RPF0108-Greutman

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00:00:30.000 | Today on the show, I have an interview for you, which I think qualifies as a pretty good mash-up.

00:00:36.000 | It's a combination of some teaching on tips and techniques and strategies that will be helpful to you in saving money.

00:00:44.000 | It's also a combination of a case study illustrating a few things that you can do wrong, and then a bunch of things that you can do right.

00:00:53.000 | And then it's got a healthy sprinkling of inspiration thrown in.

00:00:57.600 | ♪

00:01:13.600 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets, and today is Monday, November 24, 2014.

00:01:20.600 | I have an interview for you today with Mark and Lauren Groopman.

00:01:25.200 | Lauren is the founder of the couponing website called IamThatLady.com.

00:01:29.600 | And we're going to talk about their personal finance story.

00:01:32.600 | I've got a lot that you can learn through it.

00:01:35.600 | ♪

00:01:46.600 | I am preempting the Monday show that I had planned.

00:01:49.600 | Originally, I was planning to bring you a review of Tony Robbins' new book called Money, Master the Game.

00:01:54.600 | And I think I'll be able to bring that to you tomorrow. I've got to finish the book first.

00:01:58.600 | It's a 650-page book, and I didn't have much time to read over the weekend.

00:02:02.600 | So I've got to finish it. I'm about halfway done. I should be able to finish it tonight.

00:02:05.600 | And then be able to bring you that book review tomorrow.

00:02:07.600 | And then Wednesday, I'm going to bring you a show on gratitude, about why basically this is the greatest time in the history of the world to be alive.

00:02:14.600 | And I hope you'll tune in for that. If you get to it before Thanksgiving, great.

00:02:17.600 | It's not going to be some corny Thanksgiving show, but it is a neat opportunity.

00:02:21.600 | It's a show I've been wanting to do for a while, and it's going to be a nice theme.

00:02:25.600 | But today, I am bringing forward the interview that I had planned for tomorrow with Mark and Lauren Groopman.

00:02:30.600 | And this is a really fun interview.

00:02:32.600 | I met Mark and Lauren when I was in FinCon out in New Orleans, which was the Financial Bloggers Conference.

00:02:37.600 | And I immediately enjoyed talking to them because they hit a couple of themes that are right at the...

00:02:43.600 | I just immediately knew that they were hitting on a couple of themes that are important to me.

00:02:47.600 | They immediately started talking about minimalism, but they have four kids.

00:02:51.600 | And that's a big deal to me because I like minimalism, but I don't necessarily like that the whole conversation is focused, oftentimes it seems, online around some single guy or single gal living with a hundred things in their life, which is cool.

00:03:05.600 | I think it's awesome if you can do that and if you want to do that.

00:03:07.600 | But I don't relate to that anymore. I'm past that phase in my life.

00:03:11.600 | So, it's a really great interview.

00:03:14.600 | And I think that one of the... I want to point out and share with you a few things I want you to listen for when I play the interview.

00:03:19.600 | I'm just going to give you a little bit of intro to the interview and a couple of quick announcements about the show and then we'll get straight to it.

00:03:24.600 | But notice their story.

00:03:27.600 | And in a nutshell, because I want to point out these lessons so that you can hear them in advance.

00:03:31.600 | I think that'll be better than Mike pointing them out at the end.

00:03:34.600 | In a nutshell, Mark and Lauren were very mainstream, middle-class America.

00:03:39.600 | Mark was working as an actuary. I think Lauren was working in the corporate world.

00:03:43.600 | And they started having some kids.

00:03:45.600 | They had a bunch of debt and they basically just found themselves in the normal place, stuck.

00:03:50.600 | And Lauren was doing some side business, I think, at that time.

00:03:53.600 | And they were essentially just a very stereotypical, normal couple.

00:03:56.600 | Middle-America, high-income, high-spending couple.

00:03:59.600 | And they have a lot of details that they get into with the interview around that theme.

00:04:03.600 | And then they woke up and they started paying attention.

00:04:06.600 | And what I want you to listen for in this interview is notice the transformative process and notice the tools of how everything that I talk about on the show, every single day, comes together in their story.

00:04:18.600 | And by the way, they're right in the middle of achieving their American dream.

00:04:21.600 | I wouldn't say--I bet you if they said it, I wouldn't say they've made it.

00:04:24.600 | It's quote-unquote. They're not financially independent, but they're working hard and they are experiencing independence.

00:04:30.600 | Mark recently quit his job as an actuary and both of them work full-time on their blogging business and their couponing business and other associated activities.

00:04:39.600 | So, I think it's a pretty cool story.

00:04:41.600 | Notice the themes, however.

00:04:43.600 | Notice that it started with waking up, paying attention, laying out a plan of what they actually wanted to do, which I think the first step was they wanted to get out of debt.

00:04:51.600 | Then they started cutting expenses.

00:04:53.600 | And cutting expenses is usually one of the easiest things to do.

00:04:56.600 | Notice as you're listening to them that they cut expenses in two different ways.

00:05:00.600 | First, by learning to coupon.

00:05:02.600 | That made a big difference, but it was really a small expense.

00:05:05.600 | And then, by doing some major downsizing.

00:05:08.600 | So, when I talk on the show about focus on both ends of the budget, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to focus on the little things and cut those out.

00:05:14.600 | But then sometimes it makes a lot more sense to say, "Forget all this little nickel and dime stuff. I'm just going to do something drastic like sell my house."

00:05:22.600 | Notice that.

00:05:23.600 | Also, notice that they focus on raising their income through side work and then also through building a business.

00:05:29.600 | That's the business that today fully supports them, which is I Am That Lady, Lauren's couponing website.

00:05:35.600 | Notice that the combination of those things together, entrepreneurship, raising income, lowering expenses, leads to what I think of as the first stage of financial freedom, which is essentially the opportunity to be your own boss.

00:05:50.600 | Because of their ability to cut expenses and because of their ability to live frugally, then recently Mark was able just to leave his actuary job and get out of corporate America, which is not the vision that he had for his life.

00:06:02.600 | And they were able to build their business and now they're free to work together.

00:06:06.600 | And the benefits of that, they're still working.

00:06:09.600 | They still have to work.

00:06:10.600 | But I would say the benefits of that are pretty cool.

00:06:12.600 | One of the things that happened was we had to reschedule this interview a couple of times and one of those times that it happened was actually due to a family funeral.

00:06:20.600 | And the interview reminder popped up and we tried to coordinate and Lauren emailed me and said, "Josh, I'm so sorry. We're at a funeral."

00:06:27.600 | I think it was Mark's grandmother may have passed away.

00:06:29.600 | And she said, "I'm so sorry."

00:06:31.600 | And we've been busy with that the last few days.

00:06:33.600 | And I'll tell you, in times like that, it's nice to run your own business where you can have full control over what you do.

00:06:39.600 | And then to be able to do things like do podcast interviews in the middle of the day.

00:06:42.600 | So, they're still in the middle of it financially.

00:06:44.600 | But the path to that was entrepreneurship, which is a theme that I talk constantly about.

00:06:49.600 | And just notice how all of these things come together.

00:06:52.600 | Notice how, as you're listening to this interview, notice how the three things, income, expenses, and investing, the difference.

00:07:00.600 | There's only three things you can affect.

00:07:02.600 | Notice how they affected all three of them.

00:07:04.600 | Number one, raising income with extra work and with side businesses.

00:07:08.600 | Number two, cutting expenses, couponing, downsizing, other frugal tips.

00:07:12.600 | Number three, investing the difference wisely into paying off debt.

00:07:17.600 | And then it sounds to me like they invested the difference primarily into entrepreneurship at this stage.

00:07:22.600 | That is probably the fastest way to achieve financial freedom that I can figure out for the average person.

00:07:28.600 | It's far faster than saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:07:31.600 | Now, then, once you've done that, you probably need to save the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:07:35.600 | So I hope you enjoy this interview. Real quick, before I start the interview, I want to make a couple of quick comments and answer some comments and questions that I've gotten on the blog.

00:07:45.600 | And I have a feeling anytime I receive an email question or a question on the blog, if there's one person that's asking it, then more people than that are asking it.

00:07:56.600 | So a few of you have been commenting on the launch of the membership site, The Irregulars.

00:07:59.600 | And if you're new to the show, I just recently launched a membership site.

00:08:02.600 | It's called The Irregulars, and that's the structure that I've designed for me to be able to make some money on the show and hopefully to provide my living with this aspect of work.

00:08:11.600 | That's my goal.

00:08:12.600 | And so to do that, I've launched this site and this membership program.

00:08:17.600 | And so far, several of you have signed up, and I really appreciate that.

00:08:20.600 | Thank you to those of you who have done that.

00:08:23.600 | I really value and appreciate the support.

00:08:25.600 | I've received a few questions, however, about how I'm doing it and why I'm doing it.

00:08:31.600 | And as well as a few logistics about using PayPal and recurring payments.

00:08:35.600 | Let me answer a few of those things to you.

00:08:37.600 | Number one, some people suggest that I set up an option for a one-time donation button, one-time donation where people could just simply say, "Hey, I want to support the show.

00:08:48.600 | I don't want to sign up for a membership, but I do want to support the show with a donation."

00:08:52.600 | I thank you for wanting to do that, and I appreciate that.

00:08:55.600 | The reason I haven't done that, I could have done that.

00:08:58.600 | Probably the simplest way to do that would be for me to have used a website and a service called Patreon.

00:09:04.600 | It's spelled P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

00:09:07.600 | And it's basically something that people have launched where content creators can be supported directly by you.

00:09:13.600 | And it allows you to set an amount that you want to support at.

00:09:17.600 | It can be any amount, and then you can set it to be recurring, and you can set it to be recurring based upon basically when I publish content.

00:09:24.600 | It's a pretty neat system that they've set up, and it seems like a really great option.

00:09:27.600 | I chose not to go that route because I'm developing a product for you to buy.

00:09:34.600 | And so my vision for the membership program, The Irregulars, is not that it's a donation, an appreciation to me for the content that I'm putting out on the podcast,

00:09:45.600 | but rather that it's a standalone product with lots of value in it of it.

00:09:49.600 | At the moment, it is not that.

00:09:51.600 | At the moment, it's just purely an appreciation of, "Hey, Joshua, thanks for doing the shows."

00:09:55.600 | But that's my vision for what I want to create it into.

00:09:58.600 | I want to put behind that in that membership program, I want to put a lot of really helpful resources, helpful e-books that I can find, helpful videos.

00:10:07.600 | I may create some extra bonus content simplifying some of these concepts for you.

00:10:12.600 | I want very much to find some good deals and some discounts programs and things like that to serve you with behind that membership wall.

00:10:21.600 | And so I am developing that into a product.

00:10:24.600 | So it's not just a donation, it's into a product.

00:10:27.600 | I don't view it as simply a donation to support me.

00:10:30.600 | I view it as a product that I'm developing.

00:10:32.600 | Now, those of you who have so far signed up are basically – it's not there.

00:10:36.600 | It doesn't exist yet.

00:10:37.600 | I've still got to make it, which is a big focus of mine here in December and starting the new year, is to get some stuff back there for you.

00:10:44.600 | I'm not committing to put everything there for free.

00:10:46.600 | I'm not saying that I'm going to write all these things.

00:10:49.600 | I'm going to create 18 brilliant video courses and they're all going to be for free back there.

00:10:54.600 | I actually don't think they will.

00:10:56.600 | But I do think that I will always give a priority, a very special pricing discount or something like that.

00:11:02.600 | I want the membership to be the primary basis.

00:11:05.600 | That's why I haven't set that up as a recurring – excuse me, just as an option for a one-time donation.

00:11:12.600 | If you would like me to do that, if you get the vision of the product of the irregulars and if you would like me to set up, for example, the patron account, let me know that.

00:11:23.600 | Just shoot me an email or comment.

00:11:25.600 | My email address is joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

00:11:29.600 | I guess I'd be happy to do that.

00:11:32.600 | I mean I value the support, but I just want to do value for value.

00:11:37.600 | I don't want to be a charity.

00:11:38.600 | I don't need charity.

00:11:39.600 | I want to create a business and this is what fulfills and matches my personal ethical principles is I think everything should be a win-win-win.

00:11:49.600 | So I'm not looking for charity.

00:11:51.600 | Now I recognize that the way patron is set up is not charity either.

00:11:54.600 | It's hey, we appreciate the content.

00:11:56.600 | But as far as I'm concerned, the show can be free.

00:11:59.600 | That's fine.

00:12:00.600 | I'm really – I wasn't sure when I started recording episodes.

00:12:05.600 | I thought I would be able to do everything in the show.

00:12:07.600 | But what I'm learning is for me to create an interesting show, that's really awesome if you're able to listen to everything.

