Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Buddy? Hello, my friend, how you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm great? So this is a besty episode. Wanted to
Speaker 1: let folks know. So we do this for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One because we are both out of town. Actually,
Speaker 1: we need to share why it is that you're down
Speaker 1: down in Florida. Maybe we'll do that next week, okay.
Speaker 1: But another reason we run Besties as well is because
Speaker 1: we know that there are a lot of new listeners
Speaker 1: out there. And even though you get to learn a
Speaker 1: decent bit about who we are, who I am, Matt's
Speaker 1: and who Joel is sitting here across from me, usually
Speaker 1: little drips and drabs along the way, little anecdotes, little
Speaker 1: examples that we give in the episodes. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I think it was we did we dedicated
Speaker 1: two entire episodes for us basically to tell our story,
Speaker 1: our money story, our financial history, and some of the
Speaker 1: things that helped make us to who we are.
Speaker 2: Well, you also reveal your deepest, darkest secret in the land,
Speaker 2: which I mean everybody could say everybody wants want us
Speaker 2: to know that. I want to make it like clickbaity.
Speaker 2: It's like you won't believe what happened next, Matt did
Speaker 2: these three things right, Well, I wanted to share something
Speaker 2: with you as well. And that Guinness book a world
Speaker 2: record that you said that that's really impressive, Well something
Speaker 2: that actually did happen, and I wanted to You don't
Speaker 2: know about this, but I wanted to share as a
Speaker 2: little note of encouragement.
Speaker 1: A friend of ours I was chatting with him and
Speaker 1: he said him and his wife they were planning to
Speaker 1: buy a newer suv. But then he heard us on
Speaker 1: either side of his on his shoulder, like as his
Speaker 1: financial subconscious two angels right instead of proverbial angel death.
Speaker 1: That's true. So he went and looked up an episode
Speaker 1: where we talked about cars, and guess what he did
Speaker 1: instead of buying a new fancy suv.
Speaker 2: Please tell me he paid cash for a great use.
Speaker 1: He got used an older used suv, saved a ton
Speaker 1: of money. And he was just like, I just want
Speaker 1: to let you guys know, y'all are and this is
Speaker 1: what he said. He said, y'all are doing the Lord's work,
Speaker 1: which not quite We're certainly not saving souls or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but we are trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: you are making wise financial moves and you know what
Speaker 1: I could have saving your money, soul well, I could
Speaker 1: have saved my own money soul well had I heard
Speaker 1: this advice back when I was younger. This is actually
Speaker 1: a part of my story when the Wisest, when it
Speaker 1: came to some of the different vehicles I purchased. But
Speaker 1: you'll get to learn about that right now. Welcome to
Speaker 1: How the Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt.
Speaker 2: Yes he is, and this episode today, all we're talking
Speaker 2: about is Matt. We're covering Matt's money origin story.
Speaker 1: Okay, So my desire to do this episode or not,
Speaker 1: is that a reflection of my own vanity, whether I'm
Speaker 1: willing to talk about myself for anywhere between thirty and
Speaker 1: forty five minutes. Yeah, we'll we'll see how long this goes.
Speaker 1: But no, I am looking forward to this though, because
Speaker 1: like I'm in the hot seat a little bit. Actually,
Speaker 1: I started to perspire a little bit. I feel like
Speaker 1: you've turned the tables, You've turned the microphone on me.
Speaker 1: Even though I do talk into the microphone every week,
Speaker 1: it does feel a little bit different here talk to
Speaker 1: the spotlight specifically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it's I think it's gonna be
Speaker 2: fun and we're gonna we're gonna dive into my money
Speaker 2: origin story next week, and so the tables will be turned.
Speaker 2: I will feel the heat then, issue, But I think
Speaker 2: this is, this is gonna be good. It's, you know,
Speaker 2: still the beginning of a new year, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of How To Money listeners who know quite
Speaker 2: a lot about you and I. At this point, we
Speaker 2: divulge a fair amount of information about how we live
Speaker 2: our own lives and how we handle our personal finances
Speaker 2: on the show, but we've never really done a deep
Speaker 2: dive into either of our money origin stories. And anybody
Speaker 2: who's been listening, some people from back in the day episode,
Speaker 2: you know, the single digit episodes, they they will find
Speaker 2: some of these things familiar, but they will also unearthed
Speaker 2: new territory about the man, the myth, the legend how
Speaker 2: to Money.
Speaker 1: Matt. Yeah, we're gonna weave it all together because I
Speaker 1: do think that, Yeah, if you've been listening for years now,
Speaker 1: you probably have maybe a loose understanding of my past
Speaker 1: of yours as well, because we you know, we sprinkle
Speaker 1: in little bits of our history into every single episode.
Speaker 1: We try to find ways where it relates to our listeners.
Speaker 1: But this will be fun to kind of pie it
Speaker 1: all together and for folks to have a clear understanding.
Speaker 1: This will be a kind of a more conversational episode
Speaker 1: as opposed to one where we're diving into specific topics
Speaker 1: or teaching something. Yeah, this is maybe truly what it's
Speaker 1: actually like if you're having a beer with us. So
Speaker 1: we kick back. But dude, Okay, before we launched into this, though,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with you, Kate got me an
Speaker 1: amazing Christmas gift to spend a couple weeks now since Christmas,
Speaker 1: and you might remember back we had Marshall Allen on.
Speaker 1: We talked about healthcare, crazy high cost of Hell, still
Speaker 1: one of my favorite interview episodes we've done. Fantastic episode,
Speaker 1: and his splurge was coffee, specifically, he roasts his own coffee,
Speaker 1: and I kind of nerded out. I started to ask
Speaker 1: him a bunch of questions, realized that we couldn't include
Speaker 1: all that in the episode. I dialed it back, but
Speaker 1: I was really interested in his ability to roast his
Speaker 1: own coffee really nice, like world class, high end coffee
Speaker 1: for a fraction of the price, and to get it,
Speaker 1: you know, for super cheap, super fresh at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing is like the best of both worlds, right,
Speaker 2: it costs less money and it's better the best stuff exactly.
Speaker 1: So I meant, you know, after that interview I mentioned
Speaker 1: that the Kate didn't think much of it. Well, sure enough,
Speaker 1: Kate got me basically a coffee roasting kit for Christmas.
Speaker 1: And the best part is one of the easiest and
Speaker 1: cheapest methods.
Speaker 2: Of like an easy bake oven for adults.
Speaker 1: Yes, seriously, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to
Speaker 1: actually roast the coffee are is to use a popcorn
Speaker 1: air popper. Oh really, you know, it's just like this
Speaker 1: little appliance and you kind of got the spoon of corns,
Speaker 1: kernels or whatever. You drop down in there. You flip
Speaker 1: the thing on and it starts popping popcorn.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Well, you do basically you do that exact same thing
Speaker 1: with the coffee beans. You do it outside because it
Speaker 1: creates a big mess in the you know, and it's
Speaker 1: still there's a decent amount of smoke. But you do that,
Speaker 1: you keep an eye on it. You get it to
Speaker 1: the color the roast you know that you want, whether
Speaker 1: you're looking for like a lighter medium, darker medium, or
Speaker 1: darker roast, and dude, it was phenomenal. I was surprised
Speaker 1: at how easy it was to make really good coffee
Speaker 1: at home. I've got to get you some.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would love to try it.
Speaker 1: It's just like, like we said, the ability to buy
Speaker 1: a pound of raw coffee. I guess that's what you
Speaker 1: call it raw. I'm still working on the kit beans
Speaker 1: that Kate got me, four different samples basically, and we're
Speaker 1: kind of cycling through them right now. But it is
Speaker 1: definitely more affordable than buying the really nice stuff at
Speaker 1: the store. How much more affordable, I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 1: I will report back as I kind of dial in
Speaker 1: my coffee roasting escapades there we go, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll definite rist them up for you. I look forward
Speaker 1: to trying it, and yeah, I think that's cool. I
Speaker 1: was kind of fascinated by the fact that Marsha Allen
Speaker 1: revealed that he roasted his own beans. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that was a thing. As soon as he said that,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, this is gonna be a problem
Speaker 1: for me. All right.
