, a good conversation is just to talk to each other and say, Hey, what do we feel comfortable talking to our kids about? And what are certain parts of our financial side?
00:32:29
Speaker
would be important for them to know or understand or what principles should we teach them. And if you don't feel comfortable and you know that might be a good sign that you need to go get some help or some education to feel that confidence. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's a really good point to recognize when you yourself need more education. That's pretty good indicator. Yeah.
00:32:56
Speaker
Okay, so we are almost done with our time together, but I had one final question i'm not throughout you guys you guys ready. Okay, so for all of our listeners who are out there going yes, yes, yes, this sounds so good, I know I need to make changes, I know I need to fix things, especially now that we've gone through this coven.
00:33:12
Speaker
Disaster, I'm kind of freaking out. If you could give them one takeaway, one step to do today, if they feel completely overwhelmed and scared, what would it be? Would it be addressing debt or savings or budgeting or what's one thing that they could get them headed in the right direction?
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was a good question. And basically the question, if I understand it, is kind of like the one thing that if they had to just do one thing after this, what would that be? Right.
Partner Financial Conversations
00:33:39
Speaker
Again, kind of talked about people's different circumstances. And I'll let Michaela say what her, what she thinks it is as well, because typically her answer is better than mine. Whatever. Hey, I'm looking to stay married for a long time. You're on the right track.
00:33:56
Speaker
I would say first, if you have not done this already, is have a really sincere conversation with your partner about the situation you're facing.
00:34:08
Speaker
And sometimes there's kind of just this understanding that, hey, we're in the situation, we don't have income or we don't know what the future holds, but really kind of schedule some time away from the kids, go on a walk, go on a drive, whatever that may be, where you can just really talk it and express emotion, no judgment. You don't have to have a solution, write that instant and just express what you're feeling and then talk about what you think might be the next step.
00:34:36
Speaker
Sometimes after that conversation, you may feel even a little bit more anxious or you may feel like you may start to recognize you don't have answers and you've been kind of suppressing those feelings. And so the next step after that is to understand what's happening with your money and to budget after you have that conversation and just start tracking your money. Again, mint.com is a great resource to do that and do it together. And that would probably be the first two things that I would recommend.
00:35:05
Speaker
I just wanna say, are you saying mint, M-I-N-T dot com? Yes, that is correct. Okay, we'll link that one in the show notes too.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, well, we're pretty unified because I was going to say basically the same thing, but a little more summarized. But I would say get on the same page because if you're trying to do this alone, it will come back to bite you. It's just not worth it. So that's the very first thing. And then I was going to say track, start tracking your money because the feeling of just sitting down to create a budget if you've never tracked feels so overwhelming.
00:35:42
Speaker
just by tracking. If you haven't even created a budget or any categories, just by doing that, you're going to start wanting to budget because you're going to be like, holy cow, I'm spending how much on that? And it'll start just bringing that awareness. So get on the same page, track. So I guess a two part to the, what's the first thing you should do, but that's all we'd say. Okay. So just to clarify, by track, you mean just like writing down everything you spend?
00:36:06
Speaker
Yep. And the mint.com will actually track it for you so that you hook your bank accounts up and your credit cards and you can input cash transactions and essentially it will track every transaction for you. And you can put them into categories and it's just easier than having to write them all down. Gotcha. Well, so you're gathering information and then what you're going to do with that information is like step three. Yes, exactly.
00:36:33
Speaker
Okay. That's awesome advice. I love that. And I would have never thought that getting on the same page with my spouse would be step number one, but that makes a lot of sense. You can't both come at it from two different directions, right? You got to be unified. So I love that. Yeah. I mean, typically if you don't have that conversation, one of you is thinking about where you're going to vacation next year and the other one's like, how are we paying for groceries next month?
00:36:57
Speaker
Okay, so get us started on step three.
Resources & Community Support
00:37:00
Speaker
After we do one and two, tell our listeners where they find you guys on the internet.
00:37:06
Speaker
Step three, take the course. Yeah, so our website is sunsafefinancial.com, so C-E-N-T-S-E-I, financial. And we have our main course, which will be everything that we just talked about here. We'll talk about how to get on the same page and how to budget, what bank accounts to use, how to travel, which may not be relevant right now, but you can start dreaming.
00:37:34
Speaker
And we talk about, you know, saving for kids college, just like a ton of stuff. And then our second course is all about investing. So that's what we have. And then also if you're not ready to make the jump into the course yet, we have our Instagram page, Sunstate Financial, which we share stories of other couples and also lots of tips and tricks and kind of the behind the scenes of our everyday life.
00:38:04
Speaker
And then we also have a weekly financial email that comes out financial Friday. So it's just 5 quick bullet points every Friday that has been really helpful if you're not ready to go dig through a bunch of books and all of that just to get some little snippets to get started. And we'll make sure that all the links to those can be in the show notes.
00:38:26
Speaker
Perfect because our audience is, you know, typically busy moms. So the five bullet points would be so helpful every week. Totally. Yeah. And I don't want to plug our course too much. We did design it with busy people in mind. So the videos are just five to 10 minutes long. They're really digestible. It's built with busy people and busy moms in mind.
00:38:49
Speaker
Okay, I love that because nobody has hours. Well, I don't know. Are lots of people having hours and hours of extra time? I don't right now. I think even if you did, I don't know if people would enjoy it that much. They're like, financial overload. I have three extra hours. What should I do? Just work on my finances. That's not my first inclination.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, and the small bite-sized pieces would make it so that you could gradually work on, especially if you had discomfort with the whole financial conversation, the little bite-sized pieces would just be a little bit, work on it a little bit and then go do something. Yes, very step-by-step, very how-to focused, very clear, consolidated so you don't have to go fish to the information. That's why we built it.
00:39:36
Speaker
And a lot of times we try to do, we have action items at the end of each little piece. So then it's like, okay, five minutes. Now go track. Okay, five minutes. Now go create your budget, whatever. So I think that helps too. Cause then, you know, okay, what's my next step instead of you get, you know,
00:39:54
Speaker
paralyzed decision paralysis of like, what next? So yeah, helpful to like, if you even don't want to do step one and two and need some help along that route, we have a whole list of questions to help you get on the same page with your spouse and walk you through how to track and all that. So if you really want somebody to help you along the way, we got you covered.
00:40:16
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing with us today. It's like you make it feel completely doable. Like this doesn't have to be scary or uncomfortable anymore, but we just, it's just something, you know, like takes the emotion out of it, that side of it, and then also takes out the fear from external things. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing with us today. I can't wait for our audience to hear what you have to share about this. Thanks so much for having us. It's been a pleasure.
00:40:45
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon, and there are three different levels to support us there. Just head to patreon.com slash outnumbered. Next up, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at Outnumbered the Podcast. We're always having fun over there too.
00:41:11
Speaker
As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumberthepodcastatgmail.com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.