#65: Tips for Talking with Your Partner about Money From A Financial Coach

Foreign.

Thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. It's a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations in an attempt to uncover the mysteries that nobody talks about but absolutely influences our relationships. If you are struggling with your special someone and desire to turn it around, this show is dedicated to you. Essentially, we're here to ensure that you have what you need to ultimately create love for a lifetime in your own life. I'm Stacy and this is my husband Tom. We host the show together and are delighted to be here with you today inside the Love Shack.

Absolutely. Happy New Year. If you're listening live or closely thereafter, talking about money in your relationship. Relationship doesn't need to be hard, but it often is. Now I know take a deep breath. Myself included. This can be a place of significant trigger, might I say so in the beginning of 2022, which makes for a good time to focus on and make some changes for improvement in areas in our lives that carry impact. There are essentially eight impactful areas and today we are going to explore the area of money. I feel like the Jaws song would be very appropriate right now. I haven't let our incredible engineer, Mr. Eric Wright about that, but you know.

You'Re revealing a bit of yourself right now.

I know that's all right. Nice job.

Listen, I know that we all kind of have those emotions that come up first when we're discuss discussing money and I know that it can be tough. But I want you to know that if we progress forward, right, with our money and our financial picture, it's important for us to gain the ability to look at and review our money and make some significant adjustments where needed to accomplish what it is we want money to do for us, which is not going to happen if we don't know how to even begin with an open and honest dialogue about your spouse's, with your spouse, your spouse's spending, our partner's spending right around these subjects. It's inevitable that any type of peace that can be garnered around your finances will continue to elude us if we continue as status quo for most of us and the spending just continues to skyrocket.

And interestingly enough, and I would say myself included, except for until after today, many of us think all we need to do to solve our money dilemma is to simply make more money. And I'm certainly that could be a possibility.

The old adage of make more, spend less, right? That's how you do a budget. Right. And ofttimes without a budget. We are in this pursuit of making more, making more, making more. And it just never seems to go around. You know, if I look back of my New Year's resolutions over the years, there always seems to be the same two goals. Lose 20 pounds and make $200 more. And that seems to follow me around year after year. Even though I have been successful in making more money, I'm always in the pursuit of making more money. So thank goodness. Today in the Love Shack, we have Amy Scott, our resident financial expert, with us. Together we're going to be discussing the best ways to break out of bad money habits and talk openly about finances in a healthy way. And guess what? We're going to help you begin with that budget conversation and join us as.

We help you work together towards your budgeting goals for the New year by uncovering the best ways to get on the same page financially with your partner and provide you with refreshing perspectives. Say that fast five times. That is more than just make more and spend less as Stacy just alluded to.

Yeah. We'll be right back. Join us for this wonderful conversation.

I met Stacy and Tom about two years ago. I was at a point in my relationship where I was ready to file for divorce. Not that I wanted to, but I just felt hopeless and helpless. I'd been through other counseling and coaching and didn't find any success. With Stacy and Tom's methods, I was able to eliminate insecurities, set boundaries, plant my flag, eliminate rabbit holing. I was separated from my wife for a year and I have since moved back home for the last six months. Now, I still refer back to a lot of the teaching that Stacy and Tom provided and it's helped me. It's well worth it.

Learn the simple three step system to rescue your struggling relationship by registering for Stacy's brand new free workshop. Reserve your seat by going to Stacybartley.com workshop.

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Hey Mike, what's up? Hey. With 2022 coming along, guess what? We got some news to announce.

What are we going to announce?

Well, we are announcing that we are going to be continuing to broaden our show and we're moving to Kixie 8:88-80am Kixi starting January 11th. We are going to be on Tuesdays from 3 to 4pm but don't you feel fear because everybody at KKNW will still continue to have our show broadcasting on Saturdays for the two hours and of course, our replay options on Thursday morning.

Awesome.

Going against the Grain has never been this much Fun. Alternative Talk 11:50.

Shack Tom welcome back inside the Love shack. Tom and Stacy Bartley. Happy New Year to you and yours. We are here with I am here with my wonderful wife and we are.

Here with Amy Scott. Thank goodness. Yeah, she's going to help us dive into our budgeting, face our financial picture, eliminate some money fear.

Again, get on the same page with your spouse, your partner, significant other. As Stacy and I have the gift and pleasure to work with couples from all over the world. Many times this can be a place that, you know, sends them into or has them seeking to some kind of a, maybe a an outside facilitator to help them, you know, get their arms around, which often can be a very, very difficult and like I said earlier, a triggering conversation.

As many a triggering topic for you.

Tom bartley Yes.

I bet our listeners didn't even pick up on that.

It is I'm kind of the radar if all of you, if you're old enough to remember the the series mash, I am the radar of the family.

He is very much sometimes my wife.

Refers to me as being hyper vigilant.

He is very hyper vigilant. Yeah. Sometimes he manages things he doesn't even need to manage. But hey, it helps me a lot. So thanks, babe. Let's talk about Amy Scott for a minute. She's a certified financial coach who has taught couples how to get on the same page about money. And she's also very passionate about helping couples to live a life with less conflict and more space for what really matters to them. Amy's been teaching couples her unique budgeting system that provides couples with the confidence and peace of mind necessary when making big and small financial decisions together. She's masterful with helping couples reduce their financial stress and money disagreements. And she is officially now our resident financial money gal. We'll have her periodically on the show from time to time throughout the year. And we decided that the best time to kick off a new budget or to have a new financial conversation is right at the beginning of a new year. So we've had her come on to Help us just get the ball rolling. So, Amy, thank you so much for being here with us yet again. Welcome to the show. We're so excited to hear your perspectives. And I got to be honest, you're going to have to help Tom, you know, off the ledge here today because when we start talking about money, he tends to get a little ruffled.