Speaker 2: We got to reach back out to him like, dude,
Speaker 2: we're doing it. You're doing it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, maybe I'll link to the air popper. It's
Speaker 1: just a standard like popcorn air popper that Kate got me.
Speaker 1: But that plus this book she got me, and plus
Speaker 1: some sample coffees, that's all you need. But yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: keep it posted.
Speaker 2: Sounds good. Looking forward to hearing more about your coffee
Speaker 2: roasting adventure.
Speaker 1: Good. Actually, one time right now, even though we're drinking beer.
Speaker 2: We should like Instagram live you roasting your own coffee beans.
Speaker 1: It's really boring. Put in there, turn it on and
Speaker 1: watch it turn.
Speaker 2: Right now, we could like turn the camera around and
Speaker 2: you're smiling like a giddy school boy.
Speaker 1: It's that great.
Speaker 2: Well, let's move on, Matt. Let's mention quickly. The beer
Speaker 2: that we're having on this episode. This is Athena Paradiso
Speaker 2: with BlackBerry, black current and ambrosia. This is by Creature Comforts,
Speaker 2: which is just an awesome brewery out of Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 2: Will give our thoughts on this beer at the end
Speaker 2: of this episode, but for now, Matt, let's get on
Speaker 2: to the subject matter at hand. And the subject matter
Speaker 2: is you. Like we're talking about your money Rigson story.
Speaker 2: It is all about you today, and so yeah, I've
Speaker 2: kind of come up with some questions like kind of
Speaker 2: the things I want to ask you about your money
Speaker 2: history so that our listeners can learn more about you,
Speaker 2: but then also just learn more about kind of how
Speaker 2: you've grown with money, how you've handled it. Hopefully there
Speaker 2: are not not just human interest here but also actual
Speaker 2: money tips and takeaways totally. But like we said, it
Speaker 2: is I think helpful for you to get to know
Speaker 2: us better as people early on in the new year.
Speaker 2: Year and Matt, January tends to be a month where
Speaker 2: how the Money gets more downloads than usual because people
Speaker 2: are like, I got a New Year's resolution, I want
Speaker 2: to do better with my money, and so they're seeking
Speaker 2: out a podcast some similar to ours or ours in particular,
Speaker 2: and they're hoping that it will help and hopefully hearing
Speaker 2: Matt's story will provide some inspiration along with yeah, some
Speaker 2: of those tactical, practical takeaways. But yeah, let's let's get
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Matt.
Speaker 2: I want to kind of like start start young and
Speaker 2: not like baby young, like when you came home from
Speaker 2: the hospital or anything like that. But I do want
Speaker 2: to hear about my first dollar. Is it your parents
Speaker 2: started that allowance really early? But yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 2: maybe when you the first conversations you remember about money
Speaker 2: in your household, And what always sticks out to me is,
Speaker 2: and we'll get this next week, but coming from a
Speaker 2: house where money either just wasn't talked about, or when
Speaker 2: it was, it was always in like a frustrated way,
Speaker 2: or there just wasn't a whole lot of like practical,
Speaker 2: helpful talk when it came to the subject of money,
Speaker 2: you come from a household that has a pretty healthy
Speaker 2: relationship with it, it seems like totally man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I credit a lot of that to my dad.
Speaker 1: So he grew up in the Midwest, and I feel
Speaker 1: like he brought over, you know, from the Midwest to
Speaker 1: the South, like a lot of that Midwestern like work ethic,
Speaker 1: and I think he sort of translated a lot of
Speaker 1: that towards handling your money well. Also, But as early
Speaker 1: as I can remember, I always had an allowance. I mean,
Speaker 1: like some of my earliest memories regarding money were receiving
Speaker 1: a bunch of dimes and then being taught how to
Speaker 1: save a portion of it, how to give a portion
Speaker 1: of it away, how to you know, have it, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of it for spending. But that plus like
Speaker 1: a piggy bank made out of like a two liter
Speaker 1: cook bottle. That also, I will say, my dad like
Speaker 1: he taped over it so you couldn't see the money,
Speaker 1: which always like, even now looking back, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: isn't the ability to see it kind of like fun? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like kind of getting you excited about it being a girl.
Speaker 1: But he was just like, no, no, no, like you were
Speaker 1: gonna not We're gonna pretend that doesn't exist. And so
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe there's a lesson there that he
Speaker 1: was trying to teach me, But a lot of my
Speaker 1: early memories around money had to do with just not
Speaker 1: only the responsibility of handling my money well, but also
Speaker 1: doing the chores I needed to do around the house,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't just an allowance that I received, no
Speaker 1: matter what it was, because there were certain jobs that
Speaker 1: I had that I had to perform in order to
Speaker 1: receive that money. And so in that way, it was
Speaker 1: less I guess, like an allowance that I was entitled
Speaker 1: to and more like something that I did have to earn.
Speaker 2: And you've really taken that sort of idea about money
Speaker 2: into how you teach your kids about it. Well, we'll
Speaker 2: get to that later, but you really do you value
Speaker 2: you think and this is just true in the real world,
Speaker 2: right that when we work, we get money, and those
Speaker 2: two things are just highly correlated exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that's my biggest problem with calling it an
Speaker 1: allowance because it just feels like it's something that you
Speaker 1: get no matter what. It's like a stipend or something.
Speaker 1: As long as you're breathing, you get some money. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I really do like the idea that
Speaker 1: you receive money when you perform a job, or do
Speaker 1: a job, or perform a task. I do think like
Speaker 1: a lot of folks will argue that, well, no, certain
Speaker 1: chores that your kids do no matter what, and I agree, like,
Speaker 1: there are certain things that my kids will never get
Speaker 1: paid for because you're not gonna get paid for being,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to mom and I on making your bed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like these are things that you should be
Speaker 1: doing no matter what. But for me, you know, the
Speaker 1: allowance that was huge another sort of lesson, and this
Speaker 1: is I guess as I got a little bit older,
Speaker 1: but I remember getting my first credit card, like I
Speaker 1: remember showing up in the mail. I was still living
Speaker 1: at home, and this is you know, this is years ago,
Speaker 1: and I swear I was like I was either eighteen
Speaker 1: or even younger, and I may have been sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: and it was a card, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: a pre qualified letter, it had my name on it,
Speaker 1: and I remember showing it to dad and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is my credit card now, right, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. And I thought, wait, what He's like, Well,
Speaker 1: as long as you whatever you use it for, as
Speaker 1: long as you pay it off every month, there's no
Speaker 1: reason that you can't use his credit card. And so
Speaker 1: I think that stands up in my mind as well,
Speaker 1: and that might be part of my affinity towards credit
Speaker 1: cards even today, because I mean he was taking advantage
Speaker 1: of cash back bonuses and different things like that starting
Speaker 1: back in the eighties. But I think that that also
Speaker 1: had a pretty large impact on my ability to think
Speaker 1: about finances maybe in a different way than other kids were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it sounds like two. What your dad was
Speaker 2: instilling was a sense of autonomy, right where where like
Speaker 2: you're sixteen and your dad's like sure, yeah, it's your
Speaker 2: credit card. And we've talked about how helping your kids,
Speaker 2: allowing your kids some of that leash to make mistakes
Speaker 2: while they're still under your roof is actually the best
Speaker 2: time for them to make mistakes and to learn while
Speaker 2: you're there to protect them while the mistakes can be minor.
Speaker 2: And it seems like your dad was kind of setting
Speaker 2: you up for that ability too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, they were all about allowing me to make
Speaker 1: the mistakes with like tens and hundreds of dollars as
Speaker 1: opposed to like thousands and ten thousands of dollars that
Speaker 1: oftentimes those are the lessons we learn further down the road, right.