00:12:13.600 | But many times what you need is just a solution, is just a straight-up solution to a problem.

00:12:18.600 | And so that I think is where I can most effectively develop some products to say, "Hey, it's coming up to tax time.

00:12:25.600 | What's my mindset to be?"

00:12:28.600 | And I'll do some of that for free.

00:12:29.600 | I'll list out a playlist.

00:12:30.600 | Hey, here is a playlist of shows.

00:12:32.600 | But there's so much content on the show here that I think I'll be able to keep the content here for free

00:12:38.600 | and then develop some courses that are specifically helping you to solve your problems in a focused way.

00:12:45.600 | I'm sitting down with my group benefits.

00:12:46.600 | How do I think this through?

00:12:48.600 | I need a 60-minute video of Joshua saying, "Okay, let's go through your group benefits.

00:12:52.600 | Here's your health insurance.

00:12:53.600 | Here are your options.

00:12:54.600 | Fundamentally, here are your choices."

00:12:55.600 | And you just – that's $20.

00:12:57.600 | That's going to save you.

00:12:58.600 | It's a lot better than asking the broke guy in the cubicle next to you what group benefits you should sign up for.

00:13:02.600 | So things like that is what I think I can create with products as I'm able to build the capacity to do those.

00:13:09.600 | I've never done them before.

00:13:10.600 | So it's excruciatingly slow when you're launching things.

00:13:13.600 | So that's why I didn't set it up with a one-time donation.

00:13:17.600 | So if you guys would like me to set that up as an additional option, for those of you who would do that,

00:13:22.600 | shoot me an email and let me know if there's a demand for that.

00:13:24.600 | I'll be happy to do that and I appreciate your support.

00:13:28.600 | I also had some questions about a one-time only option for PayPal.

00:13:33.600 | There's a reason why I only have the recurring subscription button there on PayPal.

00:13:37.600 | And that reason is because it goes back to, again, why I am creating this as a product.

00:13:44.600 | So that's why I didn't do a one-time payment to say, "Okay, pay for a one-time payment."

00:13:49.600 | It's set up as a subscription.

00:13:52.600 | But I'm going to tell you the workaround and why I chose PayPal.

00:13:55.600 | The subscription is important because it helps me.

00:13:58.600 | First of all, it's important for me because it helps me to have some ability of predictive ability with my cash flow.

00:14:05.600 | When you're running a business, you need to know that you have some basic level of cash flow to rely on.

00:14:13.600 | So it's important for me.

00:14:14.600 | It also matches what I'm trying – what I'm going to build – not trying.

00:14:18.600 | I am going to build in the irregulars, which is a major source of content to which I'm always adding new things.

00:14:26.600 | And so I need the access to that content to be based upon the subscription.

00:14:31.600 | So the way I have it set up with PayPal is – and the way PayPal works is I do not have the ability to charge you when you have a PayPal account.

00:14:40.600 | When you set up and you decide to subscribe to my membership site using PayPal, I don't have the ability to draft your credit card.

00:14:50.600 | Rather, that's an authorization that you make.

00:14:53.600 | If you would like to do something such as, "Josh, I want to purchase a one-year subscription to the show and I'm going to start it on November 24, 2014,

00:15:04.600 | but I don't want my PayPal account to be automatically debited a year from now on November 24, 2015," that's fine.

00:15:10.600 | It's very easy.

00:15:11.600 | All you need to do is just simply do the one – just sign up for the one year and then immediately after you get all your login credentials and everything like that done,

00:15:21.600 | immediately log into PayPal and cancel the recurring subscription.

00:15:24.600 | In PayPal, you'll see there's My Authorized Payments I think is what it's called, and all you just need to do is click Cancel.

00:15:30.600 | Then your membership will be active for one year and then on November 25, 2015, after the year has passed, hopefully if my software is working right,

00:15:40.600 | you shouldn't be able to log in anymore after that date, but it will pay you for the next year.

00:15:44.600 | Then if you want to manually do it on November 25 so you don't get some kind of unexpected whack on your checking account or credit card account, that's totally fine.

00:15:52.600 | That's entirely cool with me.

00:15:54.600 | All you need to do is authorize it and then cancel it.

00:15:57.600 | But because I want to keep providing there as a subscription, I just chose that as the default.

00:16:02.600 | But with PayPal, you're entirely in control.

00:16:04.600 | That's important to me because that also fits my values and my ethics personally.

00:16:09.600 | I don't like it when people are automatically taking – I don't like it if a gym membership I signed up for some stupid contract and they're billing my credit card and I can't get the thing stopped.

00:16:19.600 | To me, I think PayPal is the most straightforward way to do that.

00:16:22.600 | So for those of you who don't want to sign up for the recurring payments, I'm going to leave it just as recurring.

00:16:29.600 | But all you need to do – it's very simple – is sign up and then immediately go and cancel, and you'll have your year taken care of.

00:16:37.600 | But that's why that's set up is because the subscription site that I want you to have ongoing access to and if you're going to pay for an annual subscription, that's what gives me the motivation to keep enhancing.

00:16:49.600 | By the way, real quick – not real quick – the reason why that's important, the lining up the subscription site, is because that's what gives me the motivation to continue adding value to the Irregulars program.

00:17:02.600 | So as far as the incentives that exist, I'm setting up the incentives in that way to incentivize me to put on my to-do list, "I need to go and add value to that site," to keep those of you around, to keep you wanting to subscribe on an ongoing basis.

00:17:19.600 | So that's why I don't have the one-time option.

00:17:22.600 | That's why it is set up as automatic payments.

00:17:24.600 | But you are fully in control with PayPal.

00:17:26.600 | I don't have the ability to charge you without authorization.

00:17:31.600 | All you do is just go in and cancel.

00:17:32.600 | It's very simple, very straightforward.

00:17:34.600 | If you have any problems with that, just email me, Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I can fix that for you.

00:17:41.600 | If there are any tech problems with that, I can tell you exactly where it is.

00:17:45.600 | Finally, if you've asked me for a desire to pay with other forms of payment other than PayPal, yes, that's coming soon.

00:17:52.600 | So I'm going to launch -- I'm going to try to -- one of the things that I would like to promote is I don't like PayPal to have -- it actually saves me money.

00:18:01.600 | I think PayPal charges me something like 3%.

00:18:04.600 | What's the transaction fee?

00:18:06.600 | Anyway, it's not cheap.

00:18:07.600 | So it's in my best interest to accept other forms of PayPal.

00:18:10.600 | The reason I chose PayPal is even though it's not the cheapest option, I like it because it puts you in control, and it's the simplest option in today's world.

00:18:19.600 | But I'm going to set up alternative systems.

00:18:21.600 | So I'm going to set up to accept checks.

00:18:23.600 | So you can send me a paper check.

00:18:24.600 | So for those of you who dislike using PayPal, I get it.

00:18:27.600 | That's fine.

00:18:28.600 | I'll accept paper checks.

00:18:30.600 | What I need to do is I need to get a P.O. box first because I already lost a lot of privacy, and I don't really want to publish my home address.

00:18:37.600 | And since I work from a home office here, then I need to go get a P.O. box.

00:18:41.600 | And as soon as I get that set up, then you'll be able to send me checks there.

00:18:44.600 | So I'll publish that.

00:18:45.600 | Just stand by.

00:18:46.600 | I should have that done soon.

00:18:47.600 | Also, I'm going to try to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

00:18:51.600 | Bitcoin is easy to set up.

00:18:54.600 | I don't know how easy it is to set up some of the other cryptocurrencies, but I would love to support and do business more with the cryptocurrency movement.

00:19:02.600 | It's always been something that's been of interest to me that I've wanted to get involved with but too many things on the list.

00:19:08.600 | And then finally, I want to accept coins, barter systems, gold and silver coins, things like that.

00:19:14.600 | So I'm going to set that up, but I also need to get the P.O. box established for that as well.

00:19:18.600 | So that should be coming soon.

00:19:19.600 | So that's just some background on the membership site.

00:19:22.600 | And that's it.

00:19:25.600 | Enjoy the interview here with Mark and Lauren.

00:19:27.600 | So Mark and Lauren, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

00:19:31.600 | I appreciate you being with me.

00:19:32.600 | Yeah, thanks for having us.

00:19:33.600 | Thanks for having us.

00:19:34.600 | I've been looking forward to this chat.

00:19:36.600 | I mean, it took us forever to get it scheduled.

00:19:37.600 | Right.

00:19:38.600 | But I've been looking forward to this chat since we had a chance to talk there in New Orleans a month or two ago.

00:19:44.600 | And you guys have an extremely unique story.

00:19:48.600 | And I think there are going to be a number of themes that we'll be able to develop and share with the audience around that's going to completely intertwine all the things that I'm into, which is essentially entrepreneurship, saving money, personal finance, and how all of these things are all mixed up together and they're not separate, distinct.

00:20:07.600 | They're not separate, distinct little silos that we can tackle necessarily one at a time, but they all flow together.

00:20:14.600 | So let's start with actually just you sharing a little bit of your story.

00:20:18.600 | What is your background relating to money and personal finance?

00:20:22.600 | And how did you kind of come through over the years between coming of age to where you are today?

00:20:27.600 | Well, we've been married for -- I should know this, right?

00:20:32.600 | You should know this.

00:20:33.600 | 12 years.

00:20:34.600 | 12 and a half years, yeah.

00:20:35.600 | Okay.

00:20:36.600 | And both of us come from completely different money backgrounds when it comes to how we were raised.

00:20:41.600 | So we get married and we don't see eye to eye.

00:20:45.600 | And it works -- we do okay for the first few years, but then after a couple years, we really found ourselves in quite a bit of debt.

00:20:54.600 | And I think a lot of it had to do with just bad decisions, but also just we weren't on the same page.

00:21:00.600 | Yeah, so I came from a background of upper middle class family that used a lot of credit cards, and Mark came from, I would say, lower middle class, paid cash.

00:21:12.600 | Hey.

00:21:13.600 | I'm not saying that.

00:21:14.600 | No, I know.

00:21:15.600 | It was more blue collar.

00:21:16.600 | It was very blue collar.

00:21:17.600 | They paid cash for everything, never got into money trouble, always paid for everything.

00:21:22.600 | And so when we got married, it was really hard.

00:21:25.600 | It was hard for me.

00:21:26.600 | I was used to buying whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to.

00:21:28.600 | And our first argument after we got married was over a bag of Doritos in the grocery store because I wanted to buy one for $4, and Mark thought that that was just absurd.

00:21:37.600 | And we got in an argument in the middle of the store.

00:21:39.600 | Wow.

00:21:40.600 | I remember that.

00:21:41.600 | Yeah, so fast forward three years after that, we're in $40,000 worth of debt, running a $1,000 deficit every month, and we're underwater in our mortgage by quite a bit of money.

00:21:52.600 | Before you go further, Lauren, I have a quick question because you point out something interesting.

00:21:57.600 | Did your parents train you around money?

00:21:59.600 | Did they set rules, boundaries?

00:22:01.600 | Did they give you an allowance as a child?

00:22:03.600 | How did they work with you around money or not work with you around money?

00:22:07.600 | I can't remember really ever having chores.

00:22:10.600 | If we were asked to do something, it was like, "Ugh, you want me to unload the dishwasher?"

00:22:16.600 | We never had chores.

00:22:18.600 | The only training that I remember growing up with money was when I would ask for something, and my mom would say, "Come here and bring me to the dining room and open up this ledger book."

00:22:30.600 | And inside the ledger book was handwritten, "This is what our money looks like," and then she would yell at me and say, "Do you see how much money that we're making? I can't afford this."

00:22:39.600 | But then the next day, we would go to the mall and go shopping.

00:22:44.600 | Now, when we went shopping, we did go to the clearance racks a lot of times because you could find good deals.

00:22:49.600 | I grew up knowing how to find a good deal, but I didn't understand money.

00:22:55.600 | I didn't have responsibility.

00:22:59.600 | I mean, I got a job when I was 16, but only because I wanted to have money to go out and hang out with my friends.

00:23:05.600 | Go ahead.

00:23:08.600 | I was going to say, Mark, how did your parents work with you?

00:23:10.600 | Well, I did get an allowance, but I had to do chores to get it.

00:23:15.600 | I think it was $2 a week at one point, and then we got a raise to $4 a week.

00:23:22.600 | But they also made us tithe.

00:23:25.600 | They made us save some of it.

00:23:28.600 | And then when we were old enough to get a job, this was back in the 1990s, which my son just referred to as the 1900s yesterday.

00:23:37.600 | So, when I was like, I think 11 or so, they made us get paper routes.

00:23:43.600 | So, each of us had a different paper route, and we had to make money doing that.

00:23:48.600 | I think I made $12 a week.