Tom, I love hyper vigilant.

I'm with you.

That's me, my relationship. Sometimes my husband will say, do we need to, to look at all of this? Do we need to track all this? But, you know, I, I've said it before, spreadsheets are my love language. So I speak your language.

Yes, very much so. Well, it's a joy and a pleasure to have you back. And where I would love to start today's conversation is around this idea. Typically, the couples that I work with and even in my own personal life, I tend to go to a place whenever the money conversation comes up is that we don't have enough. Right. And I know so many people, friends and clients alike, who on the spreadsheet, as you would say, have all the money one could possibly want, and yet they're still in the pursuit of more. Right. And it seems to be a mentality that we can get ourselves into where more is just what we need to solve our many problems because, you know, our lifestyles grow, our, our, our expending grows. Right. Even if we're, you know, so many people I know are contributing it to charitable organizations, but they're not utilizing that money to take vacations for themselves or spend time with their families. And those things can become so out of balance, especially now where most of us have screens as workplaces and, you know, that's office is always open, right. It's always a time to do some good work. And work is a good thing. I'm not diminishing that at all. But I'd like to just encourage our listeners today. Let's, let's jump into this conversation around money from letting go of the not enough conversation and looking at we do have enough. Perhaps maybe then budgeting could be a way that we could do more with what we already have instead of feeling like we've got to do more and make more money. Right. Spend less. And I think you have a wonderful personal story about this, Amy. When you personally wanted to quit work and stay home with your son, your unborn child, and that was kind of the first place you went, like so many of us. Oh, I can't afford to do that. Would you share that story? With us.

Sure, I would be happy to. And you know, when you were just sharing about that, Stacy, to me, what really stands out is any conversations we're going to have around money, it's so important to start with that why piece. And I think that's why, for me, this, my personal story is so impactful because I got really clear about what it was that I wanted to, that that why was the grounding piece. So I just encourage couples to listen to this conversation from a place of like, well, why would we do budgeting? Why would we have conversations about money? Like, why should we have that? So for me, it was, you know, my background is not necessarily in finances. I studied public health for many years. I have a master's in public health. That's what I was pursuing. And I actually was, after I'd had my second seat son and the boys were under 2 years old, that I really felt this very strong desire to be at home with them. I felt like I was 35 years old. I kind of built up this career. I had done the things I was supposed to do, and I didn't necessarily want to spend years on end at home with them, but I felt like I wanted to have this as an option to lean in more to that mom role. And I'll be honest, a lot of that was because I was exhausted with a newborn and a toddler and just feeling like I wasn't in the right mindset to go back to an office at that. But I felt like we should be able to do this. Like we weren't carrying this burden of tons of debt. We had, you know, made good financials, good financial choices. But when my husband and I looked at the numbers, the reality was that we could not cover our bills on just his high school teacher's salary. And that was a bit of, you know, I don't want to say an epiphany, but like an awakening for us that was, what could we have done previously leading up to that time that would have made that an option for me to be able to stay home? Right. So I think, you know this about me. I've shared this before, that I'm somebody who doesn't necessarily take no easily. So I didn't just say, okay, I guess this isn't going to work and I'll go back to work. I said, oh, how are we going to make this work? And so we dug into our income and our expenses in a way that, quite frankly, I think we've been together five plus years. At that time. We had never really gone through what it was that was coming in, what our expenses were that were going out. We were getting by. We were doing, quote, unquote, fine with money. But we hadn't gone through things to see, like, is this something that we want to keep spending money on, or are we willing to put a pause on this for this season of our life, for this period, in order for us to be able to fulfill that why of me to be able to be home. And my husband was incredibly supportive. I was very fortunate that he was. We're going to make this happen in. And when we dug into those income and expenses together, what we realized, Stacy and Tom, was that the gap was much smaller than we thought it was. We had made up in our minds, like, I had to work, we needed my salary, when, in fact, we only needed a fraction of that salary when we got down to the real what. So for us, we only needed an additional $600 a month to be able to cover our basic expenses. Now, there were things that we put on pause for that period of time for that season, but in order to cover our four walls and feel comfortable, we felt like we could do that. We could find $600. There are many ways to be able to do that, and we got to work on that. And as you two know, the opportunities then present themselves. So this opportunity for my husband to do tutoring at school, for me to do some freelance work, all of that became available. And before you knew it, we were bridging that gap and then some. And I realized, wow, this is something I really actually like talking about. And people became interested and said, how are you guys doing this? And in fact, people started to ask really personal questions, like, did you take a home equity loan? Did you take a loan from your parents? Like, how are you guys getting by just living on mixed salary? And I said, you know, the kids nap between 11 and 1, 12 and 2. Come over to my kitchen table, show me all your numbers, and I will help you to make a budget and make this a reality for your couple and your family. And truly, that's how my business began, which was, I don't know, about 10 years ago at my kitchen table. And I just kind of fell in love with, yes, I am a money nerd. I do love the numbers. I've already admitted I love the spreadsheets. But beyond that, to me, what I really love is helping couples get clear about what matters to them and make sure that how they're spending their money is in alignment with what they value and what matters Because I'm not okay with however many years down the road people saying, well, I always wanted to. I always wanted to start a business, take this vacation, spend more time with my parents, whatever that is. But money got in the way. Now if people want to work with me and on the other side decide that they're not going to do it, that's great, that's their choice. But I want to eradicate that conversation of we can't do it because of money.