Speaker 1: But also I do want to mention my mom because
Speaker 1: even though like more of the day to day you know,
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of handling money, well came down to
Speaker 1: dad and what he taught me. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the things my mom instilled in me. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, like she's Asian and so like all Asian parents,
Speaker 1: she wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that always stood out to
Speaker 1: me because I knew what a doctor was and I
Speaker 1: knew what a lawyer was. But she would also always
Speaker 1: mentioned entrepreneurship, like owning your own business, and that really
Speaker 1: does as I think back, that stands out to me
Speaker 1: because at the time, you didn't really know what that meant, right,
Speaker 1: Like all you knew was at their stores. And then
Speaker 1: I guess there's a business owner and so, and specifically
Speaker 1: Mom had and she still does have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who owned their own businesses, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them were like brick and mortar shops and so. But
Speaker 1: even then, I mean, I didn't necessarily want to be
Speaker 1: like the owner of a Korean food store.
Speaker 2: Like, but the ideal time, buddy, I want, hey, I
Speaker 2: could man or your own coffee roasting company. Maybe so,
Speaker 2: But the idea of being able to do whatever it
Speaker 2: is that I wanted to do with my time, for
Speaker 2: me to be able to set my own rules, I think,
Speaker 2: even at a very young age, that that kind of
Speaker 2: turned something on in my head, right, Like it flipped
Speaker 2: the switch, Oh, I don't have to go work for
Speaker 2: somebody else, I can create my own provis Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with too.
Speaker 1: Just how I mean, I literally only lasted like a
Speaker 1: year and a half, two years in the corporate world
Speaker 1: right after college, before I started my own business, before
Speaker 1: doing other things that were a little less traditional, and
Speaker 1: as I think back, I mean, there weren't many influences
Speaker 1: in my life to owning your own business except for
Speaker 1: some of those early conversations we had and thinking that
Speaker 1: I might own a food store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So so I feel like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: talked about how your dad in particular, was such a
Speaker 2: great influence your mom in regards to pushing you towards
Speaker 2: entrepreneurship or at least opening your eyes to the reality
Speaker 2: that that is a legitimate way to move forward in
Speaker 2: this world, to start your own business. But what about
Speaker 2: like maybe a biggest money fail or something like that,
Speaker 2: like or biggest money struggle early on, because you know,
Speaker 2: even today, it's not like you're rolling in the dough.
Speaker 2: But but where I'm sitting, from where I'm sitting, you've
Speaker 2: been just so incredibly intentional for a lot of years
Speaker 2: with your money and that's paid off, like you we
Speaker 2: mentioned in this on the show, but you have your
Speaker 2: budget down to the penny, like what you've spent dating
Speaker 2: back fifteen years. So it's not without like a lot
Speaker 2: of effort and intentionality that you've gotten here. But I'd
Speaker 2: love to hear what my robotic friend Matt like that
Speaker 2: you're a real human being who potentially occasionally also screws
Speaker 2: up so totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't make the always make the wisest decisions.
Speaker 1: And I will say I mean I've become more methodical
Speaker 1: and responsible as I've gotten older, but especially dude, I
Speaker 1: mean in high school and college. You know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that these were struggles at the time. Like at
Speaker 1: the time I thought I was just living my life
Speaker 1: and making great decisions. But the amount of money that
Speaker 1: I spent on cars specifically, and we've kind of hinted
Speaker 1: at this before, but early on I had this old Jeep,
Speaker 1: this old Jeep Cherokee that actually was pretty great. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty great car as well maintained. We bought
Speaker 1: it from some folks we knew. But then I saved
Speaker 1: up some more money sold that Jeep. Took that money
Speaker 1: that I earned from that sale and plus the additional money,
Speaker 1: and I bought a nicer Jeep, like a newer Grand
Speaker 1: not just regular Cherokee, a Grand.
Speaker 2: Cherokeere you go, did the upgrade and fancy.
Speaker 1: And then in college I actually sold that one and
Speaker 1: got an older range Rover, which was also a very
Speaker 1: sweet sweet ride that was very expensive to maintain. A
Speaker 1: terrible gas mileage.
Speaker 2: You obviously didn't check the consumer reports reliability ratings before
Speaker 2: you bought.
Speaker 1: That, But I mean I did this multiple times over
Speaker 1: the course of a number of years, and just every
Speaker 1: time you do that, there's just transaction costs involved, not
Speaker 1: to mention just getting it to a level of running,
Speaker 1: you know, like a level of dependability. Plus I would
Speaker 1: also put a decent stereo in. I wasn't like going
Speaker 1: around blasting music, but I liked having you know, some bass.
Speaker 1: I liked having a sub back there. But I would
Speaker 1: do that every single time. And so it was just
Speaker 1: this money that was just essentially hemorrhaging towards transportation that
Speaker 1: just wasn't all that necessary in my life. Like I
Speaker 1: look back now in retrospect and I kind of cringe
Speaker 1: at what I could have done with that money had
Speaker 1: I invested it. Say, you know, like we give these
Speaker 1: examples all the time, how if a teenager when they
Speaker 1: are sixteen or eighteen years old, if they started investing
Speaker 1: that money early on, what that money it could turn into.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't imagine the fortune, the amount of wealth
Speaker 1: that I would have had I done that. But those
Speaker 1: are lessons though that I learned along the way, because
Speaker 1: after that period of time, I was able to look
Speaker 1: back and think, oh man, that was kind of dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it was fun, but it was very expensive fun,
Speaker 1: you know. And again these weren't really nice, brand new,
Speaker 1: fancy sports cars or anything like that. These were old,
Speaker 1: old cars relatively not an expensive cars relatively speaking. But
Speaker 1: for you, it's still just like a misplacement of fun.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, For me, it was just the most definitely
Speaker 1: was the most amount of money that I was spending
Speaker 1: on anything. And so yeah, I don't know. On one hand,
Speaker 1: I see that as a massive mistake, but on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I see that as just a learning opportunity,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I've kind of carried into today.
Speaker 1: As to you know, who I am now?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well who you are now, We're going
Speaker 2: to get to that in just a second. But I've
Speaker 2: got some more questions about as like you enter early adulthood,
Speaker 2: and in particular, I want to ask you about a
Speaker 2: moment that you point to as your light bulb moment,
Speaker 2: and it's about the show Downton Abbey. So we're gonna
Speaker 2: get to some more questions about your origin story and
Speaker 2: what makes you who you are and how you are
Speaker 2: with money. We'll get to some more of those right
Speaker 2: after this. All right, we're back from the break and
Speaker 2: it's time now to slow down. This is my no,
Speaker 2: I've been taking the lead. Here I get to bring
Speaker 2: it back here, I got the rain. You just sit
Speaker 2: back and handle the questions.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna kick back and you rub my feet.
Speaker 2: No, we're not doing that. But let's get to you out.
Speaker 2: Let's dive more further into your origin story, Matt, because yeah,
Speaker 2: there's Does.
Speaker 1: It feel like that the guests just welcomed the show
Speaker 1: back on the breast because you're kind of interviewing me?
Speaker 2: It felt wrong? But I want to know too, Like,
Speaker 2: as you're okay, so you're in college, you're spending money
Speaker 2: on cars that you really shouldn't be because you could be saving,
Speaker 2: you could even start to get into investing, and because
Speaker 2: your dad had taught you some important principles about how
Speaker 2: to handle money, giving you actual money as a kid
Speaker 2: to save and invest. And so yeah, like as you
Speaker 2: left the nest, like, as you're out on your own
Speaker 2: basically at college, where did you turn for help figuring
Speaker 2: out the bigger money issues that you started to face
Speaker 2: because yeah, your dad had been such a help, would
Speaker 2: you just call him when you have questions or or yeah,
Speaker 2: what direction did you start to go in with? Yeah,
Speaker 2: your money beliefs, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Should have called my dad. So, I mean my personality,
Speaker 1: I'm just prone to do things on my own and
Speaker 1: to learn on my own and make my own mistakes,
Speaker 1: and so I'm sure I could have called dad and
Speaker 1: ask him some very specific and I'm sure I did. Actually.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you talk to your parents all
Speaker 1: the time when you're younger, and I can't necessarily remember, like,
Speaker 1: you know, some important phone call. But I also know
Speaker 1: my personality though, and I do tend to not ask
Speaker 1: for help. I tend to try to figure things out
Speaker 1: on my own. I make my own mistakes, which can
Speaker 1: be a good thing because once you learn a lesson,
Speaker 1: I think you learn it really well when you've learned
Speaker 1: it the hard way, as opposed it being something that
Speaker 1: somebody else has told you. And plus at that time,
Speaker 1: I think Dad was investing a lot in single stocks,
Speaker 1: and so he may have pointed me in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: Still a debate that him and I have often where
Speaker 1: it's just like, so tell me about your portfolio. How
Speaker 1: much better is it doing than the SMP, which turned
Speaker 1: twenty eight percent last year. But it wasn't until actually
Speaker 1: I graduated college and i'd gotten my first It was
Speaker 1: a post college job, but it wasn't a job with
Speaker 1: my profession. I was just living up in North Carolina
Speaker 1: with a friend and I first learned about the roth Ira.