00:23:50.600 | That's pretty good for 11.

00:23:52.600 | So, I had 12 plus the 4, but I had to work for it.

00:23:55.600 | And they made us save almost half of it.

00:23:57.600 | So, I don't know.

00:23:59.600 | They just made us not spend all of it, which is probably wise.

00:24:05.600 | So, I'm interested, and I'm going to let you finish your story in a minute.

00:24:08.600 | This is just a theme I haven't explored on the show yet, which is why I latched on to it.

00:24:12.600 | Have you thought about how you are working or how you plan to work with your children based upon what you've learned from your respective backgrounds surrounding money?

00:24:21.600 | Absolutely.

00:24:22.600 | It's something we struggle with.

00:24:23.600 | We talk about it a lot.

00:24:25.600 | And we have one 9-year-old son, and the rest of our kids, they're all daughters.

00:24:30.600 | They're 5 and under.

00:24:31.600 | So, we're not quite to the point with them yet.

00:24:33.600 | But with our son, who's 9, who just referred to 1999 as the 1900s, we do deal with money with him.

00:24:41.600 | And he has chores he has to do.

00:24:43.600 | And it's hard to be consistent all the time, but we're definitely trying to be as intentional as we can.

00:24:50.600 | We make him save.

00:24:52.600 | We make him tithe to our church.

00:24:54.600 | He has to do a certain chore.

00:24:57.600 | His job is to take out the garbage, and he has to either set or clear the table every night.

00:25:01.600 | He's just starting to clean up the kitchen by himself.

00:25:04.600 | He has to mop our kitchen floor, and we'll pay him extra when he does that.

00:25:08.600 | And honestly, this is all new to me.

00:25:12.600 | I'm kind of taking Mark's lead on this because I have no idea how to make a child do chores.

00:25:20.600 | Because I wasn't brought up that way.

00:25:22.600 | I'm clueless.

00:25:23.600 | And so I'm taking Mark's lead.

00:25:25.600 | And we've been kind of fiddling around with a few different things over the years of how to make it work.

00:25:30.600 | And this seems to be doing the best, where he's expected to do his chores.

00:25:35.600 | Oh, and one thing that you added this past month, Mark, was that if his bedroom wasn't clean on Saturday night, he wasn't getting his allowance on Sunday.

00:25:44.600 | So that's one thing that--

00:25:47.600 | That's helped keep the bedroom clean.

00:25:48.600 | Yeah, because that's a struggle.

00:25:49.600 | So we made that a challenge for him.

00:25:51.600 | Right.

00:25:52.600 | Keep going.

00:25:53.600 | So you had an argument over a bag of Doritos, and that's where it started.

00:25:55.600 | Keep going from there.

00:25:57.600 | Sure.

00:25:58.600 | Well, I mean, we were still in college then.

00:26:01.600 | So, Laura, I was brought up also to sort of believe that holding credit card debt was a terrible idea.

00:26:09.600 | I think my parents had credit cards, but they always made it a point to tell us, "Hey, we have these credit cards, but we pay them off every single month, so we never have balance."

00:26:18.600 | So that's kind of what I grew up believing.

00:26:20.600 | So I went through all of my college career, except for my senior year when we were married, without a credit card.

00:26:27.600 | And then Lauren kind of said, "Hey, you need to get a credit card. This is what you do."

00:26:30.600 | And I'm like, "Okay."

00:26:32.600 | So I guess I was easily swayed by her, but, you know.

00:26:35.600 | Yeah.

00:26:36.600 | So then credit cards became just an issue for us.

00:26:39.600 | And Mark got a job right out of college as an actuary.

00:26:43.600 | And so he had a well-paying career.

00:26:46.600 | And I was a drug and alcohol counselor for a few years, and then I quit that when we started having children.

00:26:52.600 | We really did okay for those first three years, I'd say.

00:26:56.600 | Yeah, and then we decided that we wanted to get a house built for us, and we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina from New York.

00:27:02.600 | And buy a nicer car.

00:27:03.600 | And buy a nicer car.

00:27:05.600 | And we just decided that we wanted to be, I don't know, rich.

00:27:12.600 | But we weren't. That was the problem.

00:27:14.600 | I guess, yeah, have the luxuries before we had earned them.

00:27:17.600 | Right.

00:27:18.600 | And so we had this huge house built for us.

00:27:21.600 | And after two or three months of moving down there and living in this huge home that we couldn't afford, I was actually doing a direct sales company.

00:27:30.600 | And I won a pink Cadillac.

00:27:32.600 | You can probably guess which direct sales company this is now.

00:27:35.600 | Let's see. It wouldn't happen to have the initials MK, would it?

00:27:38.600 | Yeah.

00:27:39.600 | Good for you. Congrats.

00:27:40.600 | And a lot of the debt that I got into was kind of acquired through that position.

00:27:47.600 | And so I had the pink Cadillac, and we had an Audi, and we had this beautiful custom home.

00:27:53.600 | So it looked like we had it all together.

00:27:55.600 | But what people didn't know is that we were facing probably the worst financial times that we could have been in.

00:28:02.600 | Then I quit Mary Kay, and I started learning how to coupon.

00:28:06.600 | And needed to coupon and learn how to meal plan in order to eat.

00:28:12.600 | I mean, it was necessary for us.

00:28:15.600 | Right. And we hadn't really been tracking our expenses too well since then either.

00:28:20.600 | We never budgeted.

00:28:21.600 | Right. But then when we decided to actually look at what we were spending, we realized that we were spending almost $1,000 a month on food.

00:28:29.600 | And this was just a family of three at that point.

00:28:32.600 | So this was between grocery stores and going out to eat. It was about $1,000.

00:28:37.600 | And Lauren figured out that if – and you were waitressing at this point.

00:28:41.600 | Right, because I needed to get a job to pay the bills.

00:28:44.600 | So she figured out that if she could cut our food budget from $1,000 a month down to $200 a month,

00:28:51.600 | she could quit her job, stay home with our son, who was two then, and we could make it work.

00:28:56.600 | We could just barely scrape by.

00:28:58.600 | So that's what we did and that's how you got started getting crazy, saving money at the drugstores and grocery stores.

00:29:05.600 | And about what year was this?

00:29:08.600 | This was 2008.

00:29:10.600 | So this was, I guess, before the idea of couponing really went mainstream.

00:29:17.600 | This was kind of more at the beginning stages of it online. Is that right?

00:29:20.600 | Yeah. It was before that whole extreme couponing phenomenon and before couponing was cool, I like to say.

00:29:28.600 | I was doing it.

00:29:30.600 | Back when you were that crazy lady instead of everyone saying, "Wow, you're cool."

00:29:35.600 | Yeah, yep, yep.

00:29:37.600 | But for those – we still had two more years where we were in this giant house.

00:29:42.600 | So we weren't really able to make any progress on our debts at that point.

00:29:45.600 | We were still just treading water and just making it work.

00:29:48.600 | But then in late 2009, we finally decided to move back to upstate New York, which is where we live now.

00:29:55.600 | It's where we both grew up.

00:29:57.600 | But we were underwater in our mortgage.

00:30:01.600 | So we found a way to actually get approved for a short sale on our house.

00:30:05.600 | And that helped out a lot and that allowed us to move back up here.

00:30:09.600 | And we moved into about 800 or 900 square foot little townhouse apartment that was – I think it was, what, $700 a month?

00:30:17.600 | And that included utilities.

00:30:18.600 | It was dirt cheap, but it was tiny.

00:30:20.600 | It was so small.

00:30:22.600 | We had two kids at this point.

00:30:24.600 | So we lived there for almost a year, and that's when we really got crazy.

00:30:29.600 | Yeah, we sold everything we had pretty much.

00:30:31.600 | Sold my drum sets.

00:30:33.600 | We sold everything.

00:30:34.600 | We barely had any expenses.

00:30:37.600 | We got rid of a lot of our cell phone.

00:30:39.600 | I think we were – we had our cars.

00:30:42.600 | We were paying off our cars.

00:30:44.600 | So we're now completely debt-free except for our mortgage.

00:30:47.600 | Wow, good for you.

00:30:48.600 | But it was hard work, six years of really hard work.

00:30:52.600 | What was the inspiration that made the difference for you?

00:30:55.600 | Did you just get tired and figured out on your own?

00:30:58.600 | Did you read a book?

00:30:59.600 | Did you hear a radio show or a podcast or meet a friend?

00:31:03.600 | What made the difference for you as far as the catalyst?

00:31:05.600 | Well, I know that we did listen to some Dave Ramsey CDs.

00:31:10.600 | Awesome.

00:31:11.600 | Did someone give it to you as a gift?

00:31:12.600 | I think it was Mark's brother.

00:31:14.600 | Okay.

00:31:15.600 | Your brother gave it to me.

00:31:16.600 | He just let us listen to him.

00:31:17.600 | So I remember on one car trip on the way from Charlotte back to New York, we listened to one of his CDs.

00:31:22.600 | So that was a catalyst for us.

00:31:24.600 | But then also we just really – I don't know.

00:31:27.600 | We were just so sick and tired of being broke.

00:31:30.600 | And we really decided – we kind of sat down and figured out our values for our family

00:31:37.600 | and realized that we were spending our money and we felt completely out of control.

00:31:42.600 | So that was kind of the catalyst for us.

00:31:45.600 | We were just sick and tired of being broke all the time and just realized we need to just really get really serious about this and kind of extreme.

00:31:52.600 | And just started making drastic changes.

00:31:56.600 | And everybody thought we were crazy.

00:31:58.600 | But now they're like, "Wow, you did a good job."

00:32:02.600 | Absolutely.

00:32:03.600 | It's funny.

00:32:04.600 | When we talk to people about our journey to become debt-free and much more financially independent,

00:32:10.600 | people think about becoming debt-free as this big moment.

00:32:13.600 | But it really wasn't for us.

00:32:15.600 | I feel like the biggest moment was this one night when we were in that little apartment.

00:32:19.600 | We had just moved in there.

00:32:20.600 | And we were sitting on the couch at night and we just decided we were going to do it.

00:32:26.600 | And we were going to change everything.

00:32:28.600 | And that's when I decided to put my drum set up on eBay.

00:32:31.600 | And we just decided to sell everything.

00:32:34.600 | That was the most significant moment in our journey to get out of debt and become financially independent.

00:32:41.600 | That was the most significant one.

00:32:43.600 | Much more significant than actually becoming debt-free because we had already decided that's what we were going to do.

00:32:49.600 | I used to listen to--I don't actually remember the source of this, but they were talking about sailing.

00:32:55.600 | And they said the most difficult decision is the decision that you make to go on a round-the-world sailing trip.

00:33:02.600 | And the most difficult time is not actually when you're leaving the dock and casting off the bow line to head off into the great blue sea.

00:33:13.600 | It's the decision months and years earlier to decide I'm going to do it.

00:33:18.600 | And then from then on, it's just a very simple set of steps.

00:33:21.600 | And it seems I've noticed the same thing with finance is that there's not actually that much intrigue to the process of becoming financially free.

00:33:34.600 | It's more the decision, and then it's just a matter of following the steps consistently for enough time with enough focus and intensity depending on what your situation is.

00:33:42.600 | And eventually, you will get there if you don't quit.

00:33:45.600 | It seems like so many things in life are like that.

00:33:48.600 | If you simply don't quit, success is guaranteed if you don't quit.

00:33:52.600 | But somehow we often labor under this idea that it's possible this thing won't happen for me.

00:34:00.600 | And very much, there are going to be hiccups.

00:34:02.600 | There are going to be things that happen.

00:34:03.600 | There are going to be setbacks.

00:34:04.600 | But if you don't quit, success is guaranteed.

00:34:06.600 | Failure is guaranteed if you quit.

00:34:09.600 | So, it's interesting.

00:34:11.600 | That really resonates with me as far as there being a decision.

00:34:15.600 | And you say, "Okay, this is it. We're going to do it."

00:34:17.600 | It's almost like our brain was already there.

00:34:20.600 | We just had to make reality follow what we had decided.

00:34:25.600 | I think that's an awesome analogy about sailing around the world.

00:34:28.600 | Yeah, I like that.

00:34:29.600 | It's the decision.

00:34:30.600 | It really is.

00:34:32.600 | The process is simple with almost every life decision.

00:34:35.600 | You're going to get married?

00:34:36.600 | Well, the decision starts with the day you decide, "Okay, I'm going to get married."

00:34:39.600 | From then on, it's just follow the steps.

00:34:41.600 | We're going to plan the wedding.

00:34:42.600 | Here's what we're going to do.

00:34:43.600 | Here's what we're not going to do.

00:34:44.600 | It's fairly straightforward.

00:34:46.600 | You have to make the decision to not quit.