Oh, I love that. And that that is such a beautiful example of looking at your finances. It allows you to do more with what you have and it doesn't necessarily need to spike that incessant drive that we have to do more because. Right. We need more money. But I can't do this because of the money. It really flips that on its end. I love that perspective because if this is something that we can muster the courage up to face, and for some of us, it is a courageous move to say, all right, just like you and you were describing, you and your husband going to face this, you know, five years in what are the numbers? And I know relationships that don't do that in 10 years, 15 years, 30 years of being together. Right. That everybody kind of has their pot, which is fine, dividing money, etc. But looking at the numbers and who's paying what and then what could you utilize that money for, really does allow you to take more advantage of your money. And then these things that you're talking about become possible. I think so many of us put off what it is we really want to do for that idea of retirement. Right. I'll just keep. When I retire, we'll get around to all of those things without realizing along the way. All of us are missing irrevocable moments in life that we can't go back and have. So just let's really look at the cost of what it is we're doing so that we can make a better choice. Right.

Well, and I would just add that, you know, a great example of we like to say in our body of work. I know I use this quote often. I don't know where it's attributed to. It's not me, but, but, but specifics in our relationship. So this would be specific. Specifically in our money part of relationship are like catnip for our soul. So you had just said, let's not have the regret. I find it's regret when we get to the end of our life journey. And you read all the end of life stories are typically around things we did or did not do in our relationships. Right? So like you had said, Amy, you didn't want to miss out on these formative years of your sons. So he said, we got to face this and figure out how can we make this work. Well, the data is the data. I'm a real estate appraisal of my other life. And you know what? It's data. It's not me whether I like the home or not like the home. It's based on the market, you know, so don't bring your own. You know, you come from. From a place of objectivity and impartiality, you know, rather than so and you are skilled like we are. You help, perhaps sometimes you need some. Some arms around you to help you step out of the emotional part of this, which oftentimes takes a skilled facil.

So let's begin this conversation with looking at what do you have? Right? And then I'm going to let you take it from there. Like, let's look at the why, like you said, and then let's look at what do we have? Like, where are we, what are we spending and what is coming in. Let's just take a look. And we're gonna. We're gonna hold your hands and go along with you there. As Amy walks us through just the beginning stages of what do we need to do? How do we even approach this in an effort to not make it so overwhelming for you as our listeners?

I love that. And I think the first place around all of this is just to start, because anything that's intimidating, whether that be exercising or trying for a promotion at work or becoming closer to our spouse or our partner, is about taking that first step. So just, I'm really acknowledging anyone who's listening to this and looking for practical tips for themselves to really take that first step. I think it is listening to this podcast. I think the first piece, and I just want to say this again, as far as the why, the why may come out inside of your conversations, but something I really encourage my clients to do. Anyone that I speak to around money is start with that why piece. And it might be different for you and your spouse. Sometimes it might be something obvious. Like for Mick and I, my husband, Mick and I really was clearly about me staying home. For some of my clients, it's like, hey, my kids are going to college in five years. I got triplets. How are we going to figure this out?

Right?

There's something really tangible. But sometimes with couples that I work with, it's just more like we don't want to have so much stress in our relationship around money. It doesn't have to be. We want to be able to move in five years. It's like we just don't want to have this in our space anymore. Right. We know there's something else out, something else out there that's available. So get clear about what that why is, and don't assume that your why is the same as your spouse's why. Start with having a conversation where you're. And I know you're familiar with me saying this, but where it's, you're curious, you're asking questions and then you're listening of your spouse. So I'm curious, maybe not necessarily what would your why be for us budgeting? That might be pretty cheesy to say, but, like, hey, I like to talk about our finances. I'd like to take some steps in this area. Here's why. This is important to me. Why would it be important to you? And just. Yeah.

And what's coming to mind is our guest from last week's show who reminded us of an impromptu acting tip where whenever you're doing prompt to, it's yes, and so if I'm throwing an idea on the table or I'm sharing my why, this would be very applicable where I would say, I would hear you and I would say, yes, and I would like to also do this. Or I would like to see that we could go there. Could we do this? It's, it's a, I hear you and here's my thoughts or, and here, this is what I want. And I think that's. That's wonderful to keep in mind. Instead of shutting it down, that's where the conversation is going to start to go sideways. If I don't feel like I can even have my own why in regards to why it is I'm adding more money or cutting back on spending, well, then we don't want to participate. That's just how it rolls as a human being. I don't want to play then if there's nothing in it rewarding for me. Yes.

