Unlock Financial Freedom: Zero-Based Budgeting with Zach Whelchel

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host CEO of We close nodes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody.

Hey.

Welcome to this episode of the Note closing show. As always, Scott Carson jacked up to be here with the day and really excited for this episode. I know a lot of you have reached out and when we talk to our students and talk to our audience out there, yes, y' all love note investing, you all love real estate. But a lot of y' all need some help with some basics to get rock and rolling, especially for some of our social media followers, like, how do I get started? I don't have no money. I've got issues. And one of the things that we find, especially from talking with not only our followers out there, but also when we're talking to our distressed bars out there, they need some help with just normal money issues and or budget in a lot of cases. And so we're really excited to have a guest expert on that. He is the founder of mybudgetcoach.com he is also a real estate investor, but he is a badass when it comes to the monthly numbers and making sure you get your shit together in a lot of cases. And his approach to budget, I think you guys will love because it's a little unique and definitely stands out from the crowd. So on our extended series of interesting people you meet at Fincon, we're honored to have Mr. Zach Wechel join us here from the Bluegrass States, Lexington, Kentucky, today on the nutculture show. What is going on, Zach, how you doing, bud?

I'm doing all right. It's a good day to be in the Bluegrass State, Kentucky, our basketball team. We've got a new coach. I don't know if you follow that at all. And we're playing Duke tonight, so it's a big deal for us over here.

Definitely. Big blue bloods there.

For sure.

It is exciting. I think Calipari had overstayed his welcome a little bit.

We. We ran him out of town and we got a new guy and I think we're excited about it. So we'll see how it goes.

You know what we here in Austin, obviously, Austin's a bit of a basketball school here. It'll be interesting what it does in the sec, but we Play Kentucky, I think football in two weeks for the first time in a long time. So it's a. Okay, definitely. But Duke in Kentucky, that's going to definitely. That's always a big match out there.

Yes. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Now what's interesting, this is a side point. You think about all these kids that have new nil deals, know name image. I like this stuff like that. And when I was in, in college, I didn't have a lot of financial education. I learned it from my own. When I became a banker, I would deal with some big names at the University of Texas coming like big, like creme de la creme. Names on the field, national championship winners, NFL players coming in that couldn't even budget their checking account right in a lot of cases, like their account was overdraft for their rental wheels being drafted wrong. And a lot of stuff there for you. So I know you've got a passion for helping people. Let's first dive into how you got started to where you're at and kind of what's led to where you're at today.

Yeah. So yeah, budgeting, I think it gets such a bad rap. It's such like a scary word or it feels so restrictive to people. Right. But yeah, it's crazy to me how much people focus on the money they make. Like you talked about these people that are like really good at what they do, they would make a ton of money. And yet we don't really focus that much on the outgoing of our money. Right. Like we spend 40 hours a week plus or like spending all this time like investing like your audience and like real estate, all these things. And yet when it comes to how we spend our money, it's like I don't really even know what happened. I guess I, you know, I just, my money just kind of went out the door and who knows. So yeah, my wife and I, we were kind of like that until about four years ago when we started actually budgeting. We started using like a proper zero based budgeting tool. I don't know if you know the kind of difference in the different like budgeting strategies or whatever, but zero based is basically where you take every dollar you own and give it a job before you spend it. So a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll look at their bank account and they'll be like, I guess I've got 700 bucks in there and I guess we're getting paid on Friday. And I guess that I think we paid this bill and you Do a bunch of mental math on can you or not afford something. And to me, that's just crazy. Nothing should ever just be mental math off the top of your head. So zero based budgeting is a tool where you basically make a plan for your money before you spend it. And it was just a game changer for us. So we started doing this four years ago. We had two kids during the pandemic. We started learning how to budget because our family was changing all that stuff. And we became so passionate about it that we like became kind of those go to people for our friends and family. We started teaching a class at our church. So we actually taught like this quarterly class at our church. We actually went to. We lived in England for last year for like three months, which was kind of a crazy thing for us. But we wanted to see what it was like to live abroad. And we, the church that we visited over there, we're like, hey, can we teach this class here as well? And they're like, sure. Great. So, you know, we've kind of taught it around the world, but we just love this stuff. It's changed our life and we just want to help other people learn how to do it as well.

I love that. That's definitely great to have a passion for it when you see how it changes not only your. Your life, but others and really gives you a kick in the butt to keep doing it because it becomes not just a job or a necessity, it becomes a passion. And I think so many people, they shame themselves for not having a budget or balancing a check or not put their money together that it weighs them down from taking that turn and, you know, taking accountability. Hey, we need to do something. Let's stick to it and get going into it, right?

Yeah. I mean, so many people, like, like a first step that's hard for a lot of people is just like looking at your checking account or like looking at your credit card account and just like seeing like, what did I spend money on? Right? It's like, yeah, it's one of those things that, where we know we should have a plan, we know we should budget, but we don't. And you know, why is it that we don't? Because I think budgeting is super fun, right? Like, my wife and I sit down every week and we say, what do we want to do with the money that we have? Like, what is valuable to us in the world? Like, what do we want to pursue? And we get to sit there and make a plan. Like, we get to get on the same page Together and then go out there and execute that plan. Like, that's fun to me and I want to, I want to share that kind of joy with others too.