Speaker 1: I was a friend of mine who was a few
Speaker 1: years older, and he was telling me all about the
Speaker 1: magic of compound returns and how I needed to get investing,
Speaker 1: specifically within a roth Ira as soon as possible, and
Speaker 1: I said, cool, done, I'll do that, and.
Speaker 2: I totally like literally, I think it was again, also,
Speaker 2: I need you to jump off a bridge, and you.
Speaker 1: Were like cool. I was about that, Dan, But I
Speaker 1: invested my money. I opened a roth Ira. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, I have things out of order, right, And
Speaker 1: so even though you do want to get investing, you
Speaker 1: do want to make sure you've got some money in
Speaker 1: the bank, and unfortunately I didn't. Really, I wasn't well versed,
Speaker 1: I wasn't well rounded.
Speaker 2: I just didn't have that E fund started.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't. And that was the problem. That was
Speaker 1: money that I actually had to take out of that
Speaker 1: account a number of months later because I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't have any margin in my life, and I was
Speaker 1: looking for some money to help me with my move
Speaker 1: to Atlanta once I got my first what I call
Speaker 1: my first big boy job. But nor was I actually
Speaker 1: invested in a low cost index fund either. I was
Speaker 1: invested in a fund that he had recommended and he
Speaker 1: had seen good results over the you know, a few
Speaker 1: years that he was invested, but it was a really
Speaker 1: expensive mutual fund that was managed by like this rock
Speaker 1: star fund manager. And so what that meant was that
Speaker 1: as soon as I started investing in it, it didn't
Speaker 1: do so great. And then on top of that, any
Speaker 1: returns that I was receiving was getting eaten away my fees.
Speaker 1: And so that's why not because of that one lesson,
Speaker 1: but since that was my first lesson, the first time
Speaker 1: I learned that low cost index funds were the way
Speaker 1: to go. But we have just seen over years and
Speaker 1: decades that widely diversified funds that cost virtually nothing is
Speaker 1: what you and I are currently invested in. It's what
Speaker 1: we recommend for everybody who's in the off building stage
Speaker 1: of their life. But that was that was a lesson
Speaker 1: I learned, Yeah, maybe the hard way. Well that's a
Speaker 1: that's a couple of lessons. It's really which funds you
Speaker 1: are are are smart to invest in you You also
Speaker 1: learned about timing of things. Order of operations is important.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about that in our seven money gears
Speaker 1: and how there is there is a way route in
Speaker 1: which you should go and investing before you have any
Speaker 1: savings on hand is a bad idea because yeah, you
Speaker 1: might need to pull that money out and that is
Speaker 1: not an ideal situation. Yet you gotta have that margin.
Speaker 1: Something else I mentioned too, that same friend who had
Speaker 1: told me about opening my first you know, opening my
Speaker 1: roth Ira. Interestingly, he had purchased a home that my
Speaker 1: friend and I were renting from, and so this was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to investment properties. And he made it
Speaker 1: look so fun and so great because he owned the
Speaker 1: place that were friends with them anyway, right, and so
Speaker 1: he would come by and hang out. This is up
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. It's kind of cold up there, so
Speaker 1: we'd have like like guys chilly nights and we'd have
Speaker 1: some friends over. That's actually coincidentally, that's when I first
Speaker 1: started drinking nicer craft beer. So that was a very
Speaker 1: formational period of my life when I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: But looking back, I realized that was my first introduction
Speaker 1: to understanding the fact that, oh, you could invest in
Speaker 1: real estate. You can buy a property that can generate
Speaker 1: income for you, and you can do that like with
Speaker 1: a good conscience. It's not like this evil landlord who
Speaker 1: is trying to extract as much value out of the
Speaker 1: tenet as possible. It's not like this massive imbalance of power.
Speaker 1: You can do it in a way that provides good
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. And I think that was
Speaker 1: really important when it came to sort of planning those
Speaker 1: initial seeds of real estate investing.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting my eight year old Selma, she got
Speaker 2: Monopoly Junior for Christmas. Oh nice, and so we've been
Speaker 2: playing is that the one with the cards or is
Speaker 2: it actually the game board? Is actually the game boar
Speaker 2: and it is. It's a lot of fun, and she's
Speaker 2: getting understanding real estate investing more where she's like, I
Speaker 2: buy this thing and then when people land on it,
Speaker 2: they have to pay me money. And it's like she's like,
Speaker 2: this is this It sounds like a lot of the
Speaker 2: way you do adding yeah, yeah, and so, yeah, trying
Speaker 2: to expound on the nuance behind a rental property or
Speaker 2: even just starting a business with her. And it's interesting
Speaker 2: how something as small as Monopoly Junior has been kind
Speaker 2: of a way to do that. And yeah, real estate investing,
Speaker 2: you know, you and I've talked about it a bunch
Speaker 2: on the show. It's been great for you and I overall.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think do think of it as a
Speaker 2: service in a capitalistic economy, where you can offer something
Speaker 2: good to somebody that they need h and at the
Speaker 2: same time make money. But talk to me about your
Speaker 2: Downton Abbey epiphany, because this is one of the things
Speaker 2: actually on the about us page on how to Money
Speaker 2: dot com, you and I both have written just a
Speaker 2: little bit about our personal lives, and this is one
Speaker 2: of the things that you mentioned in there. It's this
Speaker 2: competition with your wife.
Speaker 1: Cape back in the day. Have you ever talked about
Speaker 1: it on the show? I don't think so, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about it on other shows. I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great time, I guess to share it
Speaker 1: now when you're on.
Speaker 2: The Today Show or uh, Larry King back.
Speaker 1: So before, I mean, that was a great moment because
Speaker 1: it was a time when Kate and I were getting
Speaker 1: on the same page, specifically about like a higher level goal.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't always the case. And even before before
Speaker 1: the Downtown story, I want to I'll mention Dave Ramsey
Speaker 1: because Kate and I like when we were dating, and
Speaker 1: even when we were engaged that entire period of time,
Speaker 1: Kate was still in school, she was in college. She
Speaker 1: was a full time student, taking a full load. She
Speaker 1: was graduating early, so she was taking so many hours.
Speaker 1: She was ready to, you know, to move to Atlanta
Speaker 1: live with me. But I was a little bit concerned
Speaker 1: because we had never essentially earned money. We hadn't lived
Speaker 1: lives together while we had careers while we had earned
Speaker 1: money where we're spending real amounts of money, and there's
Speaker 1: no sort of set path on how to talk about that.
Speaker 1: And so before we got married, actually I wanted us
Speaker 1: to have more conversations around that. And actually, so I
Speaker 1: got his tickets to Dave Ramsey. He had one by
Speaker 1: I guess he still doesn't. I've heard of this guy, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've heard of this guy. This this hillbilly from Tennessee.
Speaker 1: But he had these live events and it's where he
Speaker 1: you know, he covers the basics of personal finance basically,
Speaker 1: and he kind of takes you through his brand of
Speaker 1: personal finance, a lot of which we disagree with here
Speaker 1: on how to money, We've talked a good start for
Speaker 1: a lot of It's a great start, especially if you
Speaker 1: have a lot of debts, and so, I mean, anybody
Speaker 1: who is looking for some motivation to get out of debt,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great place to start.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's not even the principles that we did disagree
Speaker 2: with that, it's the approach.