I love that. I just listened to that episode today and I replayed that section a few times because I'm like, that's an exercise I use with my clients. And I love that he was an actor sharing about that. But yes, that's, that's the type of conversation we're talking about is like, yes, it's important to me that we buy that lake house. And I also want to experience, you know, calmer conversations with you around money, for example. So that's a great place to start from. And then from a practical sense. Right. So we're gonna have to get into some of these numbers. What I typically advise on my clients to do is three. I call them simple steps. But that might be a little bit of a misomer. But like, what I mean by simple is like, they're practical steps to take around your money. So when you've had this conversation, you're clear about your why you've listened, and that doesn't go away. The being curious and listening and asking questions that's threaded throughout this process. But what I typically advise my clients to do is to start by looking at how they spend money, their expenses in three different categories. Okay. Typically we spend money and it all comes out of, you know, the same checking account. If we're a couple and we share our finances together, we typically have one account and all spending is happening in and out of that account. Income comes in and then we spend it, whether it be on groceries, Amazon, or the mortgage bill. I recommend that couples start to look at their finances in three different categories. The first category, so just think about how you spend money, whether it's mortgage or that latte you got from Starbucks yesterday or your HOA fees. Think about them in three different categories. One is the fixed and recurring bills. So these are the bills that are typically due on the same day every month and the same amount of money. So again, that might be your mortgage, hoa, car payment, tuition, if you have kids, anything where it's a set amount of money and do on the same day, you can start to think about what some of those are. The second category is the day to day spending. So this is where we're typically swiping either our debit card or if we use a credit card or one of many credit cards for these day to day expenses. So again, if it's coffee that we're getting, or delivery, groceries, gas, Amazon purchases, anything where there's not really a set amount, and we might go several days and not really spending that money. And then, oh, look, we went to Costco, we got gas in both cars, and we went out to dinner for our anniversary. A bunch of money might be spent in one day.

For example, and I bought this really cool new shoes.

Exactly. And I bought those really cool new shoes. It's not a fixed recurring expense. Unless the 15th of every month you're like, yep, I'm going to buy me some shoes, but.

I have an automatic delivery, Right?

And some folks do. And I do not blame them for that. But those, that's the second category. And then the third category is what I like to call the whammies of life. So these are expected and unexpected expenses that tend to come in when we let we least predict that they're going to be there. So for example, I don't know, my son has broken six bones. So for example, I get a call from the summer camp that Henry has fallen off the rock climbing wall and is being transported to John's home.

Right.

Medical expenses. Now I hope nobody got too worried about Henry. He's fine.

Amy, how about Christmas? Would Christmas go in this category? Like a whammy?

It would.

And that would be more Stacy, like an expected whammy. So Christmas, it's always funny when people say it just came upon them. We know what date it is every year or maybe a trip that you're going to take. Maybe you and Tom are going to Mexico this summer and you know that that's coming up in X number of months. Unexpected. We'd be more like the medical bills, the car repair, you know, something happens, the stove goes out in the kitchen. Those whammies can fall into those two different types of categories. So that's really the first step. People say, oh, should we look back? Yeah, you know, you can look three to six months back. You don't have to go too far back. You could maybe even look a month back and just start to think about your expenses and either they're fixed and recurring day to day spending or these whammies of life. Okay, that is the first step to think about it that way.

So do you recommend that like we get our statements out, you know, so I've got my bank statement in front of me and then I just start categorizing these maybe with a pencil and say, okay, this is this, this is that, this is this, this is that. And I break these out into the three buckets.

You definitely could do it that way. Some of my clients like to do it with different color highlighters. Tom would probably like that. Bust out the highlighters. Right. We got a yellow for this, the green for the day to day spending and the P for the whammies are red. Maybe if we're like, ah, but yes, absolutely. Some people like to print these out. In my experience, it depends. It depends on how, you know how much people like to use technology. But some people will like dump that into an expreadsheet and just highlight it different ways.

I see what you're saying. So you have three different Spreadsheets. And so you just go through them, you pull the numbers out, you put them in a spreadsheet so that when you're done, you've got a beautiful calculation at the end.

Yeah. And it's. I typically say, with folks like, don't get too attached to what those numbers are, but just start to become familiar with. This is the way in my mind, this is how I think about money, is in these three different ways.

Okay.

Okay.

And let me just accentuate that on Amy. So I. I could. I could see myself like, oh, God. Like, you know, I'm afraid to see what those are. So I really like. So you're just simply re. You're recording them. You know, you're. You're not. Try to stay away from the emotional part. Like, how the heck is that number so high? Not on the. On the fixed ones, but the other two categories.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, and the other thing that I want to highlight here, just from my own personal experience, I love. Don't. I would suggest if you're having a difficult time facing this, don't go back further than a month. Just begin where you are. So. So take last month's December statements and just begin categorizing them in a bucket and begin to add them up.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And we're not saying December is a little tricky because it's a bit of an anomaly. We tend to spend more money in December than any other month. But, yes, you don't have to go months back. And let's be clear that how you've been spending in the past doesn't necessarily mean that's how you're going to spend in the future.

I like that.

Right. It doesn't have to be copy and paste, but we need to get the what. So to begin with, I like the quote from James clear from Atomic Havoc. I don't know the exact quote, so I'm not going to quote him, but I'm going to say that he really says that people think they need motivation when what they really need is clarity. So this is an exercise, really, Stacy and Tom, in getting clarity about how you've spent money in the past, but not necessarily to your point, Tom, attaching meaning to the choices you made previously. We're meaning making machines, so we're going to do it anyway. So it's almost fruitless to say not to do it, but to be aware, like, wow, I see that, and this is how I feel, but it doesn't mean I have to feel that way. We can create a new future with it?