Yeah, that's definitely when you're on the same, same path and have the same values to put things in a place that makes it easier. What do you say for folks that maybe their, their spouses have a little bit different spending habits? Maybe Amazon visits their house a little too often out there compared to others?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is a whole thing, right? Different couples, different things, work for different people. Right. I mean, for me and my wife, like, we share all of our finances and we've like done the hard work of hashing out to come to like a shared understanding. And that doesn't mean that we started that way. Right. Like, we have different priorities, we're different people. Right. Like, and so a budget though, makes us come together and hash out those priorities and try to come to a shared understanding. And that means I'm giving in some areas, she's giving in other areas. But as long as we have that long term kind of plan in place, like we know what we're headed to, towards. And that's one of the things I love about zero based budgeting is like, you get to the point, they call it zero based because you get to the point where every single dollar has been assigned to a category. So there's $0 left that don't have a job essentially. And so that doesn't mean that you can't change things around. Right. Like, we always end up going over in some category, pulling that money from somewhere else. But the beauty of it is when you pull it from somewhere else, you're choosing where to pull it from. And that's a discussion you can actually have. Right. We can say like, do we want to spend more on eating out? Sure. Like, it's awesome. Like there's this cool restaurant we want to. Where do we want to pull that money from? And if it's worth it to us to, you know, buy something less on Amazon or spend less at groceries or whatever, we can make that decision. But when people just look at their bank account, they're like, I'm just going to spend because I have money. They don't know the implications of what they're doing. Right. Like it might be that you wanted to have that money set aside to invest in your property or to save up for the next property or to do any of those things, but you don't know the implications of what you're choosing to Do. Because you don't have a plan. You have to have a plan in order to know those implications.

Yeah. Now how long would you say people should take a look at, should they take a look at the last month, the last 90 days that they're spending?

Should they download in order to like establish what their budget should be?

Yeah, Exactly. Because looking 30 days back is different. But we look at like what's coming up with the holidays. Obviously people see a lot of expenses or more things happen with parties and eating out maybe a little bit more or.

Yeah.

Buying gifts for family members too. That can be kind of an intimidating thing too.

Yeah. So this is like kind of another misconception that we see with budgeting is like some people think of budgeting as like a one and done thing, right. Like you get out a spreadsheet, you write down some numbers, maybe you look back 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, you try to like get those averages, you put them down and then you like feel good about yourself. You're like, yay, look, I made a budget. And like that one time Excel spreadsheet thing, that doesn't change your behavior, right? Like if you're not living in your budget, if this isn't like something that you like sticks with you, then it's not actually going to change your behavior and you're not actually going to stick to your plans at all. Right. So what we say is like your budget should be like a living document. You should use a tool that helps you do all this kind of allocation and seeing how much you have in all your categories. And you should change it all the time. Like my wife and I change our numbers all the time. As your priorities in life change, as your values change, how you spend your money should change. And so I wouldn't stress out too much about finding the perfect numbers to get started. Just pick a tool, put some numbers down, see how it goes, and then change it over time. Again, having a plan and changing that plan is so much better than having no plan.

Totally does. Having a plan is planning for success. Having no plan is planning to fail, as they always say. I probably butchered that same a little bit there. But now the reason I love having you on here, you're also a real estate investor. You've bought and sold and bought and flipped some property out there. You're dealing with an issue right now of water leak from junior in a new house before you. But as an investor, I'm willing to bet that you got you and your, your wife put in place into your budget A bucket for your real estate investing and putting money towards down payments, stuff like that. Would I be correct in assuming that.

Yeah. Have you read the Richest man in Babylon book or whatever?

Yes, and I'm friends with Clifton Cortenbin who rewrote it for the richest person in Babylon recently.

Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, I met Clifton at fincon. I didn't realize he wrote that. That's cool. There's a concept in there of like, you know, luck comes to those who are like prepared to take advantage of the luck or whatever. I think it's a story about like cattle outside of a city or something. But yeah, that's always stuck with me. I mean, my wife and I, we. So we're in our third. Every house that we've owned, we've always kept the house and bought something else and then rented out the previous house. So we're not like these huge real estate moguls, but we've just always been intentional about never buying too much of a house that we can't afford to then go out and get the next one. And I would say like all of these situations, like we can get into them. They're all really weird situations. The first one was like a landlord who we knew was selling and we approached him and said, could we do a rent to own situation? And he gave us like 90% for 18 months towards the purchase price.

Wow, that's nice.

Because he knew that he'd be avoiding realtor fees, all that stuff. And so that was like, was enabling us to get into it to start. But yeah, like, we have been so diligent with our money for a decade. Right. We've lived below our means for a decade and that set us up to be able to take advantage of these weird situations that have come up with houses. Like the second house we purchased that was like off the market, there was like animal damage. This guy ended up like doing like this weird like three way call with the parties that were interested to like bid on the phone against each other. And the other parties were so weirded out by that that they like bailed. And so we got it at like this price. Like. But all this is because we've lived under a means and we've had a budget and we've saved all this money and we've been prepared to take advantage of these lucky situations. So yeah, like now we have buckets in our budget for, for that next property. We have budgets for, you know, maintenance on the current properties. All of those things are things we prepare for. And you mentioned Like Christmas and like all of that stuff. Like we would say like no two months are ever the same. And so what you should do in a budget is you should basically say like, I know Christmas is coming every year in December. I know problems are going to happen with my real estate proper like. And so we put aside money every month so that when those things happen, we're ready for it. So like I've got a line item sitting here for Christmas, it's November. I've been contributing into that line item for 11 months now. Right. I've got the money sitting there ready for Christmas and so many people would just like put it on a card and then figure out how to pay it off. Like we prepare for these things because we have a plan.