00:34:48.600 | Same with marriage.

00:34:50.600 | If divorce isn't an option, then you'll figure out how to get through those tough times.

00:34:54.600 | Absolutely.

00:34:55.600 | Going back into debt isn't an option, then you'll figure out a way to make it work.

00:34:59.600 | Right.

00:35:00.600 | I have a quote that's on my desktop.

00:35:03.600 | It says, "Tired of starting over? Stop giving up."

00:35:08.600 | That's true.

00:35:09.600 | To me, that's the quote that's been on my desktop for the last six months, I think.

00:35:13.600 | Simply that.

00:35:14.600 | If you're tired of starting over, just stop giving up and you never have to start over again.

00:35:17.600 | You just got to keep going.

00:35:18.600 | I'm going to steal that one.

00:35:21.600 | Yeah, steal it.

00:35:22.600 | Fast forward, you guys make it pretty though because the ones on my background isn't one of those pretty ones.

00:35:26.600 | Your sites are beautiful.

00:35:28.600 | You've got the design skills.

00:35:29.600 | Make it some beautiful, inspiring picture with beautiful text.

00:35:33.600 | Instagram worthy, right?

00:35:35.600 | Yeah, we'll send it over to you.

00:35:36.600 | Good.

00:35:37.600 | Then I can update the ugly one that's on mine.

00:35:39.600 | Fast forward, now you have four children, right?

00:35:42.600 | Do you still live in the 700 square foot apartment?

00:35:45.600 | Nope.

00:35:46.600 | We actually bought a pretty modest sized home that is about 1,700 square feet.

00:35:53.600 | Awesome.

00:35:54.600 | We upgraded to a 100-year-old house.

00:35:56.600 | Yeah, built in the early 1900s.

00:35:59.600 | We own a home now, but we definitely bought a lot less than what we can afford because we didn't want to be ever house poor again.

00:36:09.600 | Right.

00:36:10.600 | But the cool thing about where we live now is we actually almost did upgrade again into a bigger house, but we found a way to make this one work.

00:36:19.600 | Our minds are just set on staying in this house forever now.

00:36:23.600 | We're kind of done with the upgrade mentality.

00:36:26.600 | Yeah, so we refinished our attic.

00:36:28.600 | We have an extra bedroom and now our office is in the attic.

00:36:32.600 | So yeah, we like it.

00:36:35.600 | You are full-time entrepreneurs now.

00:36:37.600 | Yes, we are.

00:36:39.600 | So Mark quit his job about nine months ago.

00:36:42.600 | It was January of this year.

00:36:44.600 | Yep, as an actuary, and now we're full-time entrepreneurs working out of our house, getting to be with our family, and it's just a dream come true.

00:36:53.600 | And that's something we never really thought about when we started this journey to become financially free.

00:36:59.600 | We never really even took into account what it would allow our lifestyle to do, how much freedom we would have in our lifestyle.

00:37:07.600 | We never really even thought about that, but it's something we've taken advantage of.

00:37:11.600 | But it wouldn't have been possible or it would have been a lot more difficult if you hadn't lowered basically your monthly expenses, right?

00:37:21.600 | Yeah, and if we had never worked as hard to get out of debt.

00:37:24.600 | When we were working so hard to get out of debt, it just always felt like this is the way it's always going to be.

00:37:30.600 | We're never going to be debt-free.

00:37:32.600 | And then we made that decision on the couch that one night, like Mark had said, and then we decided we're going to be debt-free and this is going to be awesome.

00:37:39.600 | And I never in a million years would have thought that Mark would have quit his job so that we could really pursue our passion of teaching people how to do what we did.

00:37:48.600 | And it's funny that we can do this because of the couponing skills that you learned way back when.

00:37:55.600 | Yeah.

00:37:56.600 | So I know you wrote an entire book on that, but I'd like to pivot and talk about couponing.

00:38:02.600 | This is – and I'm interested to know, A, where do you start if somebody's interested in learning about couponing?

00:38:09.600 | Where do you start and how do you figure out where you're going to get the most bang for the buck?

00:38:13.600 | Right, so couponing – I wrote a book called How to Coupon Effectively.

00:38:18.600 | And that book kind of walks you through it step by step, even things like where to find coupons, where to find the best coupons, how to use them.

00:38:28.600 | And couponing is great, but I just – when I'm teaching people how to coupon, I'm teaching people more how to do strategic grocery shopping.

00:38:37.600 | So couponing is great, but a lot of times people who don't know how to coupon the right way will actually end up spending more money and becoming more broke because they're not using them the right way.

00:38:47.600 | So coupons are kind of like icing on the cake.

00:38:49.600 | So when I'm looking at a grocery bill – like let's say I'm working because we're a council of couples and I'll teach them how to cut their grocery bill back.

00:38:57.600 | The first step is I tell them is that you really need to be focusing on what's on sale that week.

00:39:02.600 | So take out your grocery store flyer, see what's on sale.

00:39:06.600 | The pages – the front page of your grocery store flyer has what are called loss leaders.

00:39:13.600 | Loss leaders are items that are on such a deep discount that usually the store is losing money on them.

00:39:20.600 | And the reason why they put them on the front of the ad is because they want to entice you to come into their store because those prices are so good and then you buy the rest of your groceries there.

00:39:30.600 | And so if you have multiple grocery stores in the same area – when we lived in Charlotte, I had five different grocery stores within like a 10-mile radius.

00:39:40.600 | So what I would do is I would go to all five of those stores.

00:39:44.600 | Now I wouldn't do that now, but back in my crazy days, I would go to all five stores and only shop the loss leader sales off the front page.

00:39:54.600 | So I would kind of stock up on those items that were in their loss leaders.

00:39:58.600 | So what couponing – how it really works is so you find the item when it's on sale and then you use a coupon with that item.

00:40:06.600 | The biggest mistake I think people use when they're starting to use coupons is they get a coupon and then they head right out and they use it.

00:40:14.600 | But then they're really not saving a ton of money.

00:40:17.600 | Because they're buying something they wouldn't have bought anyway.

00:40:19.600 | Right.

00:40:20.600 | So coupons are another source of marketing and so you need to pay attention and use them to your benefit, not to the marketer's benefit.

00:40:29.600 | Does that make sense?

00:40:30.600 | Yeah.

00:40:31.600 | So yeah, that's how you get started.

00:40:33.600 | So sites like yours – so your site is Iamthatlady.com.

00:40:39.600 | Right.

00:40:40.600 | Sites like yours, what is the primary value that they bring to your readers and subscribers?

00:40:45.600 | Is it that they are primarily telling what the deals are for this week, what the loss leaders are, where to get the coupons?

00:40:51.600 | How does it actually work?

00:40:53.600 | What do you actually do on the sites?

00:40:55.600 | Well, what you do is – so with Iamthatlady.com, we do what are called coupon matchups.

00:41:01.600 | What coupon matchups are, we take grocery store flyers from like Walmart and Rite Aid and CVS and Walgreens.

00:41:08.600 | And we match the sales up for that week with the coupons that are out there.

00:41:12.600 | Okay.

00:41:13.600 | To show you the kind of the rock bottom price.

00:41:15.600 | So ultimately what my goal is on I Am That Lady is really to make saving very, very simple.

00:41:23.600 | That somebody doesn't have to go through the grocery store flyer themselves to find those deals.

00:41:27.600 | They can come right to I Am That Lady.

00:41:29.600 | They can look and see what deals are out there for their store.

00:41:33.600 | So they don't have to figure it all out.

00:41:35.600 | It's just super-duper easy.

00:41:37.600 | And then I do articles and meal plans.

00:41:41.600 | Do you have Aldi's near you?

00:41:43.600 | We have one.

00:41:45.600 | Okay.

00:41:46.600 | So we put together Aldi meal plans on that site so that people can – they're all like – so we just launched a recent one, 20 meals for $150 at Aldi.

00:41:56.600 | And that includes a Thanksgiving feast.

00:41:58.600 | Okay.

00:41:59.600 | So we're trying to make it super easy for like the typical mom who's busy and doing a thousand things at once to come, get their coupon match-ups, see what's on sale, see what kind of deals they can find.

00:42:11.600 | Other stores find Frugal Levain tips, recipes, and then these meal plans.

00:42:17.600 | So then the business model is that you run basically a membership site.

00:42:23.600 | So people – are there extra benefits or how does it work between membership versus not membership from a business perspective?

00:42:29.600 | There's actually no membership.

00:42:31.600 | Really?

00:42:32.600 | Yeah.

00:42:33.600 | With I Am That Lady, there's no membership.

00:42:34.600 | So your site is based on advertising?

00:42:36.600 | Yeah, advertising.

00:42:37.600 | Wow.

00:42:38.600 | There's actually probably – there's probably about 10 different revenue streams that I get from I Am That Lady.

00:42:42.600 | And I have to be – it's kind of – running a coupon Frugal Levain website is pretty labor-intensive.

00:42:50.600 | I would imagine.

00:42:51.600 | Yeah.

00:42:52.600 | It's not labor-intensive.

00:42:53.600 | We actually have a team of six people that help us run that site because I just – there's no way that I could be doing that and being – running our other site and being a good mom and a good wife.

00:43:04.600 | Like it's just impossible.

00:43:05.600 | Right.

00:43:06.600 | So our revenue stream for that, we have – if people print coupons from the site, we get revenue.

00:43:11.600 | We have ad revenue.

00:43:13.600 | We have sponsored content.

00:43:15.600 | I get paid to do some videos.

00:43:18.600 | Mark, chime in too whenever – we actually –

00:43:21.600 | You mentioned the Aldi meal plans.

00:43:23.600 | One of the things that we do is we prepare – they can get all of the recipes and the list of things they would get at the grocery store for free.

00:43:31.600 | But if they want to have a nice, pretty PDF package, they can purchase that for $1.97.

00:43:38.600 | So a lot of people do that.

00:43:40.600 | Very cool.

00:43:41.600 | Yep.

00:43:42.600 | So we monetize that way.

00:43:43.600 | Amazon, I do a lot of affiliate marketing on there.

00:43:49.600 | And you also do some social media consulting.

00:43:52.600 | That's sort of outside of Ionet Lady.

00:43:54.600 | Right.

00:43:55.600 | Yeah, there are a lot of revenue streams.

00:43:56.600 | Yeah.

00:43:57.600 | So we do a lot of different – there's probably about 10 of them.

00:43:59.600 | Just what intrigues me is I like the thing about the coupon site with the idea being that you're directly – people who are your clients, your readers, you're – are basically directly paying in some way for convenience, which is awesome because like you say,

00:44:18.600 | somebody can go out and do this all on their own or they can just simply buy somebody else's time to do it and it's a win-win-win all across the board.

00:44:26.600 | It's one of the – as I look at the business models, I just think, "What a great deal."

00:44:31.600 | It's a win for the manufacturers and the stores because they're selling their products and people are there.

00:44:37.600 | That's the whole reason that they're providing the coupons.

00:44:39.600 | It's a win for you, the person who's doing the work of integrating the content and bringing it together and then reselling that content in a more convenient form for the mom going shopping.

00:44:51.600 | And it's a win for her because she saves time with a small amount of money.

00:44:55.600 | Now, I thought yours was a subscription site, but if it's even based just simply on a few purchases here or there or the ads, that sounds like a great – I like the business model.

00:45:04.600 | Well, thank you.

00:45:06.600 | It's definitely challenging to keep up with all the different revenue streams, but also what's kind of cool is that if one revenue stream goes down, we also have these other nine revenue streams which we can really tap into.

00:45:17.600 | We're pretty diversified.

00:45:19.600 | Yeah, we're very diversified and very strategic with the things that we come up in.

00:45:25.600 | It's kind of been cool because I've been doing these Aldi meal plans.

00:45:28.600 | This is my fourth one that we've done this year, and now Aldi is asking me to do some work with them.

00:45:34.600 | So now I've opened up this other revenue stream because I was doing something that I was passionate about and that made it easy for my readers.

00:45:41.600 | Now we have opened up this whole other revenue stream and relationship with Aldi that is really valuable to me.

00:45:47.600 | That is really cool.

00:45:48.600 | We do have a membership site, though.

00:45:50.600 | The MarkandLorenG.com is –

00:45:52.600 | This is your new site?

00:45:54.600 | Yes, and that one is geared more towards personal finance and really personal finance with couples in mind.

00:46:01.600 | People who might be in a similar situation that we were in a few years ago.

00:46:07.600 | We have some budgeting tools.

00:46:09.600 | We just put a pretty cool mortgage calculator up there and a debt reduction tool, and those are available via subscription.

00:46:16.600 | Okay, very cool.

00:46:17.600 | So we'll switch in a couple minutes.

00:46:19.600 | I'm going to ask a couple more questions on the coupons.