Well, it's kind of inner work. You know, we have a place where we talk about that thing I do. And that thing I do is usually something that we don't want to look at. But if we don't look at it, we can't work with it, we can't better manage it, we can't grow with it. And I would say that's very true with our money, too. We just, it's just a place to begin, you know, and if we look at it and go check it out, yeah, I did spend 3275 doll, you know, last year on shoes. Okay, do I want to do it again this year? Because if I don't look at it and I don't say, yep, that's the case, I'm going to probably do it again. Right. Just in my unconscious lack of awareness, for sure. And now I'm empowered to say, okay, maybe this year I'm going to cut that in half.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, this piece around, I like to call it like values based budgeting. So looking at that, let's use the shoe example. I am not here. I like to say to folks all the time who I work with, like, your personal finances are personal to you, but as a coach, they're not personal to me. They're just numbers. There. You told me you spent 32, $3,400 on shoes. I'm like, okay, how do you feel looking at the fact that you spent that? That's more what I'm interested in. You know, there's that quote, like, don't tell me what you value. Show me your checkbook and your calendar and I'll tell you what you value. So if you look at that, Stacy, and you're like, huh, that doesn't feel great. But here's the catch. Around that, so often around finances, we start to do budget, we start to work on it, we start to have these conversations because we think we should. We should be doing better, we should be saving more, we should be paying off debt. I'm not interested in that conversation. Should does not carry the day. Now, if you looked at things Stacey and Tom, and you looked at the big picture and you saw, wow, if we spent half that much on shoes, we could go to Cabo twice this year. Right? Or we could help this person in our community, or we could do this home improvement to our house. Let's attach that choice, right? That change we're going to make around how we spend to something we really want to create for the Future that'll carry that day. That's a wide little. Get us fired up and be like, let's have this weekly budget meeting as opposed to Tom. We really should be talking about this.

You know what I mean?

So it's just really important to be grounded in that. Why? And start to look at things and say, does that align with our values or not? And everybody spends money differently and we need to honor that.

I can avoid the conversation of Tom saying, stacy, yeah, I see the charge.

No, I, I.

How many times do we need to talk about this?

I love that should does not carry the debt. That is so good. My gosh. That should be. We should be shouting that from the rooftops. You know, I mean, and it's. Oh, boy. Most of us, oftentimes we behave like it should. Does carry the debt. Right.

I mean, well, how many times do you think we'll sit down and look at the budget if we should do it? Probably once, if we're lucky. Yeah, you could bribe me. Might get two. Might get two times out of me. But that's, that's so, so profound. Okay, so I, I have, I have.

Got my three buckets.

Yeah, I printed out the sheet. I've got the highlighters.

Total. Doing me total them.

No, no, you don't have to do any of that. Nope. All I'm asking you to do right now. Listen, let's keep it simple. All I'm asking you to do right now is to start to think about things in those three different categories. Start to become aware that this is how we spend money. Now, here's the thing. Most couples spend on recurring and day to day spending and whammies of life in the same way. They just pay for them in and out of their typical checking account. I would call it a bill account. But the thing is, these kind of expenses happen to us in different ways. Right. We can't treat them all the same way. Day to day spending happens very differently than a bill that we pay month to month. So we need to deal with them differently moving forward. So the first step is just to really be conscious that there are these three different categories. The second step is to turn your day to day spending into a fixed expense. Okay? So why so often like our mortgage, our rent? For a lot of folks I work with, their kids, tuition, whether it be high school or college, is often their biggest expense of the month. But there's not as much stress attached to it because they know the date it's due, it recurs every month, and they know how much it is so they can plan around it. Why day to day spending, whether it be the shoes or the latte habit or the Costco or the Amazon, for tons of folks, why that's a stressful area. More stressful than a $3,000 mortgage payment for a lot of folks is because they don't know how much that's going to be. How much are we really going to spend on the day to day spending? And we could start out the month and be like, all right, hey, we've got this income, we've got these expenses for the month. Hey, look at us, we're going to have 500 extra to put towards savings or go towards debt or put towards our vacation fund. But then they get to the end of the month and so often those day to day expenses have ransacked those plans, either because they swiped their debit card more than they thought they would, or they go to pay their credit card bill and they realize it's higher for those day to day expenses than they anticipated. So step number two is to turn your day to day spending into a fixed expense. And the way to do this, now you've got, now you can go back out anything that I'm going to say that you took a green highlighter and you highlighted in green everything that was day to day spending, every purchase that wasn't a fixed recurring bill or that was not a whammy.

Right.

$200 copay for an emergency room visit, for example. So that day to day spending, I want you to start to look and see how much do we spend on.

That month to month? Month.

It's not going to be the same every month. This is why a few months of data can be helpful.

Sure.

It should not be a. Well, I think we should spend $1,000 a month on day to day spending. And you've spent 2,500 the last three months. Every month. It should not be a pie in the sky, throw spaghetti at the wall kind of idea. It should be based in the what? So, so let's make it easy and say you two go back and you realize, okay, we spend about $2,000 every month on groceries and gas and Amazon. I got all the things. What I want you to do is to turn that expense into a fixed expense. So take that 2000 and like a bill, pay that amount to a second checking account. So we're going to set up a second checking account. Now here's the thing. Some people could go pull $2,000 out in cash, then they've turned it into a fixed Expense. All right, Stacey, we all have $2,000 a month. It's going to be in this envelope a la Dave Ramsey and his team. And what they do. I don't find many folks want to deal with cash, especially in the area era of COVID So what I have folks do is set up a second checking account, call it a spending account, and only use that account for day to day spending. And the thing about it is you pay that account like a bill. So we said for the two of you that you spend about $2,000 a month on this day to day. So you could transfer 2000 all at once or maybe on the 1st and the 15th. Or for folks who are listening, lined up with their pay cycle, maybe they're paid weekly and they want to do $500 every week. It will give you a budget for how much to spend together on an amount you've decided on together. This should not be one person and the other saying, all right, we're going to stick to this amount. And it takes a few months to build that muscle of working really well. But here's the thing. No longer is that day to day spending ransacking those other goals. Now the bill account is just to pay those recurring bills, one of which is the bill that we pay to transfer money into the day to day spending account.