Well, but then you're also saving, not having to pay 20 to 30% interest rates and credit card, which is just stupidly ridiculous. Just, just absolutely don't know how they get away with that not being usury out there. But that's, that's one of the most contributing factors, I think, to people never ever getting ahead or the, the buy now, pay later aspect of things. It's just, it's a bad, bad financial strategies. I guess you say it's not really a strategy for failure, but strategy for the lenders on those things. For sure.

Yeah. And a good budget will help you never outshoot out, kick your coverage or whatever. Right. You'll never outspend the cash that you have. So like if you do choose to use a credit card, like we're fine with that. Right? Like use a credit card. Just use a tool that helps you set aside the money so it's ready to pay off that credit card and that way you can take advantage of the points or whatever and you're not going to go into debt.

Totally agree to the points aspect of it, but make sure it gets paid off.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you can't control that, then yeah, don't mess with it because it's not worth the 20% right now.

One of the things that obviously was big on the election, we're not going to get into who you voted for, anything like that, but it was the inflation and people having less at the end of each month with costs going up, stuff like that. What's your counsel for folks that are seeing more month at the end of the paycheck?

Yeah, yeah. I mean so many people live paycheck to paycheck. Right. And it's not even people that like you might think like, oh, people who don't make that much money or people who aren't that smart or whatever. But that's not the case. Like people that make a ton of money still live paycheck to paycheck. And this drives me crazy, right? Because it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much you can save over time, right? That's how you can build wealth. That's how you can invest in properties, like all of those things, right? So we talk to so many people who live paycheck to paycheck, and what we try to help them do is break that cycle. Right? You want to get to the point where the money you're spending this month is not the money that you just made, right. It's the money that you made a month ago, two months ago, and you've got that buffer. So, you know, like in my budget, my wife and I always keep like a two month buffer. So we have our buckets kind of filled for this month, we have our buckets filled for December and we've got January filled. And once we have those months ahead of us filled, the extra money, that's the money we know we can start putting towards investments or putting towards savings or whatever. We always have a buffer. And so I'd say people are too unkind to themselves or too optimistic. They'll be like, I can only spend 600 bucks on groceries and it's just not realistic anymore. So embracing those true numbers, setting aside the money for it, setting aside a buffer, and then spending the fun money or the investment money or whatever. Once you have that buffer, you need a tool to help you do that, essentially.

I totally agree. You got to have a tool and an easy tool to use that you can tap into on a regular basis, right?

Correct. Yes.

You know, a lot of people like the old, let's just draw it up on a piece of paper as you can. Excel spreadsheet. Well, if you don't understand Excel or you don't make it easy to access or use, you're never going to use that tool, Right?

Yeah. And we would also say like you want to pick a tool that can connect to your bank and can bring in your transactions. Right? Because like manually putting your transactions in, for some people it works. And it's good to have that top of mind and they need that discipline. For me personally, I couldn't keep up with it. Right. I need my transactions actions to be pulled in automatically. I need to go in and approve them. Right. Because it's good for me to have eyes on everything that we're spending as a family but it shouldn't be super cumbersome. Right. You need to lower the, the kind of the effort bar so people actually stick with it for sure.

Now let's talk about you guys app and how you guys are separate out there because I think it's very important out there. I, I really tired played around with your tool a little bit and I really enjoy it. Whenever we have somebody on, I like to dive into things. I'm like, oh, this is pretty cool. I love the fact that to obviously connect the bank account makes it very easy, but then to go to identify which buckets those things are going to is one of the easiest things and it really does give a true. You can see a snapshot of where you're really spent. Your money's going in a lot of cases too, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when it comes to the budgeting app landscape, there are literally hundreds of budgeting apps out there. I know there's a ton of good tools and like, I will always say like the best budgeting app is the one that you're actually going to use. Right. So like I'll talk about like our platform, why I think it's different but like, even if you don't like our platform, pick something because a tool is better than no tool. A plan is better than no plan. But yeah, as far as our app, the insight that we kind of gathered like my wife and I teaching budgeting to friends and family, is that zero based budgeting is, is hard. It is a skill, it is a life skill that you have to learn. And you know, people complain all the time about like, why wasn't I taught this in school, you know, why didn't my parents teach this? Like, it's going to take you a while to like get over that learning curve and learn how to do this. And so basically what we found is like people need help, they need a hand, they need somebody to talk to about this stuff. And so my budget coach is kind of a brand that is a budgeting app. So you get all the tools that you need to connect to your bank, to set up your categories, to actually track your transactions. But you also get that coach and we think that coach is super important to actually helping people succeed. And we have a directory on our website. We have over 30 coaches on the platform. We just got back from Fincon. I think we talked to 40 coaches that were interested in joining. So we're growing rapidly on the coaching side for sure. But we think it's important that you can get on a directory, read through these coaches bios and just find somebody that, that connects with you for whatever reason. Right. It might be like the level of income, it might be their background, it might be their like profession that they've been a part of in the past. It might be the fact that they speak Spanish or English or a different language. Like that's really important to people as well. So you basically get on there, you pick a coach, you set up your budget and you've got a coach there to help you set it up and, and to help you along the way. And that's kind of what makes us different.