00:46:21.600 | We'll switch to kind of personal finance for couples and see what you are learning about that.

00:46:25.600 | Okay.

00:46:26.600 | The reason that I'm trying to emphasize the couponing without going into kind of the couponing details is –

00:46:35.600 | I don't know how maybe you can – you've got a whole book on how to get started with couponing, so I don't want to try to recreate a book in an audio form.

00:46:43.600 | But what I'm fascinated by is the business model because to me it's such a pure business model of just simply seeing a need.

00:46:50.600 | I get a lot of questions from listeners asking how do I start a business.

00:46:54.600 | To me, I think the business is just simply you see a need and you fill it, and then the business often comes out of that.

00:46:59.600 | How did you actually get started with the site?

00:47:01.600 | What was the actual – once you started couponing, what was the story behind building the site and building the business?

00:47:07.600 | Well, I first started actually teaching coupon seminars.

00:47:11.600 | So I was teaching coupon seminars when we lived in Charlotte, and I wasn't charging for them.

00:47:14.600 | I was just doing it for free at local churches or ministries or whatever who would ask me to come in.

00:47:19.600 | Then we moved back to New York.

00:47:21.600 | Well, back up real quick because when we were in Charlotte, there were a few online resources.

00:47:25.600 | Yes, that I would read.

00:47:27.600 | So I kind of knew the whole blogging thing.

00:47:30.600 | I knew that you could do it.

00:47:33.600 | So when we moved back here, I started couponing again and doing what I do.

00:47:37.600 | After a few months, I'd post my shopping trips on Facebook and all my friends would see it.

00:47:42.600 | They said, "Can you teach us how to do this?"

00:47:45.600 | I'm like, "You know what? I'm going to do a grocery saving seminar, and I'm actually going to come up with a booklet."

00:47:51.600 | I made a booklet, and I charged $10 a person for it.

00:47:54.600 | I had 30 people show up that night.

00:47:57.600 | So what I did is I took that $300, and I started a website with it because I just thought there weren't many resources in the central New York area that really had a lot of local deals.

00:48:11.600 | You were doing all the work yourself, so you figured you might as well just share it with everybody else who was asking for it.

00:48:18.600 | Right. So that's how I Am That Lady got started.

00:48:21.600 | It was out of a pure need.

00:48:23.600 | I was doing all this work, and I might as well share it with my friends because they wanted it.

00:48:27.600 | So I was doing dishes one night and just kind of thinking about a name, trying to figure out how to name a website.

00:48:34.600 | I had no idea what I was doing.

00:48:36.600 | I had really no background in website design. I had taken an HTML class in college, so I knew a little bit of coding but not a ton.

00:48:45.600 | I just thought, "Okay, well, I'm just going to do it."

00:48:48.600 | We were still getting out of debt, and we actually were looking toward sending our son to private kindergarten next year, and we didn't have money to pay for that.

00:49:00.600 | I was thinking, "If I can start this website and maybe make $300 a month to pay for his schooling, that would be a huge blessing to our family."

00:49:11.600 | I was doing the dishes one night, trying to come up with a name, and I just don't know what to call myself.

00:49:19.600 | I'm just that crazy lady that loves to coupon or whatever, and I just thought, "I Am That Lady. I Am That Lady."

00:49:25.600 | I rushed over to the computer, and I checked the domain that was available.

00:49:28.600 | I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

00:49:30.600 | That's how that domain got started.

00:49:32.600 | Since then, so it's been four and a half years, the income on that site pays for three of our children to go to private school, and it retired my husband from Corporate America.

00:49:42.600 | It's funny. Her goal was to make about $300 a month to pay for our son's school.

00:49:48.600 | For the first six months—

00:49:51.600 | No, eight months.

00:49:52.600 | Eight months, you didn't make—

00:49:54.600 | I didn't make anything.

00:49:55.600 | You might have made $50 a month.

00:49:57.600 | He was working 60 hours a week for nothing to just build up that audience.

00:50:04.600 | It's weird. I started it to make money, but I didn't know what it would turn into.

00:50:13.600 | That's how it got started.

00:50:14.600 | About two months after I started the website, I got a phone call from a local news station.

00:50:19.600 | They wanted me to come on and talk about couponing.

00:50:22.600 | I've been on TV ever since.

00:50:23.600 | I've been on national TV, local television for the past four years.

00:50:28.600 | That's helped me become a known and respected frugal living expert in my area and given the website a lot of credibility as well.

00:50:41.600 | The neat thing about it and what I hear in that story is one of the reasons why I think entrepreneurship can fit so many needs is that there are so many benefits that can be stacked through entrepreneurship.

00:50:55.600 | Let's say that you said originally you got your $1,000 grocery bill from $1,000 to $200 or to $400?

00:51:05.600 | To $200.

00:51:06.600 | Okay. If we say you saved $800 a month, a lot of times people just say, "Oh, the $800 a month," and that is pretty darn impressive.

00:51:16.600 | But if you recognize that if you eliminate $800 a month of cost then through the couponing, and let's just do some quick math. I'll do it all.

00:51:25.600 | Let's say, first of all, you save on the employment taxes that you had to pay in order to earn that money.

00:51:31.600 | That's 7.65% because Mark was working as an actuary. That's $61.20.

00:51:37.600 | Then let's say you save on your income taxes.

00:51:39.600 | I'll use an effective bracket of 20% just assuming state and federal if you're in a state that charges them.

00:51:46.600 | That's going to vary depending on the family.

00:51:48.600 | Let's just say $800, 20%.

00:51:50.600 | That's $160.

00:51:52.600 | Then you save probably on sales tax.

00:51:54.600 | I don't know if your state did have a sales tax.

00:51:58.600 | In Charlotte, did it have a sales tax? I don't remember.

00:52:01.600 | Yeah, I don't know. In my state in Florida, we have a 6% sales tax.

00:52:06.600 | I'm not sure that may change based upon the coupon as far as what it is.

00:52:10.600 | But let's say, so then again, you have $800 and you save 6% on sales tax. That's $48.

00:52:16.600 | If you add that together, your $800 of savings plus $61.20 for employment taxes plus $160 for income taxes plus $48 of sales taxes,

00:52:27.600 | that's effectively like earning $1,069.20.

00:52:32.600 | Then if you turn that into a business and you say, "Okay, I was able to cut this.

00:52:36.600 | That was effectively like earning $1,069.20."

00:52:40.600 | You can turn it into a business.

00:52:41.600 | Now you have the ability to add some part of your business expenses and to generate some income but then deduct some of your business expenses.

00:52:53.600 | So now a portion of your car trips where you're going to the grocery store to check out options,

00:52:58.600 | now that portion of that mileage is deductible.

00:53:00.600 | Now some portion of your computer costs, whatever is associated with the business or your printer paper or things like that,

00:53:06.600 | whatever is associated with the business, it starts to add up.

00:53:09.600 | The key is that you can start to add some of these benefits.

00:53:15.600 | Just simply, even if the business never took off to the point where it was able to send three kids to private school

00:53:20.600 | and allow your husband to quit his actuary job, at least you were starting to accumulate benefits

00:53:25.600 | by doing something that served you and by having a business that was a need that you had in your life.

00:53:29.600 | That's how you stack benefits.

00:53:31.600 | In the same way that you can stack coupons and the coupon people, you guys talk about,

00:53:34.600 | you find the deal, when it's on sale, then it's discounted, then you add the coupon, then you add the local.

00:53:39.600 | That's how you get the $4 item for $0.065.

00:53:43.600 | The same thing happens from a financial planning perspective through entrepreneurship.

00:53:47.600 | That's a great point. I always looked at couponing as an hourly wage.

00:53:53.600 | If I'm sitting down for an hour and taking an hour to clip coupons and plan out a shopping trip and save $100,

00:54:01.600 | it's like making $50 an hour. That became my job for a little while.

00:54:04.600 | It's also making, like you say, Josh, it's like making $50 an hour of tax-free money.

00:54:09.600 | If you were going to guess, using some of the resources, just ballpark, what would you say an average person,

00:54:15.600 | if they were going to cut their grocery bill from $1,000 to $200 today,

00:54:19.600 | with all the resources that now exist that you've created and others have created,

00:54:23.600 | would that be 8 hours a month, 12 hours a month?

00:54:26.600 | How much extra work do you think that would be?

00:54:28.600 | I would say between 8 and 10 hours a month.

00:54:30.600 | Let's call it 10 hours a month. I said $800 a month.

00:54:34.600 | If you can cut your expenses by $1,000 to $200, and we're assuming you get a similar or the same quality of,

00:54:39.600 | the same standard of product and food and all that kind of stuff, which is a whole separate question,

00:54:45.600 | but $1,069.20 of savings, including the tax discounting, divided by 10 comes out to an hourly wage of $106.92 per hour.

00:54:57.600 | That's pretty good.

00:54:58.600 | On 10 hours a month. It's really good.

00:55:00.600 | This is one of the themes that I look at. I tell people, "You live how you want to live,"

00:55:04.600 | but I just think that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Many families are dual-income families,

00:55:09.600 | and both mom and dad are working very, very hard to make money.

00:55:17.600 | I oftentimes look at their budgets, and I'm sitting there talking with them about their goals,

00:55:20.600 | and I find that many families, mom wants to be home with kids, and says, "I would like to be home,"

00:55:25.600 | but I don't see a way for it to happen.

00:55:29.600 | Through efforts like these that take time, I am convinced that unless mom is making a very high income,

00:55:36.600 | that the quality of life can actually be better and higher if she'll stay home and spend time focusing on

00:55:43.600 | some of these things that take time and some of these savings abilities.

00:55:47.600 | I could go through example after example after example, but that would be one example of how I would get there.

00:55:54.600 | You're earning an effective wage of $107 an hour if it indeed takes you 10 hours of extra work per month

00:56:01.600 | to save $800 on coupons.

00:56:03.600 | Right. You know what, Josh? One thing you didn't take into account, too, is child care.

00:56:07.600 | Right.

00:56:08.600 | When I was working at a house, I was paying a child, child care.

00:56:12.600 | When I'm teaching these grocery savings seminars that I still teach, that is the main message that I'm trying to share

00:56:20.600 | with people is that you are so stressed out all the time because you have to pay for child care,

00:56:27.600 | and you need this, and you need this, and you need this, but what if you just stopped and focused on not going out

00:56:34.600 | to eat and not spending money and learning how to cut your grocery bill back and being very, very,

00:56:40.600 | not going on many vacations and all of those kind of things.

00:56:44.600 | Your life would change.

00:56:45.600 | That was one of the big reasons why Mark quit his job this past year is because we desired a different quality of life.

00:56:51.600 | We were both working pretty much full-time.

00:56:54.600 | I was working full-time on the site.

00:56:56.600 | He was working full-time.

00:56:58.600 | We just got sick of it, and we realized a way to make it work, and that was better for us.

00:57:04.600 | That lifestyle choice, you mentioned that a lot of moms do want to stay home with their kids,

00:57:14.600 | and that's true.

00:57:16.600 | That lifestyle that you just long to live, that has some sort of financial value.

00:57:23.600 | I don't know.

00:57:24.600 | It might be worth different things to different people, but if you just sit down and talk about it,

00:57:29.600 | "Okay, how much does this mean to me?"

00:57:31.600 | You'll make it work.

00:57:34.600 | Right, and like you say, it might not hurt financially as bad as many people think it will

00:57:40.600 | because there's other ways to make up that income through saving.

00:57:44.600 | Right.

00:57:45.600 | I'm convinced more than anything it's just simply a choice.

00:57:49.600 | For my wife and I, we were never willing to consider the possibility of otherwise.

00:57:53.600 | I'm still not.

00:57:54.600 | If I needed to, and this is what I'm doing now, if I needed to, I would work two or three jobs so that she could be at home.

00:58:03.600 | To me, it's in line with what our goals are and our vision is for our family.

00:58:09.600 | However, a lot of people, they have questions about, "Well, how do I do it?"

00:58:14.600 | I'm convinced that if you want to do it, then this is one very valuable aspect is by allowing and showing the possibilities of the savings

00:58:23.600 | that can be had through basically the division of labor.

00:58:28.600 | It's a very valid economic concept that can be applied in our own families.

00:58:33.600 | Everything in our society is predicated essentially on convenience.

00:58:37.600 | That's why we live in this strange, twisted, weird world where on the one hand, you can be a high-earning Mary Kay rep

00:58:44.600 | or a high-earning drug and alcohol counselor in a relatively high-earning actuary.

00:58:48.600 | You can spend all of your money and you can consume it all or you can switch to being a lower-earning entrepreneur and have a better quality of life.