Speaker 1: Although some of the principles, some of the principles we
Speaker 1: definitely disagree with, but yeah, and just his attitude, his approach.
Speaker 1: But regardless, that was I didn't know if anybody else,
Speaker 1: anybody else to turn to any other sort of way
Speaker 1: for us to get on the same page. And so
Speaker 1: we went to this thing and it was great because
Speaker 1: it allowed Kate and I to have a shared vocabulary.
Speaker 1: It allowed us to talk about our money in a
Speaker 1: way that was constructive as opposed to only talking about
Speaker 1: it when we had arguments.
Speaker 2: He's like the unbiased third party that entered into your
Speaker 2: relationship to give you some advice that you sorely needed
Speaker 2: and give you the ability to then talk about it.
Speaker 1: Well exactly, yeah, And so I wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: because that was helpful for us early on. It was
Speaker 1: good for us as we started to basically build our
Speaker 1: life together, and so that was sort of like the
Speaker 1: initial sort of building block. And then you mentioned the
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey story, and that was another sort of moment
Speaker 1: where it felt like that we were becoming even more
Speaker 1: aligned with our goals. And we'd been kind of watching
Speaker 1: it down to an Abbey earlier that week we're driving.
Speaker 2: It wasn't at that point in time it was a
Speaker 2: hot show. It was man, it was like the squid
Speaker 2: Game of its time.
Speaker 1: Especially, Like I mean, they were just living this life
Speaker 1: of leisure and they're just in this you know, this
Speaker 1: giant English countryside castle. And Kate asked, She's like, well,
Speaker 1: how how do they do that? Like was that actually
Speaker 1: real life? And we got to talking about wealth and
Speaker 1: the ability for your money to you know, do the
Speaker 1: heavy lifting for you. Like when you have enough wealth,
Speaker 1: that money is when you put it to use uh
Speaker 1: in certain ways, when you invest it, that that money
Speaker 1: is able to then grow and then you have options
Speaker 1: and that was essentially our first conversation about financial independence,
Speaker 1: which is something that was in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: Like I remember my dad literally telling me that story.
Speaker 1: He's like, there's this like picture sort of like a
Speaker 1: roller coaster and like, once you kind of reach that
Speaker 1: peak and your money starts making more money than you do, well,
Speaker 1: then if you want to, you can just kick back
Speaker 1: and you'll be cruising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then then you two can be become a
Speaker 2: member of the British aristography exactly, just avoid cruises on
Speaker 2: brand new ships that might sink in the freezing ocean.
Speaker 1: But anyway, like that's what got us talking about financial independence,
Speaker 1: and for us that was really cool because it helped
Speaker 1: us to realize that there might be these these sort
Speaker 1: of longer term goals that we're working towards as opposed
Speaker 1: to us continuing to trade our time for money instead
Speaker 1: putting our money to use in ways that would allow
Speaker 1: our money to grow.
Speaker 2: And that is I think as people start to kind
Speaker 2: of wrestle with different personal finance topics, as you start
Speaker 2: to learn more, when you find out what compounding returns do,
Speaker 2: how they work, and how much your money can work
Speaker 2: for you over the long haul over decades. It's kind
Speaker 2: of one of those like epiphany moments, and then you
Speaker 2: realize the concept of financial independence and that it can
Speaker 2: be broken down even into a simple math problem, but
Speaker 2: the reality that you can. There are all these steps
Speaker 2: along the way that provide different amounts of financial independence
Speaker 2: in your life. And then that ultimate reality where you
Speaker 2: have enough money in the bank account that you don't
Speaker 2: have to work if you don't want to. Is it's
Speaker 2: pretty incredible. But there are all these little mind blowing
Speaker 2: things along the way, these dominoes at fall I think
Speaker 2: in your personal finance education, but that is one of them, right,
Speaker 2: and that is one of the biggest ones. I remember
Speaker 2: I was already like investing, well, I knew a lot
Speaker 2: of the basics of personal finance. But then when I
Speaker 2: kind of started to get into and read some of
Speaker 2: the smarter folks in the financial independence movement, and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I didn't know money could do that,
Speaker 2: and like that is that is mind blowing?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, it's it's pretty life changing. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it truly is. Another funny note too, is that we
Speaker 1: had that conversation while we were in this crazy, old,
Speaker 1: crusty Honda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, had you
Speaker 2: chant at that point like you said, yeah, you're right
Speaker 2: about you you're in this like nasty car at this point.
Speaker 2: Oh you prioritize vehicles before then, because I mean, on
Speaker 2: the crusty I think I think you did. So is
Speaker 2: is this is this?
Speaker 1: It this loing back at that car with so much respect,
Speaker 1: like I almost wish we still got it to and
Speaker 1: it was amazing. It was an amazing car. And so
Speaker 1: we didn't have to do that. And what's interesting is
Speaker 1: like that was one of the first more quote unquote
Speaker 1: extreme steps that we had taken in order to save
Speaker 1: money faster, in order to minimize our expenses. At that
Speaker 1: point in time, we weren't having a ton, we were
Speaker 1: working from home because we'd started our business, and so
Speaker 1: we realized at that point in time we could why
Speaker 1: not just try just having one car? And so for
Speaker 1: us that was you know, like fourteen years ago, fourteen
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago where we have only had one vehicle
Speaker 1: in our family. But the reason we were doing that, though,
Speaker 1: is because we had the goal to be able to
Speaker 1: put down twenty percent on the first house that we're
Speaker 1: saving up for. We're saving up our first down payment,
Speaker 1: and the thing is too Like I had a nicer,
Speaker 1: newer Grand Cherokee, and we sold that vehicle because we
Speaker 1: were being smart.
Speaker 2: You downgraded we purpose we did.
Speaker 1: Because we knew we could get more for that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Let's get that off to somebody else, and we're going
Speaker 1: to continue to drive the car that gave us the
Speaker 1: best gas mileage, that old Honda Accord. It was a
Speaker 1: fantastic car.
Speaker 2: When you and I we still share that same philosophy
Speaker 2: about cars. You have one car minivan. I have one
Speaker 2: car minivan, and they're both pretty inexpensive. Mine was literally
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars. That is the only car that our
Speaker 2: family owns. And it's not because we can't afford a
Speaker 2: nicer car. It is a purposeful choice. And I think
Speaker 2: like once that epiphany hits you, you become willing almost
Speaker 2: to make more oddball choices that most people aren't willing
Speaker 2: to make, because it's propelling you more in that direction
Speaker 2: that you want to go, Like you realize what financial
Speaker 2: independence can do for you, that you can kind of
Speaker 2: get to the top of that roller coaster through by
Speaker 2: making a few smaller choices that to most people they're
Speaker 2: unwilling to make. But in your new reality, it's not
Speaker 2: that big of a deal because it allows you to
Speaker 2: get where you want to go a whole lot quicker.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, And a lot of folks will say, well,
Speaker 1: this car it's paid off. It's like, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have had a payment on that car anyway.
Speaker 1: But then secondly they're like insurance, it's not all that
Speaker 1: much money. But yeah, sure, maybe for you know, one year,
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal, but over multiple years,
Speaker 1: after ten, fifteen years, like that money really does add
Speaker 1: up and it can have a big impact and appreciation.
Speaker 2: You got that two year old car, think about how
Speaker 2: much it's going to appreciate in the next three to
Speaker 2: five years. And absolutely we're not telling everyone they have
Speaker 2: to live the way we live, but it is it's
Speaker 2: interesting when we go back to.