Well, I love that because having the coach comes with something that a lot of us really struggle with and that's accountability.

Absolutely.

You know, and we all go through different things. I mean your budget's different now with two kids than it was with one kid, than it was with no kids.

Yep. Absolutely.

It's different now as we get older. Where do you. And by all means, this is not financial advice, but where do you, where do you suggest people start? Maybe trimming their expenses, trimming their budgets. What are some of the be the top two or three categories that people can find hidden money in their, their budgets to put towards savings or investing or other things out there? That's.

Yeah. Goodness. Yeah. So I have like my own personal takes. Like I'll say like as, as a brand, like kind of the thing that makes us unique is you've got all these coaches and they have all their different opinions. Right. So like as a brand, like we don't have too many strong opinions. We take because we think coaches can coach in different ways and have different takes. My personal takes would be, you know, amongst my peers or friends or whatever, I see people like paying a lot for cars when they don't need to. Right. Like my.

Here's. I don't mean to interrupt you. So there was an article that came out from lendingtree.com ranking the. The 50, the biggest metros as far as non mortgage debt.

Yep.

Okay. And auto loan payments was like the number one category in 27 out of the 50 markets with San Antonio. The average, get this average auto loan debt per person was 18 grand. Gosh, that's this crazy then. But that's the thing paying for brand new cars, 700 to a thousand bucks or more for car payment just seems so stupid to me.

Yeah. I mean if you, if you add up the opportunity cost over your lifetime of doing that, it's. It is the, it is the difference maker. Right. That's the difference between buying properties over time and building wealth and, and just staying in debt, essentially. So like my wife and I, we. My cars throughout my history, I've actually turned a profit on. I think I'm on my third or fourth car and I. Like my first car I bought for 500 bucks. It was like a Jeep Wagoneer in 82. It had like an Olympics logo because they sponsored the Olympics back in the 80s or something on it. 84. 84 maybe. I don't remember. Yeah, the fact that you remember that was great. But I sold that thing on ebay for like 1500 after I drove it for like six years or something. And then I bought a night and an 86 VW rabbit, I think because the gas mileage was so good. And I sold that for a profit as well. That one actually came from Hawaii. It was like shipped over from Hawaii to Wisconsin. Apparently the lore on that was it was owned by the archbishop of Honolulu. So it's like my friends called it the Popemobile for, you know, just because it was funny.

You had God on your side with that one.

Yeah, right. And I needed it because it would run out of brakes. I'd have to like to brake. I'd have to like downshift consistently for several months because like the brakes were so bad.

The form of braking, take your foot out the wind.

So like, I probably have a much higher tolerance for dealing with these things than most people. But the difference there is that like I've saved so much money on cars and again, like luck favors those who are prepared for it. Right. Like all that money that, you know, my wife and I have chosen to be diligent with over the years enabled us to buy these properties. Enabled us, I mean, honestly enabled us to get to this point where we were able to start this company. Like, I just quit my full time job working for this kush. I was like a software developer in like a cush corporate environment and I quit like that high paying job in order to do something I was passionate about. And the reason I was able to do that was because we've made all these, you know, sacrifices over the years. And to me, working on something I'm passionate about is just so important. And like, especially I've got two young boys who are watching their dad and I want to show them that this is, you know, it's more important to do something that you value in the world than just to make, make, make money. So anyway, long, long, long winded answer, but that's kind of my Top take would be cars.

But yeah, definitely, totally agree, totally agree to that because we just had to. I same thing. I buy my cars, take care of them. As long as you take care of them, they last. I just had to buy a new to me because the, the Dodge Ram pickup that had been. Which has been paid off for over 10 years. We, we totaled it in an accident. Then I had to go buy a newer one and I was like, I'm not paying 80 grand for a new pickup. I'll buy something that's a few years older and get a better deal. I almost paid off from the insurance settlement, but it's the, that's the thing is the Teslas, these high end like Ford Broncos out there, 80 grand a pop. Or when I was truck shopping, $125,000 for a Ford Raptor. I'm like, who is paying this stuff?

Yeah. And like mind boggling if that's your thing, right? Like, I mean we would say like spend according to your values, right? Like what, whatever you value. Like make sure you spend your money there. And we're not going to tell you like as a brand, we're not going to tell you what to value, right? Like if cars are your thing and like you just love it and you geek out about it, like sure. But for your average person who doesn' much value out of it but still spends an outsized amount of their cash on it, that's what drives me crazy. Because they're not spending according to their values. The truth is there's probably other things that they value more, but because they don't have a plan moving forward, they look back and they say, shoot, I guess I spent more on things I don't value and I missed out on the things that I do value. And that's what I hate to see. I want to see people that are diligent with their money so that they spend according to what they want to do in the world and think that through beforehand instead of just letting life happen to them.

Yeah, that totally, totally makes a lot of sense. Where are the other things that you think people can trim or eliminate from their monthly budget in some cases to help that bottom line?