I love that. So that then there's never the worry, you know, as you put things up on automatic withdrawal, that there's not in there because, you know, Stacy bought her shoes.

Yes.

I really like that. I've never heard that. I mean, that's. That's very creative and very. Sounds very effective. And do you find this when people get successful, like you say, get it, get that muscle memory, so to speak, from the athletic.

Yeah.

Metaphor, if you will, that brings a lot of calm to their picture. That was not there prior.

Absolutely, absolutely. This is actually the area that causes the most amount of stress. And it's because somebody, and I'm not going to say it's Tom, but it probably is. Is over there paying the monthly bills.

Oh, yes, that's correct.

Right.

Okay.

So I just kind of made that assumption. But, you know, he's in my house, it's me. There's always going to be something. I want to normalize, normalize, normalize that. Typically inside of couples, one person is more interested in managing the. The finances. And that's okay. Right? That's okay. Again, I want to normalize that. But here's Tom over here making sure everything's lined up. And then Stacy, who May not go buy shoes, but she might do an additional 99. Not 99, I don't know, $90 on Amazon. And Tom's over here saying, well, we didn't plan for that. Like, I had everything lined up. I had everything paid. We were good. I was gonna put this money into savings and then wasn't clear that that expense was going to come up. So we turn that into a fixed expense that the couple agrees on and can plan around. It's a game changer.

1. I love that you don't. You know, when I think of budgeting, I think about, like, getting all the bills and all the accounts and everything out and. And, you know, having to itemize it and then having to add up all the columns. I mean, you could spend an entire evening, if not an entire weekend kind of digging it all out and figuring out where we are and. And I love what you've done. It's just so simple and streamlined that automatically. Okay, here's your budget. Your budget is that spending account.

Yep, yep. And I'm going to give you permission some other financial coaches might have you track what's happening in that account. I don't. I actually don't like. Because the thing is, like, we put $1,000 in there first and the 15th. That's what we're doing for you, too. You just spend down from there. That's the only account you're really looking at. Like, how are we doing? Should we go out to dinner tonight? I don't know. I mean, actually, I have young kids. The only account that they have access to is our spending account. They can't spend from it. They're only 11 and 13. They'd be buying Roblox all the time. But they can look and see.

See.

So when they say, mom, can we get pizza tonight after school? They can look in that spending account. They know they can see how much is in there. And then we have a conversation. Well, mom, there's $250 in there. We can definitely get pizza. Okay, well, when does money go in there again? Well, on the 15th. Okay, well, what's today? What's the six? Well, do you have to go grocery shopping? How much is that going to be? It starts a whole conversation with your kids around, what are the things we have between now and the next time? Money is transferred into that account.

So you're teaching money literacy and some.

You know, project management, projection, you know. You know, I mean, those are all important, vital financial skills.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So this is a cool game changer. Can I Tell you, the third step. Now I'm too excited. Okay, so that is a game changer. So all of a sudden, and here's the thing, it's not perfection. So it takes a few months, like Tom was saying, building that muscle and memory, making those transfers, seeing like, hey, is 2000 enough really a month? And 2000amonth really enough for us? Should we be transferring some more? Listen, the biggest skill I can teach anyone is to plan. So if you can say after a month or so, like, actually, I think it should be more like 2,400amonth. Let's plan around that. Or we've got some bigger expenses coming up next month. You know, we're having our families around for the holidays. Let's put an extra 500 into that spending account. Great. We're not looking for perfection here. I always say I'm looking for like 75%. We can get 75% plan. Then when the other stuff happens, we're much easier to cash flow that coming through. But how do we deal with these whammies of life? This is one of the most common things people say to me is like, we're doing okay. We feel like we're caught up. And then all of a sudden, I went in to get an oil change. I thought it was going to be $70 and $900 later, I had my rotors fixed. And I'm going to say just car things that needed to be changed, you know, or $1,500 because they told me I needed two new tires and I had a slow leak or whatever. All of a sudden we think we're doing well. We think we're on the same page. And then where do we have the money to pay for that? So, so often if folks don't have that money in savings, they use their credit card. And that's where credit card debt can build up over time. I actually think it's not often, you know, oh, well, I bought so many things online or I went on all these trips. No, it's from covering life's whammies. It's that band aid we keep putting on because we just don't have enough money set aside. And we weren't planned for that. So what I have folks do to plan for these whammies, these expected Christmas is coming, unexpected expenses, right? Car, house, kids, etc. Is to set up separate savings accounts, each one with a specific purpose. Okay, so often I'll talk to folks and they'll be like, well, I have an emergency fund. And I'll say, well, what are the last three things you spent out of that emergency fund? They're often things that they're covering that they're not really sure are quote, unquote emergencies. So I'm not against having an emergency fund, but I think it's really smart to say, okay, car repairs. What did we spend last year on that? And we're not looking for perfection again, but Maybe we spent $2,400 last year on our car repairs. My idea is to set up a separate checking, a separate savings account just for car repairs. Call the car repairs account. And then every month, like a bill that you can plan around, transfer $200 to that car repair account account. So it's building up to that 2400. And when you go to get something fixed, you can pay it out of that account. It's so much easier to plan around because we're saving monthly for these whammies of life Now. I like the on I. Nobody's giving me any money for any of these banks. I'm not affiliated with anybody. But I love the online banks for this ally, capital 1 360, because they allow you to set up as many savings accounts as you want and give each one a specific purpose.