00:58:57.600 | The way to get there is to see through the mirage that is called measuring everything in terms of income and an external dollar-tagged lifestyle expenses

00:59:11.600 | to see through that and see to the deeper level which is what are the values that are important to you

00:59:17.600 | and what is the value that you can get with your money.

00:59:19.600 | We pay for convenience and I think that's entirely perfectly fine and acceptable, but you should do it because of a choice.

00:59:26.600 | You bring up a good point about this whole facade of a lifestyle and that's why we started our other website, Mark and Lauren G.

00:59:36.600 | The tagline of the site is the new American dream.

00:59:39.600 | Getting rid of the keeping up with the Joneses mentality and really figuring out your value system

00:59:45.600 | and why you want to live the life you want and get back to a simpler, happier lifestyle,

00:59:50.600 | one that was similar to the way our grandparents grew up.

00:59:53.600 | That's our whole passion is just that simpler, happier life.

00:59:59.600 | We've been that couple that keeps up with the Joneses and tries to look the part.

01:00:03.600 | Let me tell you, it's not fun and it's not as rewarding as you want it to be because there's always more

01:00:10.600 | and there's always something more that you want.

01:00:12.600 | We are kind of recovered keeping up with the Joneses people and really have a passion for helping other Americans

01:00:19.600 | get their life back and be like, "It's okay to drive around a junker van. Who cares? It's okay. You don't look the part. That's okay."

01:00:29.600 | It really takes a change in mindset, viewpoint, a clarification of values and a lot of self-confidence to be able to do that.

01:00:40.600 | The trouble is that many of us in our culture, we struggle with self-confidence.

01:00:45.600 | When you struggle with self-confidence and you're not able to – when you struggle with self-confidence,

01:00:52.600 | then you feel like you need to impress certain other people.

01:00:55.600 | The problem is that many people, not all people – again, if you have money and you just like buying stuff that you like buying,

01:01:03.600 | go for it. All the more power to you. I don't have any problem with that.

01:01:07.600 | But there are many people that I have worked with – and it sounds like you were a couple in this situation –

01:01:12.600 | who that's not the situation and rather what they're trying to do is you're trying to fill an emotional need

01:01:17.600 | that you have of maybe a lack of self-confidence, a lack of love, "Mom and Dad didn't spend time with me," whatever it is.

01:01:24.600 | You're trying to fix that need with money.

01:01:26.600 | The real value would be to fix the problem and not spend money on it but fix the underlying problem and then you're free of it.

01:01:33.600 | In some ways, I consider myself privileged because of where I live just simply to see every single scale of wealth where I live.

01:01:44.600 | I always notice this when I go out boating. I don't own a boat. I don't particularly wish to own a boat.

01:01:50.600 | Anybody who was born and raised in Florida knows that the best kind of boat to have is a buddy's boat

01:01:54.600 | because then it really is far more intelligent to have a friend that has a boat than to have a boat yourself.

01:02:00.600 | But when I go out on the water, it's so funny because in the world of boating, there's always another step.

01:02:06.600 | So if you're out in your 19-foot center console, there's the guy that's got the 25-foot contender there.

01:02:12.600 | Then if you've got the 25-foot contender, you're looking over at the 37-foot Bahama.

01:02:16.600 | Then if you're in the 37-foot Bahama, you're looking up at this 58-foot yacht.

01:02:20.600 | Then if you drive your 58-foot yacht down the intercoastal, all of a sudden you find the guy that's got the 145-foot European-styled yacht.

01:02:27.600 | It never ends.

01:02:30.600 | The key is to recognize that I can get on a paddle board, buy a paddle board on Craigslist for $600 or borrow one or rent one.

01:02:39.600 | I can get on a paddle board and I can paddle my paddle board over with a cooler to the same exact sandbar

01:02:44.600 | where the $120,000 boat is pulled up.

01:02:46.600 | I can hang out on the sandbar on Saturday in the sunshine in my beach chair with a cooler full of cold drinks.

01:02:52.600 | I don't have to spend the $120,000.

01:02:54.600 | But if I'm trying to solve a need, an emotional need that I have, then I may have to spend the $120,000.

01:03:01.600 | I'm not mad at boats. I've got a lot of friends that have some fancy boats and I like going out on them.

01:03:06.600 | But the key is that do it out of surplus when your lifestyle is squared away.

01:03:12.600 | Then you're just enjoying the luxury spending because you can easily afford it.

01:03:15.600 | Don't build your lifestyle on it.

01:03:18.600 | It really is a mindset change. It's funny being here at the point we are now.

01:03:25.600 | I can think back to the way my brain used to work way back then.

01:03:29.600 | I didn't even realize I was doing this.

01:03:31.600 | I don't know if there was an emotional need or something, but I just know that I was always just thinking of the next thing to get.

01:03:40.600 | When I have a little more money, then I'll get a nicer car.

01:03:44.600 | I was always just looking for the next upgrade.

01:03:47.600 | I don't know why because we all know that it never makes you happy.

01:03:52.600 | But I was just stuck in this cycle of always thinking I had to get the next cool thing.

01:03:58.600 | We're kind of the non-upgrade family right now.

01:04:01.600 | We don't really care. We have a van that has 140,000 miles on it.

01:04:05.600 | We're putting money aside for a new one.

01:04:08.600 | We own it and it's our little pride and joy.

01:04:11.600 | We don't care what other people think, but that does take self-confidence.

01:04:14.600 | A lot of people don't have that.

01:04:16.600 | It was something that we had to practice and build up upon.

01:04:19.600 | It didn't come natural to us.

01:04:21.600 | What's funny is that if you can change your mindset, and then I want to move on to talking about some of what you've learned as a couple working with money together.

01:04:30.600 | But if you can change your mindset about what you value.

01:04:32.600 | I read an article the other day that it's advice that I have given somebody else one time.

01:04:40.600 | The advice was, "What's the most intelligent choice that a young man can make as far as vehicle choice?"

01:04:47.600 | The problem is, and the article was saying that any intelligent young man who has half a clue about his life, the very best kind of car that he could buy would be to buy a minivan.

01:04:58.600 | They're the best value on the road.

01:05:02.600 | They are wonderfully versatile vehicles.

01:05:06.600 | They're relatively inexpensive.

01:05:08.600 | They're useful in all circumstances.

01:05:10.600 | Somebody who's focused on building up a life would ideally, an intelligent 21-year-old young man would buy a minivan.

01:05:19.600 | But when's the last time you saw a single young intelligent 21-year-old man driving a minivan?

01:05:25.600 | It doesn't happen, right?

01:05:26.600 | It's either some big old pickup truck or some fancy flashy car or something like that.

01:05:31.600 | Now, there's a reason for that.

01:05:33.600 | I call it signaling theory.

01:05:37.600 | We have to signal who we are and what we want and whether it's we're trying to signal something to our mate or whatever, to our peers of our success.

01:05:46.600 | We try to signal something off.

01:05:48.600 | But if you're clear on what your values are and you're clear on what you're trying to signal, it would not serve me to signal.

01:05:54.600 | I value the signals that are thrown off by driving a minivan.

01:05:59.600 | Now, I wasn't mature enough at 21 to do that.

01:06:02.600 | But now I am.

01:06:04.600 | So it's always easier.

01:06:05.600 | I just say change what you value and focus on what you're actually trying to do instead of focusing on trying to compensate for who you're not with your purchases.

01:06:14.600 | As long as you're talking about minivans, me and one of my best friends, Tim, we have this thing.

01:06:19.600 | You know how motorcyclers, when they pass each other on the road, they do this little wave?

01:06:24.600 | Right.

01:06:25.600 | I think that guys driving minivans should develop the same sort of wave.

01:06:29.600 | Like, "Hey, what's up, man?"

01:06:31.600 | We bought our first house at 21.

01:06:35.600 | Or were we 22?

01:06:36.600 | We were 21.

01:06:38.600 | And then we bought our first minivan at 21 as well.

01:06:41.600 | We didn't have kids yet.

01:06:42.600 | But Mark bought it.

01:06:44.600 | See, we started off good out of college.

01:06:46.600 | We really did.

01:06:47.600 | And then we got wrapped up in this whole mentality and it just went downhill from there.

01:06:51.600 | But we had a minivan at 21 or 22.

01:06:53.600 | And we called it Big Red because it was red.

01:06:55.600 | And we drove that for a few years because Mark was like, "Why would I get a truck if it's just going to put something in the back?"

01:07:03.600 | At least I can get a minivan.

01:07:04.600 | We can fit some sheetrock in there because he likes to do woodworking.

01:07:08.600 | And then we can at least carpool with people.

01:07:10.600 | So we did have a minivan before we had kids.

01:07:12.600 | Josh, I do like your theory about just, yeah, you want to signal who you are.

01:07:18.600 | Like you make -- everybody has to have a car.

01:07:21.600 | And you always feel like, okay, this car has to represent who I am or who I'm trying to be.

01:07:26.600 | Yeah, it's like I very -- I don't want to give myself too much credit.

01:07:32.600 | In retrospect, it's easy to think that I was more intelligent and more mature than I actually was.

01:07:41.600 | It's tough to imagine at 21.

01:07:44.600 | I mean I made some good decisions and some dumb ones.

01:07:46.600 | But I knew I never wanted to -- I didn't want to drive a sports car because I didn't want to attract the type of woman that was attracted to a sports car.

01:07:53.600 | And like that -- the number two biggest decision that you make in your life is the spouse that you marry.

01:07:59.600 | And if you want to look at what is going to either make or break just about every aspect of your life, it's the spouse that you marry.

01:08:05.600 | So I loved -- I always thought sports cars were awesome.

01:08:08.600 | But I didn't want to attract -- I wanted to attract the type of woman that wasn't going to be looking at me and saying, "Oh, he's got a sweet red sports car.

01:08:17.600 | Look how cool he is."

01:08:19.600 | That wasn't for me.

01:08:20.600 | I would rather attract her with a minivan and attract that type of woman.

01:08:24.600 | And later on, then we'll rent the sports car and enjoy it together after I've already cemented the fact that she's not after me because of my car.

01:08:31.600 | Same thing with money.

01:08:32.600 | It's like if I had had money, if I had had money, I would have hidden it because I don't want to attract someone who's into me for my money.

01:08:41.600 | That's death to a relationship.

01:08:43.600 | I would -- now, thankfully, I didn't have any money.

01:08:47.600 | I barely had any money.

01:08:48.600 | We were both college students.

01:08:50.600 | We didn't have any money.

01:08:52.600 | But it's a major issue.

01:08:54.600 | So let me get off my soapbox and I want to ask you about some of the lessons that you've learned of trying to integrate within the context of a marriage from a perspective of very different financial pasts to hopefully come to a place where you may be able to communicate a little bit more about money.

01:09:09.600 | What are some of the lessons that you've learned through your journey in, I guess you said, the 9 or 12 years you've been married now?

01:09:15.600 | Yeah.

01:09:16.600 | I think the most important one that we learned is if we could do everything all over again, we would have had a conversation about, okay, what is actually important to us?

01:09:27.600 | We would have had that conversation much earlier than we did.

01:09:30.600 | And it took us so long to get there, and I don't know why.

01:09:33.600 | Yeah, we call it our financial bucket list.

01:09:35.600 | So why don't you explain, Mark, a little bit more about what that is?

01:09:39.600 | Sure.

01:09:40.600 | It's just deciding as a couple, okay, these are the things that we hope to do in life.

01:09:43.600 | These are the milestones we want to achieve.

01:09:45.600 | These are what's really important to us because I've got to imagine that if a couple newly married sat down and did that together, really talked about what was important to them, they probably wouldn't, on that list, wouldn't be like buying a luxury car in a year.

01:10:06.600 | Maybe some people would.

01:10:08.600 | But I've got to think that most wouldn't because that's not something that's like -- it's not something that people would say, "That's what I value.

01:10:16.600 | That represents me."

01:10:18.600 | So come up with a list of things that really represent who you are and decide that that's where you're going to put your money towards.

01:10:26.600 | Yeah, so one thing I think that we didn't do, kind of piggybacking off of what Mark said, is we never sat down and said, "Okay, this is where" -- because I think your values are played out in the way that you spend your money, right?

01:10:40.600 | So with us, we would just spend our money and not talk about it, and for so long, we didn't talk about it.

01:10:47.600 | We didn't talk about what our money meant to us and what it can do for us.

01:10:51.600 | You sit down and write your values out, and then you get together, and you realize that what you both want in life with your money isn't the same.

01:10:59.600 | So being able to talk about that -- so that's why we talk about creating this financial bucket list of these are the things that you want to do as a couple and decide together that this is where your money is going to go.

01:11:08.600 | That is super important because then it's a team project.

01:11:12.600 | Right, and when you don't talk about it, the money just goes.

01:11:16.600 | We had these values.

01:11:18.600 | We just never talked about them.