Yeah. I mean food is always one like, I mean you see a lot of like door dashing these days, right? People that pay like an a completely out like huge amount of money and like all those fees like doordash is so frustrating to me because you look at it at first you're like ah, seven bucks for this. And it's like this fee that fee, that fee and then it ends up being like double or triple what you think it's going to be towards the end. Yeah, I would say like all the little things add up. Right. And like when you're, when you're touching those on a daily basis or when you have to pull that money from somewhere else, when you have to see that by me choosing to do doordash, I just had to pull money from, you know, this or that or now I can, you know, do this thing I enjoy less. I mean that stings and you realize what you're actually doing to yourself. So I'd say all the little things add up. But food, car payments. Yeah, those are the big ones that I see.

Yeah, definitely the memberships. We were. One of the things that we'll occasionally get into here is when we're dealing with buying non performing debt, we'll get people that want to modify the loan, haven't paid in six months or a year. And one of the things we asked them is like, hey, send over two, two months of your bank statement. So see what's going on. Let's talk about your finances. What are you spending monthly on this? What are you spending monthly on? Your subscriptions. And this one guy hadn't paid his mortgage in two years and we find out that basically what he's spending monthly and monthly subscriptions, like to his only fans, subscriptions would have paid his mortgage payment. I'm like, how are you and your wife doing this? Yeah, I'm like, I don't have any, I don't have any sympathy for you because you're not spending things smartly on here. I don't care who's on only fans unless it's your account.

That's a different story. Yeah, I mean subscriptions are another one where people just don't realize what they're spending. Or they'll sign up for free trials, not cancel them. Like we have like, I have like a whole kind of to do system that I would not be able to live without. Like I put all of my to dos in it, I review them or whatever. And so every time I sign up for free trial, I put that right there in the to do system. So I know to go and cancel it. Right. But a lot of people just don't do that. And then they end up stacking all those things. And if you're not reviewing your spending, you just don't know. Right. Like when we first started budgeting and we first started actually looking at our spending, I was paying for like two Netflix accounts. Right. Like how long was that going on? And I had no idea because I wasn't even looking at my statements. I wasn't even looking at the transactions that come through. So again, just, just working up the bravery to do that at least is, is such a important first step.

Yeah, that's, that's so true. I, you know, we like to look at what we have going out monthly here with subscriptions because we always like to. It's the death by a million paper cuts.

Yeah.

In a lot of cases. And it does add immediate impact to your balance on your account and what you can put money towards. If you're getting rid of those freebies or getting rid of those, take advantage of those free trials. But then if you're not using to get rid of it.

Yeah. And, and also like the thing that's motivating to us is like at the, at the, towards the end of our budget we've got those things that we're working towards. Right. Like, and for a while it was that, that next house down payment and having that motivation sitting there at the bottom of your budget every month. Like when the end of the month comes and you know, my wife and I sit down and review the past month in a zero based budget, you, you get to choose what to do with your savings essentially. So if we went under and eating out, we take that 40 bucks we saved, we move it right down there to that category and it's like a dopamine hit. It is to get to sit there and say, look at all the good things we did and here's exactly where we're putting that money. Let's move it right now. Let's you know, put it in the high yield savings or whatever, get it ready to buy that, that property. But like knowing the, the immediate feedback of like how savings are going to help you in the long run, for me, like that's, that's, that's more fun than these subscriptions or whatever. Right?

Yeah, definitely. A lot more long term gratification versus in signing up and see what happened on Yellowstone last night.

Sure, sure. For sure.

Yeah.

And I get it. As humans we struggle with that. We struggle with immediate gratification versus long term stuff. Right. And so it's hard to look towards the future and to plan for it, but the people that succeed over time are the ones that are able to do that. They're the ones that are able to sacrifice today for tomorrow. And I would say me personally, I'm probably one of the outliers, but my, my Mentality has always been sacrifice today for tomorrow. Right? Like I have always been on delayed gratification like my entire life. It's just been my default setting. Like even as a child my parents told me I would just always want to save money, save money. I wouldn't want to spend money even as a kid. And we're trying to teach our kids now. We actually, I have a four year old and a two year old. We teach them how to budget. So every time we go to Walmart they get two bucks. They get to choose where they spend that or save it or spend some and save some. And like my 4 year old saved up to a $10 car which means he went to Walmart 5 times without spending his money. So we were super proud of him. But yeah, yeah, so my thing has always been on delayed gratification. And I like a budget actually helps me, oddly enough, swing back a bit towards the middle. Like I need to be able to spend some money on today to enjoy today so that I'm not always looking to the future. And a budget gives me permission to do that in some ways as well. Because my wife and I have planned for, you know, I, I enjoy video games. So I've got like a video game line item and it gets 30 bucks every month. And like I spend it, right, Like I spend it on fun things that I enjoy. So yeah, a budget can help wherever you are on that spectrum to help you swing back towards like a healthy middle, basically.

On your coaches that you have on the website there, how much of them are marriage counselors? Because they'll probably have a few arguments that the, yeah, couples have a little.