You were reading my mind, Amy, because I, I was saying, though, how about all the fees associated from all these different accounts, but all the, the new online. You, you mentioned Allied and, and capital 3, capital 1 360.

I want you to mention those again. Tell us where to go find them. People want to go research.

Sure. The, the online banks are just becoming more and more popular. Popular out there. So there's a lot of them out there. My two favorites are Ally.

Is that a L, L, I, E.

D. It's a L, L, Y.

Thank you.

Yep. Or Capital One, which a lot of people know, Capital One, but it's capital 13 6. All affiliated. You know, I mean, what I'm saying is like, it's all part of the Capital One family.

Sure.

But these accounts, because the brick and mortar account, brick and mortar banks love to charge you for savings.

Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes.

It's crazy, right? Or even so, to my second point of setting up a second checking account. If your bank, Wells Fargo, pnc, Bank of America, whoever is going to charge you for that second account, I'm not having it. I do not tolerate people spending money to have a checking account or to have savings accounts. So what I recommend is a bank like Ally that allows you to have a checking account for free and as many savings accounts as you want. No minimums. You can have 3 cents in that car repair account. And every month, like a bill, you're putting money into that account or your Christmas account or your home repair account or Stacy's shoe account. She wants to go shopping quarterly, for example. Or even bigger things like I have folks who pay car insurance every six months.

And let me ask Amy. So just like. So do you have clients, which I'm thinking our own. So you may. You have a traditional, you know, bank and mortar bank relationship. And then you would set up these other accounts and you can electronically transfer from your traditional one to these user friendly, no fee based other accounts.

You got it, Tom. That's exactly what I do and what my clients do. I've had capital 1,360since it was ing back in the day. So I've actually been doing this for like 15 or 20 years. But this is. I used to just maybe have a couple. I'm not going to tell you how many savings accounts I have right now, but I'm going to tell you that every single one of them shows up when I log into my account. And it shows me every single account that I have or we have. Because really it's my husband and I together. And then I. There's some of them that I do automatic transfers to Tom. So kids birthday fund, my kids camps in the summer. Summer camps that cost some cash. Right. And like things like HOA fees and things like that. I do. And then there'll be other ones that maybe my husband and I will decide to contribute to if we have some extra money to go towards it and that aren't necessarily a regular training transfer. Yeah.

Beautiful.

Wow, that's a beautiful. Okay, so that is a great place to begin. Like, is that not so simple? I don't know about y', all, but that was very refreshing to me. That was the funnest budgeting conversation I have, bar none ever had in my whole life.

I would conclude too. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you're the one that gets a little sweaty under the armpits. What was that like for you?

It was awesome. And we're going to be doing it.

Yes. I'm excited.

I mean, yeah, I mean, it's, it's. I mean, again, I mean, the reason why we so appreciate your, your body work and how you come at it, because you come at it from the feeling side. Let's be honest. There is so much energy charged to money in our sphere. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's all an individual road and we could have Many episodes just around that. But you have, you've taken the, you know, you've demystified it and taken the charge away and given us some practical frameworks, which is what we're all about as well. How do we start so that. Thank you so much.

And if you want to work with Amy personally, we would highly recommend her. Amy, remind us all where we could reach out to you. Maybe we just need a little support to kind of get the ball rolling or maybe we've taken it this far and we want to take it further. How would people get in touch with you?

Best way to find me is just on my website. I keep it really simple. It's just Amy Scott coaching.

Yep.

And those three steps that I talked about, Tom and Stacy, I actually have like a PDF on my site that you can download because, you know, some people are exercising or they're walking. I know I'm always walking when I'm listening to your podcast is, you know, so that they can go back and read through that and see those steps practically instead of what did I miss from this?

Perfect. You guys go get that.

Gotcha. Amy scottcoaching.com let's get to the three buckets and let's get, get the, you know, becoming less stressful and more. Bring some ease. I love that word eas. Bring some ease back into this.

We're going to have Amy back the first of every quarter, so she'll be back to check on us all and see how we're all doing.

There's going to be a quiz in homework. It's right now.

So thank you, Amy. It's always so much.

Thank you so much.

Time with you.

Oh, it's the best being with you guys. Thank you so much.

We're going to take a quick break and when we come on back, we're going to have a little bit of fun. It's time for some fun. I think we've been having fun.

Hey, babe.

Did you know that the average couple spends only two hours a day with each other? And the majority of that time is spent eating, watching TV and surfing social media rather than connecting with each other. And if children are involved, my gosh, it's even less time than that.

I know, babe. That's why you created our conversation cards, for connection, because they're the perfect conversation starter. So the next time you're sitting on a couch, rather than turning on the TV or grabbing your phone, pull out a card and get ready for some good old fashioned laughter and loving connection.

Yeah, you can get your cards@stacybartley.com Working.