Speaker 1: Some similar patterns. Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously we'll get
Speaker 1: to your story next week, but I mean there's some
Speaker 1: there's definitely some over like we're very different in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but there's a lot of core fundamentals
Speaker 1: that are the same. Because to a certain extent, there's
Speaker 1: a certain formula that you can easily follow that's going
Speaker 1: to allow you to achieve financial freedom, of financial independence
Speaker 1: a lot faster. I wanted to mention the car thing too,
Speaker 1: because you're asking about like my money struggles and how
Speaker 1: that's sort of essentially my biggest mistake that I think
Speaker 1: of when I look back, and I wonder if if
Speaker 1: I've essentially overcompensated before those past errors, you know, like
Speaker 1: I've got all these SUVs, these expensive to maintain, terrible
Speaker 1: gas milage SUVs haunting me from my past, and so
Speaker 1: I'm only driving very fuel efficient Hondas.
Speaker 2: The most economical choice.
Speaker 1: Yes, aside from like tellyo to and Lexus or whatever.
Speaker 2: I get it, I get it. All right, Well, we
Speaker 2: got we got I got a few more questions to
Speaker 2: get to. Man, I want to talk about your formation
Speaker 2: of your first small business. We can talk even about
Speaker 2: the podcast a little bit and how we got started here,
Speaker 2: but yeah, let's get to some more of your story
Speaker 2: right after this. All right, we're back and special guest
Speaker 2: on today's even I'm here Matt Altmis, my co host,
Speaker 2: my best friend, and we started Matt, can you believe
Speaker 2: we started having money four years ago? And it's been
Speaker 2: a whole lot of fun. There we've developed this incredible
Speaker 2: community of people who listen, who care about the show,
Speaker 2: who have learned a lot and made a lot of
Speaker 2: changes in their lives. And so this is but this
Speaker 2: is not the first small business you started. I want
Speaker 2: to talk about the first one that you began, and
Speaker 2: it was not too long after you graduated from college.
Speaker 2: You mentioned kind of being like a beauty school dropout. Basically,
Speaker 2: you were in the corporate world for a hot minute,
Speaker 2: and then you were gone and you decided to smart
Speaker 2: start your own photography business. What made you feel like
Speaker 2: you could you could jump ship and start your own business?
Speaker 1: Was it? Was?
Speaker 2: It really mostly the inspiration from your mom and kind
Speaker 2: of like what you learn growing up about entrepreneurship, because
Speaker 2: it always felt like unapproachable to me for a long.
Speaker 1: Time, right, I mean literally, it just came down to
Speaker 1: crunching the numbers. I mean, and so I've always found
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I have Excel spreadsheets going
Speaker 1: back to like, yeah, two thousand and six. But when
Speaker 1: I sat down and crunched the numbers and mapped out
Speaker 1: the ability for me to make a living with something
Speaker 1: else other than my standard job. Granted I wasn't making
Speaker 1: a Ton back then, and so it was it's easier
Speaker 1: to make anything look good once you crunched the numbers.
Speaker 1: But that gave me the confidence to know that, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: this is something that not only could I do and
Speaker 1: find enjoyment and satisfaction by doing, but this is something
Speaker 1: that can provide for Kate and I in a serious way.
Speaker 1: And so I mean that coupled with the fact that
Speaker 1: neither Kate nor I had any debt. By any debt,
Speaker 1: I mean like zero, Like we didn't a lucky way.
Speaker 2: To start off in a lot of ways, absolutely, especially
Speaker 2: these days, like that is not the case. It isn't
Speaker 2: that hard to come by.
Speaker 1: Any student loans.
Speaker 2: We both had scholarship like unicorns in today's art.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as well as small amounts of money that
Speaker 1: our parents had dedicated for our college as well. But
Speaker 1: we both also had enough basic financial knowledge to know
Speaker 1: that we weren't going to go into consumer debt. We
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned and knowing to pay off my
Speaker 1: credit cards literally at the age of like sixteen or
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, I knew that that's how you approach
Speaker 1: credit cards, at least in the same thing with Kate,
Speaker 1: And so that allowed us to take what seemed like
Speaker 1: more of a risk to step away from jobs that
Speaker 1: were solid, that were dependable, that were paying us, you know,
Speaker 1: a paycheck every two weeks.
Speaker 2: If you had had large amounts of debt weighing you down,
Speaker 2: whether it was school debt, credit card debt, anything, you
Speaker 2: would have probably found it a lot more difficult. It
Speaker 2: would a bigger risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And we didn't. I mean, we didn't even
Speaker 1: have a mortgage at that point. We were just renting
Speaker 1: a place.
Speaker 2: But and you're like, we can always skip down if
Speaker 2: we can't afford rent.
Speaker 1: Like I wanted to mention too, just again, I want
Speaker 1: to reiterate crunching the numbers and having that knowledge and
Speaker 1: the comfort that that brought, because what I realized, too,
Speaker 1: is that by going through that process and crunching the numbers,
Speaker 1: even just on the cost of healthcare, I learned that
Speaker 1: even if I was going to stay with the company
Speaker 1: I was with, it didn't make sense for me to
Speaker 1: be a part of the company healthcare plan because it
Speaker 1: was so expensive. And so I see that almost as
Speaker 1: like this turning point from thinking that the world's going
Speaker 1: to take care of you, or your employer is going
Speaker 1: to take care of you as you know to like, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: now I'm in the driver's seats, and you got a
Speaker 1: question more to make these decisions because nobody else. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, It doesn't matter what industry you're in, what
Speaker 1: company you're with, nobody's going to care about you in
Speaker 1: your livelihood and your future as much as you are.
Speaker 1: And so I think oftentimes we can get lulled into thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got this nice, dependable wage, Oh I've got these benefits,
Speaker 1: but in the end, it comes down to us to
Speaker 1: be able to determine what's going to be best for
Speaker 1: us and for our future. Okay.
Speaker 2: One of the most interesting things about you starting your
Speaker 2: own photography business. I remember when I met you, like
Speaker 2: you guys were already photographers, Like we've known each other
Speaker 2: for I don't know, like twelve years now, been good friends, yeah,
Speaker 2: ten twelve years. Yeah, and so you I remember you
Speaker 2: telling me early on that you've turned down a lot
Speaker 2: of people that reach out to and why did you
Speaker 2: shoot their wedding? Like you were consistently turning down business,
Speaker 2: And I was like that that would frighten me as
Speaker 2: a small business owner. I would be trying to get
Speaker 2: as much business in as I could and so yeah.
Speaker 1: Well make the sunshine and right, yeah, yeah, oftentimes that
Speaker 1: is the mentality what.
Speaker 2: Was your ethos behind like turning down gigs?
Speaker 1: So it took so we you know, we started the
Speaker 1: photography company, and we started out with it as a
Speaker 1: side hustle and it slowly ramped up and then it
Speaker 1: eventually took over and was able to provide all of
Speaker 1: our It was the sole source of our income. But
Speaker 1: when I say like it took over, like it literally
Speaker 1: took over our lives. And what we learned, especially being
Speaker 1: newly married, was that it was really destructive. It was
Speaker 1: really difficult for our marriage, and it took a couple
Speaker 1: of years of us living through that for us to
Speaker 1: kind of go through that storm to you know, Luckily,
Speaker 1: we made it out of that and we were able
Speaker 1: to look back and we realized that man, that sucked.
Speaker 1: That was really difficult, and we need to make sure
Speaker 1: that we're not continuing to do that because our relationship
Speaker 1: isn't it's not going you know in a great direction.
Speaker 2: You're valuing or putting too much emphasis on the business
Speaker 2: and your relation.