01:11:20.600 | So we didn't invest in the things that we truly felt like should be invested in because we never had a conversation.

01:11:27.600 | Right, and then the fingers come out, and you start pointing fingers at each other because you didn't talk about it.

01:11:32.600 | But really, both of you are at fault, and we got into that finger-pointing thing for a little while.

01:11:38.600 | But once we sat down and really figured out where we wanted to go and had that kind of list of the things we wanted to do, then we were a team going together.

01:11:47.600 | And then every decision we made was together, and if somebody messed up, it was a mistake, and then we got right back on board and we did it together.

01:11:56.600 | And I think that's what's missing so much with couples and finances right now is that the whole together aspect isn't there.

01:12:03.600 | A lot of couples don't even combine finances anymore.

01:12:06.600 | They have their own paychecks go to their own checking account, and then they're paying for certain bills out of their account.

01:12:13.600 | And I just think that's just the wrong way to deal with it.

01:12:16.600 | You're going to have money issues.

01:12:17.600 | It's not only a good financial move.

01:12:20.600 | It's also just been great for our relationship.

01:12:22.600 | I feel like we're closer.

01:12:24.600 | We know what's going on in each other's brains.

01:12:28.600 | We're just honest with each other, and we're just on the same page in many aspects of our life.

01:12:33.600 | I have definitely observed that kind of a common theme is simply decide what you're going to do.

01:12:43.600 | And to me, one of the things that's important to me is not to tell people what they should decide to do with their life.

01:12:50.600 | But the difference, some people--it's easy to pick on luxury cars, but I'll tell you what.

01:12:55.600 | There's a massive trend happening, and I've seen more news articles on it.

01:13:00.600 | I think I started thinking about it a little bit later, but I've seen so many more news articles talking about it over the last six months or a year.

01:13:08.600 | There's a massive trend among young people away from cars, but now we spend practically as much on cell phones or other things.

01:13:18.600 | So we're going to have to shift our analogies as generations go on.

01:13:22.600 | We're going to have to shift our analogies away from luxury cars because young people don't seem to be that interested in cars as they are in having the latest fancy gadgets.

01:13:30.600 | But the key is if you want a luxury car, and if that's important to you, write it down on a list and say, "Hey, I want a luxury car."

01:13:36.600 | I mean, Mary Kay has given out more pink Cadillacs, and that's motivating to people, right?

01:13:41.600 | So I think, cool, awesome. If you value that, go for it.

01:13:45.600 | Just consider, however, what the cost of that would be.

01:13:48.600 | For example, would you rather have a luxury car or would you rather go to Europe for a year?

01:13:52.600 | Well, if you'd rather have a luxury car, go for it.

01:13:54.600 | Would you rather have a luxury car or would you rather be financially independent?

01:13:56.600 | If you'd rather have a luxury car, go for it.

01:13:58.600 | But the key is just deciding what it is, and then that process--

01:14:02.600 | I think that process of writing things down and working towards them allows you to at some point say, "You know what? I don't value this goal anymore. I'm going to scratch it off and move on."

01:14:10.600 | And what happens in our society feels to me like we're often just distracted to death, where we're moving not purposely with a vision for what we're accomplishing in our life.

01:14:21.600 | Rather, we're being reactive, and we're reacting to the latest advertisement.

01:14:25.600 | We're reacting to the fact that Tom did such and such, and I want to copy Tom.

01:14:29.600 | We're reacting to the fact that we're trying to fill this need that we've never filled instead of moving purposefully with a vision.

01:14:35.600 | Right. Exactly.

01:14:36.600 | Yeah. So you can really waste a ton of money just by not writing those things down, because too much time goes by, and you keep spending money and buying these things before you actually sit down and decide what really actually is important to you as a person or as a couple.

01:14:56.600 | Then what did you just spend all this money on?

01:15:01.600 | Right.

01:15:02.600 | There were things that, like you said, you'd realize that, "Hey, these really aren't that important to me."

01:15:07.600 | And you can't get the money back.

01:15:09.600 | Right.

01:15:10.600 | You mentioned combining finances. Did you guys combine your finances right from the beginning of your marriage, or did you start with separate finances and later combine them? What did you do?

01:15:19.600 | We combined them right away. I think even a month before we got married, we were in the process of getting everything set up.

01:15:26.600 | But yeah, we combined them right away. That's what our parents did, so that was what we did. We were both taught to do that.

01:15:34.600 | As far as actually practically handling it at this point in your growth, what does it actually look like around your house with how you actually go through the process of managing money?

01:15:45.600 | Well, we probably talk about it more than ever now, even though we've been on the same page for a long time.

01:15:51.600 | We still sit down at the end of every month, and we sit down together and plan the next month's budget.

01:16:00.600 | Right. And actually, we're doing something kind of crazy on Mark and Lauren G.

01:16:03.600 | We actually record that and do a live Google Hangout.

01:16:08.600 | There are people that are brought up that have never seen anybody talk about money before, ever, and they don't know how to communicate.

01:16:17.600 | So we thought, "Why don't we just be guinea pigs?"

01:16:20.600 | So now we do the last Sunday of every month. We sit down and we do our own personal budget on a live Google Hangout where people can tune in and ask us questions.

01:16:28.600 | We'll kind of walk you through it right now, but if you ever want to see it in action, you can always go and watch us do it.

01:16:35.600 | But what we found is that Mark is the actuary. He loves spreadsheets. He's a big nerd.

01:16:40.600 | Love you, honey, but you're a nerd.

01:16:42.600 | It's okay. I embrace it.

01:16:44.600 | And I am a big vision, big picture, big thinker person, so I always know what birthdays are coming up, how much I need for groceries, how much we need for these budgeting categories.

01:16:56.600 | For so long, we argued over budgeting. I didn't want to be a part of it.

01:17:00.600 | He would bring up a spreadsheet that would make me break out into a cold sweat.

01:17:04.600 | I just couldn't handle it.

01:17:06.600 | So we found a way. He does the numbers part of the spreadsheet.

01:17:10.600 | We actually developed an easy drag-and-drop budgeting tool on Mark and Lauren G.

01:17:14.600 | We developed that out of the need for our personal relationship because I hate spreadsheets so much.

01:17:21.600 | I needed something easy to be able to follow and use, but he wanted something so robust as a spreadsheet.

01:17:27.600 | So we combined the two into that tool that we developed.

01:17:31.600 | So I can follow along when he's making the budget now, and it doesn't stress me out because it's not a spreadsheet.

01:17:38.600 | So he fills in all the budgeting, what we need to spend, and then I come in and say, "Okay, well, we have four birthdays this month.

01:17:46.600 | This is how much I need for gift money."

01:17:48.600 | And then we make those decisions together on, "Oh, we have a tight month this month.

01:17:53.600 | How much can you do on groceries?"

01:17:55.600 | And I'll say, "I think I can do 100 this week."

01:17:57.600 | And then if we have a little bit extra money, then we'll get like 125, 150 if it's a crazy week.

01:18:04.600 | So we do it together, and that's how we play off each other.

01:18:09.600 | And it also keeps us focused on our long-term goals too because we can talk about, "This is how much we're putting to our retirement accounts this month."

01:18:18.600 | So it really keeps us thinking both short-term and long-term.

01:18:24.600 | How much at this point with four kids, so a family of six, are you spending on groceries per month?

01:18:29.600 | Any idea?

01:18:30.600 | Between 400 and 500 a month.

01:18:34.600 | That's fantastic.

01:18:35.600 | Yeah, so we're usually around $100 a week, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less.

01:18:41.600 | But we usually budget 125, I think, and sometimes I don't spend it all, and sometimes I spend right at 125.

01:18:49.600 | So when you're doing budgeting, you're doing a very proactive budgeting.

01:18:53.600 | We're planning for, you know, it's October 31, we're planning now for the month of November, right?

01:18:58.600 | Exactly.

01:18:59.600 | So kind of the Dave Ramsey approach, write it down, put it down, here's what we're going to do.

01:19:03.600 | It's the only way that works for us.

01:19:05.600 | Okay.

01:19:06.600 | How do you handle that?

01:19:07.600 | Because now with full-time entrepreneurship, I would imagine that your income fluctuates.

01:19:11.600 | How have you learned to handle that with regard to fluctuating income?

01:19:15.600 | Well, I mean, luckily we've been able to make more than enough.

01:19:21.600 | So it's not so much about, you know, how much should we bring in this month.

01:19:25.600 | It's really like how much do we have to, you know, take out of the business?

01:19:29.600 | And we try to make that number as small as possible.

01:19:32.600 | Yeah, so we, you know, bring out, like, I think this past month, our budget, we had some budgeted stuff and some health care things that we had to take care of.

01:19:41.600 | And so we withdrew $5,000 for the month from the business.

01:19:45.600 | And then everything extra stays in there and we use it and budget that part out for the business.

01:19:50.600 | So that's kind of how we take care of it.

01:19:54.600 | We haven't had a month where we've been able to, you know, have to squeeze out money.

01:19:59.600 | We're blessed to be able to make enough for what we need every month.

01:20:02.600 | Great.

01:20:03.600 | Do you see that, do you think it's possible that as you continue to grow as a couple that your budgeting system will change?

01:20:10.600 | I think that it kind of has changed a little bit.

01:20:15.600 | You know, Dave Ramsey talks a lot about using cash for everything.

01:20:19.600 | We use cash for some things, but then we also use credit card for other things to get points, to get airline miles.

01:20:27.600 | So we also, we don't take cash out for everything.

01:20:33.600 | You know, we take cash out for groceries primarily and, like, miscellaneous money.

01:20:37.600 | And that's pretty much it.

01:20:38.600 | That's funny, you did mention credit cards.

01:20:40.600 | You're going to have to write a post on that.

01:20:42.600 | We're not so afraid of credit cards anymore.

01:20:44.600 | Yeah, we used to be anti-credit card, but now we're, you know, learning how we can kind of integrate them back into our life.

01:20:50.600 | And so that's how it has changed.

01:20:54.600 | The proactive budgeting for us has been able to be the best thing that we've found and that works for us.

01:21:02.600 | I don't think that, I mean, as life changes and things shift, definitely I think that, you know, we're open to changing and all of that.

01:21:11.600 | But right now it's what works the best for us to stay on top of.

01:21:14.600 | I don't see us stopping our proactive budgeting.

01:21:18.600 | It's the only thing that we've been able to do that we can both stay on top of and be involved with.

01:21:23.600 | Right.

01:21:24.600 | It's, the reason I ask is, I mean, I think, I'm no expert.

01:21:30.600 | All I have in this area is my personal experience, what's worked for me, and then also talking with other people.

01:21:35.600 | But I think different things work for different people.

01:21:38.600 | And the key is once you've found something that works, make sure that you focus on it.

01:21:43.600 | Because if you just simply say, "Ah, well, this worked," and we used to have a joke in the financial business.

01:21:49.600 | "I did this such and such thing and it really worked, so I stopped doing it."

01:21:53.600 | And that seems to be a lot of times what we do.

01:21:55.600 | It's like, you know, I went on this diet and it worked.

01:21:57.600 | I lost a bunch of weight, so then I stopped doing it.

01:21:59.600 | And then I got fat again.

01:22:00.600 | Well, duh.

01:22:02.600 | Right.

01:22:03.600 | You got fat before eating a certain way.

01:22:06.600 | Now you went on a diet and that got you skinny.

01:22:08.600 | And then you went back to how you were eating before, so you got fat again.

01:22:11.600 | And, you know, recognize what works and keep on doing it.

01:22:15.600 | But I sometimes think that there's a difference between habits and, like, the need to focus on and change certain things over time.

01:22:24.600 | And I don't know where this line would be.

01:22:26.600 | But I know that for me at a stage in my life, proactive budgeting, looking forward, was actually an extremely important thing for me to get out of debt.

01:22:38.600 | And I think that it still is extremely valuable, especially if I get into a situation where I feel like I'm a little bit loose.

01:22:45.600 | Let me just sit down and kind of run the numbers again.

01:22:47.600 | But what I actually learned is I think I spent -- I sometimes -- so I went from spending a lot of money to not spending much money with the budget.

01:22:54.600 | And then my mindset shifted.

01:22:56.600 | And I think I figured out that I was actually spending more money than necessary because I had budgeted for a category and I was scared of being deprived.

01:23:04.600 | So I learned this with something like eating out.

01:23:07.600 | If I had $200 set aside for eating out, then if I still had money sitting there in that category that I hadn't spent, well, I got to go out.

01:23:15.600 | And so instead of listening to the fact of saying, "Well, I need to -- I don't really feel like it.

01:23:20.600 | Let me just not -- I don't feel like spending that money," then I would go ahead and say, "Well, we got to go out."