Bit you get into like, like whenever you're doing money coaching or budget coaching, like it kind of becomes counseling, right? Like when you're talking about like how much you're spending your money, like and how you're spending your money. Like we have a podcast and the whole point of our podcast is we have guests on the show, they can introduce themselves. Instead they give us their budget and we just go by their budget, we go by their line items. And the idea is that we can get to know someone just by how you spend your money, right? So like at the end of the show they get to introduce themselves and like all that stuff. But like the truth is you can get to know somebody just by how they spend their money and like it reveals like kind of like where your heart is or what you value and all those things. So yeah, like we have coaches that will end up meeting with, with spouses like couples and spouses. And like, we've seen already, like, like, you know, healthy results of that. Right. Helping, helping couples get on the same page with their finances. Like, finances are such a, a struggle for a lot of couples. And getting on the same page there, like, has trickle effects to, to being on the same page like throughout your relationship, which is really, really cool.

Cool. No, it totally makes sense now with the, the fire movement. Obviously a lot of growth is taking place and a lot of things have changed over the last few years, especially like in the housing side of things. People like, I don't necessarily want to buy a house. I don't see the value in that. I would totally agree. In a lot of places it's much cheaper to rent than is to own these days.

Sure.

Out there, where do you see. And I know you don't have a crystal ball, Zach. Okay. But sure, the next 12 and 24 months, where do you see maybe some of the trends going that people are going to be focused on a little bit more when it comes to, to their money and their budgets?

Goodness. Yeah. I mean, interest rates, like purchasing like a h. House purchasing is so much harder now with interest rates. Right. Like all of those things. I would say. Yeah. I, I don't know. I mean, us personally, we just purchased a house, even though the interest rates were, were high, we ended up locking in at like a five six two five or so.

Okay. Okay. I, I have to throw something out there.

Okay. Okay, good.

For being an investor for over 20 years, being ex mortgage broker, and I think back to 2004 to 2008, 6% was a damn good rate. Okay.

Okay. Yes, yes, very good rate.

Now my parents, their mortgage was, which was the first mortgage I ever refinanced was like at 18% interest rate. Okay. And yes, we have a 2%. Of course, 5.625 is higher than the 2%, but come on, man, it's still cheap.

So yes, I get it. Like when you, when I talk to my parents and like they dealt in like the teens or whatever. But it's also, these things don't happen in a vacuum. Like it's a function of the economy at the time. Right. So it's not quite apples and oranges. Right. Because like growth was also happening, like all of those things. But yeah, like our first two properties we got in the twos. And so having one at like a six, like, it hurts, but, but yeah, like it was just a life decision that we had to make because we have children. And again like swinging back towards enjoying the now and not always delaying gratification. Like, my kids are only this young for so long and like, I want to be able to prioritize that. So we made that decision. But yeah, as far as, like, the trends and where things are headed, gosh, I don't know, man. Like, I hope, I hope the economy gets stronger. I hope that wages start to match some of this inflation so that people can afford things. But again, like, all that I can say and like, kind of the values that we, we teach are like, don't look externally for things to get fixed. Right. Like, you know, take control of your own situation. Take control of the things that you can control. And that's not necessarily fair. Like, like sometimes it is unfair and the external circumstances are unfair and like the broader macroeconomic situation does suck, but take control of what you can control. You can control your outcome. Right? You can take the dollars that you own, you can make a plan for those and try to stretch that money as much as you can and try to be good about saving up over time. Because again, it's not about how much you make, it's about how much you save over time.

You're 100% right. Control what you control. I say this all the time. Doesn't matter who won the election, who lost the election. You can only control what you're in charge of. Kamala Donald is not going to save you. No matter how you vote, you've got to take the reins of your financial reins by the hands and take care of it yourself. Yourself.

Yeah, I mean, like the whole election thing, like, yeah, I'm sure the what's happening in D.C. and all, it does have some impact on us. Right? But like, when it comes to optimizing your life, the amount of impact that has versus the amount of impact of like, how much energy I bring to my kids when I go in there and say hi to them after this, you know, like that that's just way more of an impact in like my day to day and the health of my family. And you know, I try to focus my, my effort on that and so of, instead of getting caught up in the all that stuff, so.

Exactly. It's good, good to block out all that stupid noise in a lot of cases out there.

Sure.

One thing I, I, I guarantee folks out there are thinking about that mybudgetcoach.com I get signed up for. What's that process look like? What's the, is there a trial page? And what is it to have a actual live person I can talk to, to help guide me along the way.

Yeah, yeah. So we. There's a website, it's mybudgetcoach.com if you're on the socials, it's my budgetcoach HQ. We're basically on every social platform. And yeah, so you sign up, you get a free trial. It's a 35 day free trial. And then in order to sign up, you kind of pick a coach, right? So you go, if you hit the. Start my free trial on the webpage there or hit the find my coach, you basically pick a coach on the directory. And I'd say, you know, spend some time reading through some of these, right? Find somebody that connects with you. It's funny you brought up like counseling or whatever. I have a friend who is a marriage and family therapist, right. And in his line of work, he says that, like, one of the highest predictors of success in like a therapy relationship is just the affinity you feel with your counselor. Right. Picking somebody that you get along with is just so helpful and like positive outcomes. And we think that's the same in like, the financial coaching space as well. So pick somebody that you'll resonate with. Pick somebody that you want to chat back and forth with and then get started, you know, setting up your accounts, setting up your categories, starting to see your transactions come in from your bank, starting to categorize those, starting to actually deal with your overspending and your underspending. But take that step and message your coach or sign up for a call and, and talk to them one on one. It is a learning curve. Budgeting is a skill. It does take effort. But the thing I always say is, like, you can choose your pain, right? Like, there's the pain of like, learning a new skill and learning to be diligent with your money. And like, sure, there is like some frustration and, you know, effort that is taken there, but the alternative pain is one that you probably know all too well, right? The pain of avoiding your finances, the pain of not knowing what's happening. The pain of overdrafting or not being able to afford the things you want to afford or feeling like your money is just gone every month. Like, choose your pain in life, right? And I, like, I would much rather choose the pain of being intentional than the pain of avoiding. And you know, I would encourage everybody else to do that as well.