Speaker 1: And we, I mean we enjoyed it, you know, like
Speaker 1: it was literally all we ever talked about. It's all
Speaker 1: we ever thought about. It's all I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of what we did, especially this first couple of years
Speaker 1: after that, you know, we were able to, like you said,
Speaker 1: we said no more often and turn down work. But
Speaker 1: as a small business owner, I mean that was I
Speaker 1: think I think that's probably the hardest lesson for any
Speaker 1: small business owner to learn, which is that there are
Speaker 1: other things in our lives that we need to prioritize
Speaker 1: and need to value, and if you don't, the business
Speaker 1: is going to take over, right like, if not, there's
Speaker 1: this sort of default way that the world again just
Speaker 1: by default, it encourages us to go a certain direction,
Speaker 1: and if there are other things that you value more,
Speaker 1: you have to fight for those things. And so that's
Speaker 1: when it came down to us literally saying no. And
Speaker 1: we you know, we could have. We talked about going
Speaker 1: in different directions as well, bringing on additional shooters, and
Speaker 1: you know we did know more of that later on
Speaker 1: in the business. But you know, at that point in
Speaker 1: our lives, we were we had enough. We had always
Speaker 1: had enough. There are you know, there were some years
Speaker 1: that were leaner than others. There are some years that
Speaker 1: were really fat. But even still, we were lucky enough
Speaker 1: to be in a position where we were never wanting,
Speaker 1: and so for us, that was an important distinction to
Speaker 1: make to draw that line, to say no to income. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a powerful thing, to say income and
Speaker 1: to say like, I have enough, and you know what,
Speaker 1: drawing some lines because you and I, like, there's no
Speaker 1: limit to the amount of things we could create or produce,
Speaker 1: or the amount of the level to which we could
Speaker 1: grow the small business that you and I have started together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but to have normal functioning family lives, like there has
Speaker 1: to be a limit, you know, we have to create
Speaker 1: an artificial limit. Because we could keep pouting away. We
Speaker 1: could write books, and we could be on Instagram live
Speaker 1: like three times a day. Like, there's a million things
Speaker 1: we could do to reach more people to grow the business.
Speaker 1: But we have consciously decided to say no to doing
Speaker 1: more because it's not healthy and there has to be
Speaker 1: a limit, and you have to be able to it's
Speaker 1: a wise thing for your own mental health, for your
Speaker 1: own sure relational health. In order to see that and
Speaker 1: to say it, Yeah, and again it's you know, Kate
Speaker 1: and I we were fortunate enough back then with photography
Speaker 1: to be able to make that decision. Right like, we
Speaker 1: were in a solid position, and the same thing is
Speaker 1: true with you and I right now. We are lucky.
Speaker 1: We are fortunate to be in a position where we
Speaker 1: can say that, oh, well, I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do this aspect that know of spreading, spreading the reach
Speaker 1: of how to money. A lot of other people who
Speaker 1: are doing this thing. Do you want to do this?
Speaker 1: It's like, well maybe maybe, maybe not. But we're in
Speaker 1: the position to where we don't have to say, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: we have to do this thing, and that might change,
Speaker 1: you know, like like later this year, we might be
Speaker 1: in a position to where it's just like, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: we really need to do this thing now, we're not
Speaker 1: really excited about it, but when it comes. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is how businesses work. If there's things that you
Speaker 1: aren't excited to do, you get other people to do
Speaker 1: their things and hopefully it can scale in a way
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But again, you and I are fortunate
Speaker 1: to be in a position to where we can say that,
Speaker 1: and we understand that not everybody is in that position.
Speaker 2: Totally, and I completely agree. I will say part of
Speaker 2: it is you put yourself in that position, right, and
Speaker 2: you you you know, driving a crusty car and having
Speaker 2: one car and avoiding debt, and you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of credit goes to being raised well having good parents too.
Speaker 2: And then another thing that helps too is having income
Speaker 2: coming from somewhere else, not just from an employer or
Speaker 2: from a business that you've started, but in particular for
Speaker 2: us and for you is rental real estate. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier your story of kind of realizing by
Speaker 2: that a friend had a rental property and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that seems like that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: We're paying him money every single month. Yeah, he's taking
Speaker 1: that money and scooping some off the top y rest
Speaker 1: goes to the bank.
Speaker 2: He's a cool dude.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Was that kind of what gave me
Speaker 2: the inspiration to get into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, so that was my first foray. Another friend
Speaker 1: of ours up there in North Carolina as well, Clark.
Speaker 1: He around the same time, he had purchased his first
Speaker 1: home and it was a triplex, so he was the
Speaker 1: original house hacker. He was the first house hacker that
Speaker 1: I knew. Yeah, because he moved in the main level
Speaker 1: and he had it was a lot where it dropped
Speaker 1: away and he had two levels underneath the main floor.
Speaker 1: Pretty crazy lot, but he had too. He inherited two tenants,
Speaker 1: and so I forget, you know, I can't can't remember
Speaker 1: the numbers today, but they were covering a substantial, if
Speaker 1: not all, of his mortgage. And I was like, holy crap, Like,
Speaker 1: so you're living for free.
Speaker 2: That's possible. And so that was another one of those
Speaker 2: mind blowing up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so just you know, rental real estate as
Speaker 1: an idea was introduced, and then immediately right after that
Speaker 1: was the idea of house hacking. Both of those seas
Speaker 1: were planted. But I didn't have any money back then.
Speaker 1: You remember, like I told you how I had to
Speaker 1: take money out of my roth Ira in order to
Speaker 1: move move back down to Atlanta and to cover a deposit,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. That's where I was at that point.
Speaker 2: So those bigger investments were not on your radar. Oh,
Speaker 2: it was not a possibility at all. I mean, I
Speaker 2: was like the guy. I was like, I helped Clark.
Speaker 1: I was something my friend move into his house, and
Speaker 1: I was just like the muscle because he was going
Speaker 1: to pay for pizza and beers and for me, it
Speaker 1: was a free meal.
Speaker 2: That's good enough.
Speaker 1: That's where I was in my life at that point.
Speaker 1: And so I mean it wasn't for another like I
Speaker 1: think five or six years before rental real estate was
Speaker 1: a possibility, you know. So within that time Kate and
Speaker 1: I got married, we saved up money for a down
Speaker 1: payment for our first personal home, got a little two one.
Speaker 1: But then after that we started saving up some money
Speaker 1: to invest as well, and you know, those that had
Speaker 1: been planted started to germinate a little bit. And that's
Speaker 1: actually when you and I met, and you had purchased
Speaker 1: your first, you know, your own primary residence, and we
Speaker 1: got to talk and found out that you were trying
Speaker 1: to be wise with your money as I was, and
Speaker 1: I think you had shared that you were thinking about
Speaker 1: buying a rental like because you just had your own
Speaker 1: property at that point. I think right right when we met.
Speaker 2: I think I literally was on the verge of pouncing
Speaker 2: on property number two and running out the first one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so we were like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to move, but we've got this money saved
Speaker 1: up and we should put that towards our property. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, our interactions us talking about it. I think
Speaker 1: certainly gave it was very encouraging because it would have
Speaker 1: been a lot tougher for me because I didn't know
Speaker 1: anybody in Atlanta who was doing that at that point
Speaker 1: in time. Right, Like in my mind, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe only people in North Carolina do this. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And so to have somebody else who was my age
Speaker 1: who was thinking that, like, oh yeah, houses right now
Speaker 1: are really affordable. This is a really smart move. That
Speaker 1: was like the final straw that allowed me to think, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I am going to do this and yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think we both got our both of us
Speaker 1: got our second properties around the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like a confidence boost. I think when
Speaker 2: a friend is doing something absolutely and if you can
Speaker 2: learn learn from them as a guinea pig, I.
Speaker 1: Think sometimes it feels less foreign, you know, just even
Speaker 1: talking about it with somebody else.
Speaker 2: You listen to a podcast and hear people talk about it,
Speaker 2: but when you're talking to someone in person who you're
Speaker 2: close with, or even just like that's why we encourage
Speaker 2: people to join like an investor meetup group or something
Speaker 2: like that, like learn from the people that are doing
Speaker 2: it and they will like they will help demystify some
Speaker 2: of those things that in your mind you have built
Speaker 2: up to be these hurdles that you can't surmount, and
Speaker 2: it is possible, but and you know, we can talk
Speaker 2: about it until we run out of air in our
Speaker 2: lungs and hopefully that will be helpful advice to you.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, meeting individuals where you live
Speaker 2: who are doing it already is like, I think the
Speaker 2: best way to go absolutely.