Hard to put a smile on your face. Alternative Talk 1150.

Welcome back inside the Love shack, Tom and Stacy Bartley. We're going to step right into the follow the fun, if you will.

Yeah. And it's the first week of the month. The first week of every single month we do a giveaway. And the people that win those prizes are on our fun list. So you want to get on our fun list so that you too can enter to win fabulous prizes. And I know we've been giving away some things if you're a follow of our podcast, we've been doing this weekly now because we gave away something the whole month of December in in honor of the holidays and some of our.

2.0 conversation cards, you can still get them even though it's not the holiday. They make a great gift anytime time.

And we're not giving them away today. We're going to give something else away.

But they are for sale.

Yeah, that's true.

You can buy them.

Our giveaway today is a soft, cozy throw for you and your special someone to snuggle up in. I mean, after all, baby, it's still cold.

Yeah. And how about a home film festival? Pop the popcorn, clear the calendar, stream the shows and oh, baby, let's roll. I can just say the the week between Christmas and New Year, Stacy and I took a kind of a much needed downbreak and we did have some film festival nights with a very soft blanket and it was awesome.

Yeah, that's kind of what was the inspiration for our giveaway today. So we're going to have our wonderful, extraordinary engineer pick a number between 1 and 100 for us today. And we are going to give away this incredible throw that you too can use to have your own cuddly film festival or anything else.

Popcorn with the throw. We'll keep it radio friendly. Don't worry. So, Mr. Mr. Eric, extraordinary writer. What is your number, sir?

Let's go with.

17.

Oh.

Oh, wow. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Oh, my, my, my. It's. It's P O R R A S. Porous Mariola. I'm not going to give the rest of it. Porous Mariola, congratulations. You are the winner. And you are going to be so set up for an upcoming film festival at your house with your special someone. Now listen, I wanted to give you some ideas maybe for some romantic movies, because after all, this is the Love shack. We are in the Love Shack. So some great movies that came to my mind that you may Want to check out and stream with your bucket of popcorn and your new throw or. Or your old throw, whatever that is for you? How about Along Came Polly, An Officer and a Gentleman. I liked that one. Ghost. Remember the pottery thing?

Somewhere in Time.

The Way We Were and When Harry Met Sally. It's a good one too. And if romance isn't appealing to you right now, how about what we did is we actually picked an. Our favorite actor actress and we had a whole series of Sandra Bullock.

They really. Yeah. That wasn't even aware that she had made.

Yeah. Very talented old ones, new ones. It was incredible. So you can. You can create your film festival that way or can simply just select a genre that you're feeling in the mood for, whether that be action or comedy or sci fi. Right. There's all kinds of ways to create your own in home film festival wrapped up in your little cozy blanket. What I want to do is, as you're hearing this, do it like set the side, set aside the time.

Just like our assignment that Amy gave us. You know what? None of it works unless we step in and do so.

We end every episode with a wonderful. Can you feel it? It's a podcast, a song that we choose specifically for this episode. You can check out all of our Spotify music lists on our website for each and every episode. It's the idea of feel into what it is we have talked about tonight. We've stimulated your logic. Now we want you to feel some things. And today we've chosen a song. It's from Blanken Jones and it's called Glow. And I chose the song because I wanted to give you something that you could play in the background that was going to help relax you as you get out those highlighters and you start highlighting those expenses into those three buckets for your own budget, like, you know, really exhale. I hope that what you've taken away from today's conversation is that this is so simple and so doable and that when we do it, it's going to alleviate a lot of stress and help empower you in this area of money.

And this is. This is a tremendous song for so many. In so many ways for me. But I mean, yes, I mean, let's be honest. Environment matters. And as we shared, this can sometimes be a little bit of an intimidating place to step into at end.

The.

At the beginning of 2022. So let's do everything we can to make this environment really create the conditions that make this result inevitable. Getting these three buckets in place and just Taking a look. That's. Remember, that's all Amy gave us. Just take a look. No judgment. Taking a look. So we understand where we're at. So check out this song. It's one of our faves. We have a lot of faves, but this is a really good one.

We do have a lot of faves. Plank and Jones has incredible relaxing music master mixers.

They're European, and they're just very, very incredible how they do things.

Yeah. So put it on. Pull out that paper, pour your favorite beverage, roll up your sleeves. And how come we can't approach this budgeting conversation from a place of joy and gratitude for what we have?

And check out that resource that Amy has on her website for free. If again, so, you know, there's a lot to take in there and just, just walk through it very sequentially with the music going, you know, taking, taking breaths, if you, if you will. Just note affirming. We got this.

Yeah. That's it for today's episode in Time in the Love Shack. If by chance you have a conversation about love, sex and relationships you would like to have us talk about here, go ahead and reach out to us because we are dedicated to having conversations that you want to have.

And if this particular money conversation is bringing up a lot of things, which it often does, and you need some. Some support sometimes, these really significant places in our life and relationships, you need some outside expert facilitation. You know what? That's exactly what we do, and we're blessed and honored to do so. So please reach out to us.

Special thank you to Amy Scott today for being here with us and sharing her money wisdom. Come on back next week as we join you again to continue to share additional ways that you too can improve your sex, love and relationships. We're Thomas Daisy Bartley. It's been a pleasure to be here with you inside the Love Shack today. Now go make it a great day and get on that budget. We'll look forward to being back here with you next, next week.

See you next week, everybody.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com SL podcast. Love the show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.