I totally, totally agree with that 100%. It's a little pain. And when folks are getting started, there's a little bit more time on the front end figuring things out. But then how often do you. You suggest people go back and review it with their spouse, their family, once a week, once a month, once they get things rock and rolling.

So we would say that a budget is something you should live in, right? So, like, my wife and I have it on our. Like, we have the apps on our phone. Like, as we're out spending money throughout the day, you know, we go in it. It should be kind of easy to just open it up and it'll say, like, you have, you know, eight new transactions, and you just kind of swipe on them to categorize them. And then, like, you're done with it, right? But you want to kind of. Some people compare it to, like, laundry or dishes, right? You don't want it to build up too much. You want to kind of create that habit of sticking with it. So, you know, whenever we go to spend money, we reference that category. So, like, my wife just went out to get groceries. She looked at the grocery line items, she saw how much money we had, and that guided, you know, what she could spend. So, like, whenever you're making purchasing decisions, you're looking at how much you have in that. That category. And then whenever you're, you know, routinely kind of making purchases, you want to categorize them. So we sit down together every week on Sunday night, and we kind of review the last week, every month, we close out the month, but then kind of on a daily basis in between that. Not every day. It's not perfect, but we try to just, you know, categorize things and reference those categories. Categories as we go.

Just staying on top of it, top of mind. Definitely helps you make better buying and budgeting decisions, for sure.

Yeah. Again, it's one of those things, like, we have people that will say, like, I don't want to have to deal with this, you know, every week or whatever. And I say, okay, like, choose your pain, right? Like, because we're going to be diligent about this and we're going to choose to set aside extra time and money and effort and eventually again, you know, wealth and luck and all those things favor those who are prepared, right? Like, do the hard work. Be the type of person that's prepared so that you can take advantage of all those other things that come your way.

Now, have you always lived in Lexington or have you moved around a little bit? I mean, you mentioned, I think previously that you were in London for a time being, right?

Yeah. So this is another thing of, like, my wife and I trying to decide, like, what is the life we Value what life do we want to build or whatever? We have always just felt like we needed to try living internationally. So this past year, I took a sabbatical for my job. This is before I quit at my corporate job. We took a sabbatical, and for three months we went and lived in England. We lived in London. We found this place on Airbnb and then negotiated off of Airbnb to get a better deal so that we could afford it because London is super expensive.

Yeah.

We took my wife's sister with us, and she kind of helped with the kids, and she got to experience London because she's always loved that culture as well. And we loved it. It was super cool. We ultimately decided that, like, we wouldn't be able to do it for long term, like visas and all that stuff. But, yeah, building a bit of little life, part of building a life that we enjoy and being intentional with our money is travel. Like that. And we used to do travel, like, on a short basis where you'd go to Europe for, like a week or two. And after living in London for three months, like, this is the way I want to travel for the rest of my life. I don't understand why I ever thought it was a good idea to go for two weeks to a place and spend all that money just to be there for two weeks. Like, if you work remotely or if you work for yourself and you can find a way to do this. Like, this is how we want to travel. So we're going to try to build into our budget. Like, we have lines, line items for basically saving up for every year, every other year, trying to be in a place for an extended period of time. And that allows us to kind of share that adventure with our children, because this is something we love. We want to share that with our children over time. So, yeah, it's just something we value. Again, looking at somebody's budget, you can see what they value. I've got a friend who, he is just obsessed with solar eclipses, and he has a category for each solar eclipse that's happening in the next 10 years or whatever, and they're already saving up for that because a budget is a reflection of what you value. And, like, for them, they love this thing. They're going to make sure that they set aside the money to. To afford it.

I love that. What was your favorite? I. I got to ask this because I. We've been to London a couple times and love this.

Okay, cool. Yeah.

What's your favorite memory? Or you think about the. The London memory? That comes to mind when you think of the city.

Oh, goodness.

There's probably a few. I get it.