01:23:27.600 | And so I think over time there might be a change in our lives.

01:23:30.600 | And for me, the key thing is to recognize what's working, what's not working.

01:23:34.600 | For example, I mean how long are your budget meetings?

01:23:37.600 | An hour.

01:23:39.600 | Yeah.

01:23:40.600 | So my wife, she would shoot me if we did an hour.

01:23:43.600 | Well, I mean it's really because --

01:23:46.600 | We're doing it live.

01:23:48.600 | When we host it, we're talking to people, too.

01:23:50.600 | If it was just us doing it ourselves, maybe 20 minutes.

01:23:53.600 | Yeah.

01:23:54.600 | That's about the attention span that I have.

01:23:57.600 | Okay. So good.

01:23:58.600 | So it sounds similar.

01:23:59.600 | So I'm the financial nerd.

01:24:00.600 | When I get excited, I make a spreadsheet because I'm like, "Yeah, this is awesome."

01:24:04.600 | And my wife is like, "Joshua, listen. Why are you putting all these spreadsheets here?"

01:24:09.600 | But here's the thing.

01:24:11.600 | I have a virtuous wife, and she doesn't spend a lot of money.

01:24:15.600 | And so I don't have those same concerns that maybe a husband in a different situation

01:24:22.600 | and a wife in a different situation where one of them is a big spender.

01:24:27.600 | I love that you guys can teach what you're learning,

01:24:30.600 | and I think that it will be so helpful for different people to try different things

01:24:35.600 | and really follow through with it to find something that works.

01:24:39.600 | Because as long as people are doing something consciously--

01:24:42.600 | I used to think that only one way worked.

01:24:45.600 | Now I've seen enough situations, though, of different people doing different things that work for them,

01:24:50.600 | and I've recognized that there are multiple approaches that can work,

01:24:54.600 | but you've got to find something that works for you.

01:24:56.600 | Right.

01:24:57.600 | So true.

01:24:58.600 | And we're careful on our budget night Google Hangout.

01:25:01.600 | We just let people know that all we can do is just kind of show you this is what we do.

01:25:05.600 | This is what worked for us.

01:25:07.600 | And so if we can just help people that maybe our way would work for them, too,

01:25:13.600 | that's just what we aim to do.

01:25:14.600 | Well, and you know what we do is we have a lot of couples sitting down and watching us together,

01:25:17.600 | so it's opening up that conversation that they've never had before maybe

01:25:21.600 | and showing them how to communicate maybe healthy, not saying that we're healthy all the time,

01:25:25.600 | but I do think that we've kind of got it down to know how to communicate in a healthy manner about money.

01:25:31.600 | And we want to share that with people.

01:25:33.600 | We want them to know and practice it together.

01:25:36.600 | And whatever they want to use and however they want to budget, if it works for them, then we're all for it.

01:25:43.600 | Right. Absolutely.

01:25:44.600 | What a cool community you can build, though, as far as kind of almost a support group

01:25:49.600 | and helping to help a community of people, couples, learn to work well together.

01:25:54.600 | What a cool idea.

01:25:55.600 | Yeah. Thank you.

01:25:57.600 | Anything else I missed that you're excited about?

01:25:59.600 | Any other tips or ideas or tactics that you think would be helpful to the audience as we wrap up?

01:26:05.600 | I think we covered a good overview of what we do.

01:26:12.600 | Our heart really is really, and I'm that lady to help busy moms and then Mark and Lauren G.

01:26:17.600 | to help married couples and learn how to budget and get out of debt.

01:26:21.600 | That's just what we do and we love doing it, and we've seen some good success in being able to help people.

01:26:27.600 | Very cool. And you just launched a podcast. Tell us about your podcast.

01:26:30.600 | What are you talking about on your show?

01:26:32.600 | Sure. It's the Simpler Happier Life podcast, and we talk just really about issues with money that come up between couples.

01:26:42.600 | Yeah. It's just all about exchanging that overrated, stressed-out American dream for a new dream of life with financial independence.

01:26:50.600 | So we talk a lot about a lot. Most episodes are just Mark and I bickering back and forth.

01:26:55.600 | If we're going to get in an argument about something, we go grab our mics.

01:27:00.600 | Was that last week's?

01:27:03.600 | Our last week episode was Mark yelling at me. Not yelling. I think he wasn't yelling.

01:27:07.600 | But I had spent money when I shouldn't have. So we really try and keep it as real as possible.

01:27:13.600 | We want people to feel like they're in our living room talking with us. So hopefully we achieve that.

01:27:20.600 | Right. What a cool idea.

01:27:22.600 | Yeah.

01:27:24.600 | Unfiltered.

01:27:27.600 | It's very unfiltered and unedited.

01:27:29.600 | Financial talk unfiltered.

01:27:31.600 | It's funny. On the Simpler Happier Life, have you guys ever seen, there's a video on YouTube, and I've wanted to play it on this show,

01:27:37.600 | but it has profanity in it, and I don't care for that. But it is pretty funny.

01:27:41.600 | Have you seen the video where the guy is impersonating a farmer?

01:27:46.600 | And he talks about how crazy cool it is that he can be a farmer and that he can work right where he,

01:27:54.600 | like those chickens basically print money, they just like poop out eggs basically, and then you eat them and there's food growing all over.

01:28:00.600 | Have you seen that video that I'm referencing?

01:28:02.600 | I haven't.

01:28:03.600 | Okay. I will find it, and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Be forewarned that there's vulgar language in it.

01:28:08.600 | But it's so funny because it drives home this idea that essentially so many people today, if you pay attention to finance,

01:28:15.600 | if you're a financial planner, you talk with people, it seems like everyone wants about the same thing.

01:28:19.600 | They want a slower pace of life. They want the ability to work from home, to spend more time with their family and their loved ones.

01:28:27.600 | They want healthier food. They want a better standard of living.

01:28:31.600 | And here's this guy, it's a comedian talking about how here he is living on a farm, so he can just get up,

01:28:37.600 | and there's a rooster that crows every morning. He doesn't have to wake up to an alarm clock.

01:28:41.600 | He can get up, and he works right from home, and he's got all this fresh food that just shows up for him.

01:28:46.600 | It's like we've gone through this cycle, almost this boom-bust cycle of lifestyle, where historically people thought,

01:28:53.600 | "Well, I need to get more and more and more, better, better, better, bigger, bigger, bigger, fancier, fancier, fancier."

01:28:58.600 | And now there's this massive push back in the direction of the search of how things used to be, simpler and happier.

01:29:06.600 | Now, it's really hard because you've got to avoid, as a listener instructed me one time, which I hadn't recognized even I was doing,

01:29:13.600 | you have to avoid the golden era fallacy, just simply, "Everything was always better in the past."

01:29:17.600 | Man, there is some stuff from the 1980s that was not better than today. We live in an unquestionably better world.

01:29:22.600 | But how can we take the stuff that's better today and integrate it with the wisdom of the past for a better future for all of us?

01:29:30.600 | Yep, we're totally right there with you. That's our motto.

01:29:33.600 | Very cool.

01:29:34.600 | And I think the reason that we are having a success with our podcast and our website is because what we're saying is resonating with a lot of people.

01:29:42.600 | I think there is a movement to get back to the way things, at least the way we think things used to be.

01:29:49.600 | Just not to ignore the wisdom of the past.

01:29:54.600 | And different people, it seems as though different people experience this in different ways, whether it's family, whether it's building something with your hands.

01:30:05.600 | For me, that's a big deal. So much of my work has been and is mental work, where I don't get to actually look and see anything that I did.

01:30:15.600 | It's all a theoretical construct. It's all concepts and ideas.

01:30:19.600 | That's not nearly as satisfying sometimes as getting to actually physically build something or physically weeding my garden or physically trimming my trees and just doing some physical work where you get hot and sweaty.

01:30:31.600 | And then you look at that and say, "There's the satisfaction of there's a job well done."

01:30:36.600 | So, I don't want to go be a bricklayer for a business, but who knows?

01:30:41.600 | I could certainly do that and experience a lot of joy from it more than sometimes I get with the knowledge work.

01:30:48.600 | And it seems like so many of us, we're missing something that we're trying to fill the need for.

01:30:52.600 | Yep, I agree.

01:30:54.600 | I feel like we could have a whole podcast series just on that.

01:30:59.600 | You guys take it and run with it on your show. Go for it. That'll get people to listen to your show.

01:31:06.600 | Yeah, that would be awesome. On our to-do list.

01:31:09.600 | Very cool. Mark and Lauren, thank you for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

01:31:12.600 | And thank you for sharing your wisdom and keep going on your journey and keep chronicling it and helping others because that's what a massive advantage we have living in a world where normal everyday people can help other normal everyday people and do it profitably.

01:31:27.600 | Yes, well thank you so much for having us.

01:31:29.600 | Thanks for having us, Josh.

01:31:30.600 | Thanks.

01:31:31.600 | Told you it'd be a great mashup. And the coolest thing is there's nothing in there that any of us can't do and can't emulate.

01:31:40.600 | So, go check out Mark and Lauren's blogs. I'll put links to all their blogs and to their blog and to the couponing site in the show notes.

01:31:46.600 | That's it for today's show. I thank you for listening.

01:31:49.600 | As we go out here, I'm going to read a few of your iTunes reviews that I thank you so much.

01:31:54.600 | I love, love, love getting these and it helps the rankings of the show. It really does.

01:31:57.600 | But actually my favorite thing about it, I love getting them.

01:31:59.600 | They pop up on my phone.

01:32:01.600 | Usually they come in during the night because they're a little bit delayed from when you leave them in iTunes.

01:32:05.600 | And so they come in during the night and I get up early and I check my phone and it's really exciting to read your reviews right off the bat.

01:32:11.600 | So, thank you guys so much.

01:32:12.600 | Review here from Zern Cox is the screen name in iTunes.

01:32:17.600 | It says, "Engaging and motivating. This is a great podcast to keep you motivated on your financial journey and to stretch your mind with both new and familiar ideas."

01:32:26.600 | Perfect. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. So, that, I love that.

01:32:31.600 | Next comes from Carnation Cat.

01:32:33.600 | It says, "It's like having a best friend in the business. I'm impressed by how Joshua takes complex topics and breaks them into bite-sized, understandable pieces.

01:32:42.600 | Even when he discusses something I have no knowledge of or interest in, I find myself fascinated, probably because his enthusiasm is contagious.

01:32:50.600 | Looking forward to ever increasing quality and variety in these great podcasts."

01:32:54.600 | Perfect. Thank you.

01:32:55.600 | Yes, more quality coming.

01:32:56.600 | I am majorly focused. I've got some changes that I'm doing personally as far as how I'm going to change and update just some of the ways that I do to bring higher quality to the show over the next year.

01:33:07.600 | And more variety. I've got lots of new content coming in, in a bunch of different ways.

01:33:12.600 | "Great show. I greatly enjoy this podcast. It's entertaining and informative. On top of all that, it's a daily show. Keep it up, Joshua."

01:33:18.600 | "So funny to me how in the podcast world..."

01:33:20.600 | This is from Jordan Sinclair.

01:33:22.600 | Thank you, Jordan.

01:33:23.600 | "So funny to me how in the podcast world this daily thing is such a marvel."

01:33:28.600 | I look at him like, I mean, yes, it is tough to do every day.

01:33:32.600 | But what's funny is just I think every broadcast radio person forever, that's what they've been doing.

01:33:38.600 | So I think they've got much bigger teams than maybe I do.

01:33:41.600 | I don't have any team. I just have me.

01:33:43.600 | But that's awesome.

01:33:45.600 | So thank you guys so much for your views.

01:33:47.600 | Please keep them coming.

01:33:48.600 | Just do it for me.

01:33:49.600 | Just do it for me. I love it. It makes my morning when I wake up early and I find one of your reviews sitting there on my cell phone.

01:33:55.600 | And I get to read them and I show them to my wife and she gets excited for me.

01:33:59.600 | So thank you guys for listening.

01:34:01.600 | I'll be back tomorrow with the review on Tony Robbins' new book, 650-page manual on money.

01:34:07.600 | Thank you for listening to today's show.

01:34:12.600 | This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment.

01:34:19.600 | Your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

01:34:27.600 | This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice.

01:34:35.600 | Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy.

01:34:45.600 | And consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.

01:34:56.600 | Hold them accountable for your results.

01:34:59.600 | I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes.

01:35:06.600 | If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn together.

01:35:13.600 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.

01:35:15.600 | The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new.

01:35:21.600 | Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto,

01:35:29.600 | Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.

01:35:33.600 | Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.

01:35:35.600 | We've locked in low prices to help you save big store-wide.

01:35:39.600 | Look for the locked in low prices tags and enjoy extra savings throughout the store.

01:35:43.600 | Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.