Speaker 1: And plus I mean ten years ago, like there weren't
Speaker 1: I mean, there weren't real real estate podcasts. Like the
Speaker 1: only podcast I'd ever heard of was like this Harry
Speaker 1: Potter podcast that I get across. It was very much
Speaker 1: in its infancy, and it was just books, you know,
Speaker 1: like I remember reading The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by
Speaker 1: like one of the Keller Williams guys or whatever. But
Speaker 1: it's there's a big gap between reading this massive textbook
Speaker 1: basically to actually pulling the trigger and doing that in
Speaker 1: your local town. And like you said, having somebody there
Speaker 1: locally who you know is also doing it, it kind
Speaker 1: of gives you the confidence. It allows you to poke
Speaker 1: holes in each other sort of plans and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: what about this, or or Hey, how are you planning
Speaker 1: to tackle this? That definitely makes it just so much
Speaker 1: more approachable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well, so there's no real resolution to
Speaker 2: this podcast because your story is not complete, Like there's
Speaker 2: still there's still a lot of money moves.
Speaker 1: That we're still we're still doing it, yeah, aren't we that.
Speaker 2: You're making And that's part of the fun of creating
Speaker 2: this podcast is along the way we get to share
Speaker 2: the things that we are doing. You know, we're we're
Speaker 2: not seventy year old who have like reached the end,
Speaker 2: Like we're in the middle of this with our listeners,
Speaker 2: hopefully with wisdom to share. But yeah, is there anything
Speaker 2: else that you want to kind of relay to everybody
Speaker 2: about your story that you think is important Matt before
Speaker 2: we kind of end this one out.
Speaker 1: I think one of the other things that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about real estate. I think for
Speaker 1: anybody out there who is thinking about going in that
Speaker 1: direction is just to know that this isn't a completely
Speaker 1: passive form of income. Yeah, because the rewards can be
Speaker 1: quite large, but it does require time. And so I
Speaker 1: think anybody who's thinking about doing this, they need to
Speaker 1: start thinking about it more as like a small part
Speaker 1: time job, as a side hustle, something that can potentially
Speaker 1: ramp up and consume a lot of your time, potentially.
Speaker 2: The most lucrative part time job. Absolutely for sure. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: especially it is You're right, it is work. And we
Speaker 2: talked about that when the episode. We talked about that,
Speaker 2: the miss of passive income, and exactly it's not a
Speaker 2: complete farce, but there is a reality to which if
Speaker 2: you want passive income, you got to work for it
Speaker 2: in any regard, Like it doesn't just kind of you
Speaker 2: don't like snap your fingers in the passive income fairy
Speaker 2: comes along and starts stubble money in your account.
Speaker 1: Remonth, Yeah, exactly, And so just to think about it
Speaker 1: that way. I mean, I was talking with a friend
Speaker 1: over Christmas break. He had had a good year. He
Speaker 1: was thinking about what to do with some additional money
Speaker 1: that he had, and he had renovated his own home,
Speaker 1: and so he's like, you know, I've got these like
Speaker 1: renovation skills. I know how to make a house look good.
Speaker 1: He was thinking about buying another property in his neighborhood,
Speaker 1: working on it, renting it out. And this is the
Speaker 1: conversation I had with him, I was like, hey, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: you know, like the fact that you like everybody has
Speaker 1: their own superhero like power, you know, like and so
Speaker 1: for him, his sort of superhero strength is the ability
Speaker 1: to make a property beautiful himself, like without having to
Speaker 1: hire anybody else. It's just the cost of his tools,
Speaker 1: the supplies, and his time. Yeah, but what I wanted
Speaker 1: him to think through was what his life would look
Speaker 1: like were he to do that. And he has a
Speaker 1: full time job. I mean, he owns his own business
Speaker 1: and it's actually growing and expanding and it's going to
Speaker 1: look potentially very different this coming year. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, imagine you know, doing that from eight
Speaker 1: to six or whatever it is that you get off work, Like,
Speaker 1: are you going to have it in you to come
Speaker 1: home and then clock in another three or four hours
Speaker 1: hanging drywall at this new property that you found that
Speaker 1: you want to flip. And that's what we want folks
Speaker 1: to think through with, you know, with any decision, with
Speaker 1: any new responsibility, with any way that you're thinking about
Speaker 1: making additional income, right if it's a sidehume, think through
Speaker 1: what you want your life to look like. Yes, there
Speaker 1: are oftentimes sacrifices we need to make in the short
Speaker 1: term to achieve a goal, but do make sure that
Speaker 1: you are aware of what that's going to look like,
Speaker 1: because you want to make those decisions with your eyes open.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure that you're making those decisions informed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you want it to be a calculated sacrifice
Speaker 2: because if you can't actually pay the cost you're gonna
Speaker 2: you might actually lose money in that proposition, because yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to be willing to follow through for surely. Well, dude,
Speaker 2: this was a lot of fun. I'm glad we got
Speaker 2: to dive into your money story. Hopefully it's just interesting
Speaker 2: and helpful for listeners. Quickly, Matt, let's say, folks know
Speaker 2: Matt a little bit exactly the like I said, the
Speaker 2: man the myth legend mar on deck for next week
Speaker 2: by best Bunny, I'll be ready. But we had a
Speaker 2: beer on this episode. This one was athena parody so BlackBerry,
Speaker 2: black Current and Ambrosia by of course creature comforts out
Speaker 2: of Athens, Georgia, where you went to college Alma Manter,
Speaker 2: That's right, So yeah, what we thought. Unfortunately, that was
Speaker 2: not a brew that was there while I was in school.
Speaker 1: I know, sadly right. If so, though, like what I've
Speaker 1: even been able to appreciate it, probably probably not. It
Speaker 1: took me actually growing up and being out in the
Speaker 1: real world and talking about real estate with my friend
Speaker 1: enjoying my first milk stout. I think that was one
Speaker 1: of my first craft beers where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is different than all those other beers, but yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a Berlin of ice. It's a tart German wheat.
Speaker 1: It poured a dark crimson red, like a very luxurious color,
Speaker 1: almost like a purplis hue to it. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was really beautiful and I really enjoyed this one. Like
Speaker 1: the other variations of Athena, it's got that nice wheaty backbone.
Speaker 1: But obviously with this one with the added fruit just
Speaker 1: adds that they call it paradiso because it's like you're
Speaker 1: in paradise. It's like you're surrounded by just all this
Speaker 1: luxurious fruit. In this case, ambrosia as well, is the
Speaker 1: ambrosia of fruit, Like I know, ambrosia salad is, like
Speaker 1: you know, that's where they add marshmallows to question. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know what what's an ambrosia what's
Speaker 1: an ambrosia player looked like I have to look that
Speaker 1: up after the episode, But I really enjoyed it. What
Speaker 1: were your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was like rich and velvety and
Speaker 2: had like this medium tartness level going on. It's the
Speaker 2: first time I've had this version. Like you said, they
Speaker 2: make variants, and I think, don't say.
Speaker 1: Variant, Joel, variations on it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of my yes, it's a good point.
Speaker 2: I think probably my favorite variation is still the one
Speaker 2: they do with with tart cherries. It's delicious. But this
Speaker 2: one was really good, better than this almost expected. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, again another winner from Creature Comforts because they
Speaker 2: don't lose, man, they always make it.
Speaker 1: So they do a very good job. Be sure to
Speaker 1: swing by Creature Comforts if you're ever in Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1: But Joel, I feel like I did a lot of talking,
Speaker 1: but I didn't like direct the show quite as much.
Speaker 1: But you did a fantastic job. Oh, thank you, my friend.
Speaker 2: It was fun.
Speaker 1: It was fun. Yeah, and yeah, unfortunately we can only
Speaker 1: do these, like, I don't know, like once every few years.
Speaker 1: I guess we interview each other, have to be like
Speaker 1: a different twist on it next time we do it.
Speaker 2: That's right, But yeah, all right, well yeah, well, if
Speaker 2: you are curious about hearing my money story, you'll get
Speaker 2: to hear that on next Wednesday's episode, but Matt, until
Speaker 2: next time. Best friends out, Best Friends Out the