Yeah, there's a few. My wife and I are, like. We're into, like, theater and, like, musicals and plays and whatever. So being in the West End is pretty cool. We lived in a place where you could just grab a bike and bike anywhere, and I love that. I love being able to just bike anywhere, use the transit. I did a couple things that in London that, like, I just wouldn't do here. That, like, I was just a completely new place. Like, there was, like, this startup night where you could go and pitch to a bunch of VCs. And I went and stood up in front of, like, hundreds of people and gave, like, this, like, pitch, which usually I'm pretty reserved, and that's hard for me to do, but I'm there and I'm. I'm like, nobody. Nobody's ever gonna see me again. Like, if. If ever I can be brave enough to do something like this, might as well do it here. So that was fun. But, yeah, we also got plugged into, like, a local church, which was kind of cool just to, like, have friends built in and to know people that way. Yeah, I'm trying to think of. I mean, for kids, it's awesome because there's parks and everything. Oh, I'll tell you. Okay. This was probably our coolest experience. We went to, like, a theater thing, like, downtown where they had, like, a series of, like, musicals do. Like, they do this once a year or whatever. And it was. They had the king from Hamilton come out. I don't know if you're familiar with the Hamilton show or whatever. And he has a song. And at the end of the song, it was King George. And at the end of the song, he said, now if you all look up the sky and honor our king. And we thought, like, oh, cool, like, you're the king, whatever. But the second he did that, like, jet planes flew by by. And then more jet planes flew by. And then the flag of England was put in smoke in the sky. And it turns out the king's actual birthday was happening. And so they were honoring the king right down the road. And so they had timed the end of this song from Hamilton to reference the actual celebration of the king. And that was just like, a pretty cool moment.

That's really, really cool. I would say. Going to. When I was there, we went to the Globe Theater and caught.

Oh, cool, cool.

Shakespeare. And then the Meat piece and Taming of a Shrew at the Globe Theater is pretty, pretty freaking cool for sure.

That's awesome.

Yeah. So I think that's one of the great things too is that traveling abroad especially you spend three months there, you figure out, hey, things aren't maybe nearly as expensive as we think. Yeah. If you go for a week and you're staying at a five star resort or five star hotel, there's things that can make it much more affordable out there first and just be just as good, if not better than, you know, first class everything, all that stuff. I, I like eating at places that are not that five star but are where the locals go, the food's better and the atmosphere is often a whole lot more affordable too.

Yep, yep. It's all. It's on what you make it. Yeah, we travel super cheap. Like we, we will like rent out our house when we leave as well so that like we're not double costing or whatever. Like we travel super cheap because we find a made to find a way to make it worth it. Yeah.

I love it. I love it out there. Website. My budgetcoach.com. check it out. It's really an easy website, really great app out there. And the fact that you can talk to or review some of the coaches and find one that matches up with your flavor or your background and things like that I think is what makes it so unique. For those of you out there looking to do this, that need to do this and, and want to get the things. Rock and roll. Because really having a good budget, knowing where your money's going is really the first step to finding financial independence and, and the re side of retiling early because you got to know where your money's going to put. Where to put it. And you guys do such a great job with that.

Zach, awesome, thanks. Thanks so much for having me on. This has been fun.

Yeah, man. Glad to have you. We'll be doing some more stuff I think with you over in the near future here for sure. Definitely.

All right, cool.

Thanks, man. Hey, good luck with that water leak there from Junior. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, thanks so much. I'm going to go rip out the ceiling now and fix that.

So, so this is. Zach was telling me beforehand that basically you all guys just moved to this new place in Kentucky, right?

Yeah. So this is our new house and it's, it's old. There's lots of problems with it. Most of the windows, like the vapor barrier is broken in them so we have to fix that. But like the first week we're here, my, my 2 year old, we put him to bed at 9 o' clock, we go into the there to check on them. At 10 he's at the sink. He's got the sink turned on. He's got the thing clogged. The water is just overflowing and overflowing and overflowing. And we have no idea how long this is going on for. Like it could have been 30 minutes, we just don't know. So yeah, we had to like rip out the ceiling, rip out the drywall, like get all this stuff out. And trying to convince a two year old that what he did was wrong is funny too because he, he thinks it's pretty funny that he caused all this damage at this point. So.

Well, it's a good thing you have that in the budget.

For sure, for sure, for sure.

I don't know. Do you guys haven't seen this but an asset or a facet maybe, maybe further down the road of helping folks with their budgets when it comes to investment properties, since you are also an investment property investor.

Yeah. So this is where it's like up to kind of the coaches, right? So like we have some coaches who focus on this, right, who know this world and can like kind of speak that language and if that's something that matters to you, like pick a coach on there. So like I'm a coach on the platform as well and kind of my like slant or my audience that I talk to is people who are trying to retire early. Right. So I speak to fire. I speak to like the importance of like not only having a budget to get to fire, but once you get to fire, you're going to have to live on a drawdown, right? And so, so like you're gonna have to learn how to live on an expectable amount so that you can feel comfortable that you will sustain fire as well. So that's kind of my slant. But you know, we have coaches on there who, who focus on any number of things. So you know, pick a coach that kind of works for you.

Awesome. Great stuff there, Zach. Have a great day, buddy. Thank you so much. And we'll be seeing you later. All right?

All right, see ya.

All right, guys, gals, go check it out. My budgetcoach.com get signed up for that. It's a great tool to add to your tool, tool belt. Especially if you guys don't have any tools in your tool belt. Great place to get started to get you on that path to be able to see where your money's going on a monthly basis and start working towards that path of the first down payment or the first money to invest or whatever your focus is. But you got to start somewhere and having no plan is planning to fail. So let's get you to, let's get you to plan so that you can see achieve success and take it to the next level. So go out, take a smash break and we'll see at the top. Hey note investors. So you want to dive into the world of note investing but no know how to get started or you don't want to pay 30, 40, $50,000 for a one on one coaching program that just completely does not deliver the deals or the funding or the access that you need to take your note business to the next level. 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