On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with J Money, award winning personal finance blogger and experimenter about changing the way we think about money and defining financial success.
In this episode we discussed:
J. Money is an award winning blogger, consultant, experimenter, and daddy of three funny boys. With over a decade of building communities online, Jay’s projects have reached 40+ million views and are regularly featured in the media. An avid coin collector, skateboarder, and yoga enthusiast, Jay loves getting people excited about finance and is best known for his personal finance blog,BudgetsAreSexy.com. You can learn more about Jay atjmoney.biz.
Connect with J Money:
Website: https://budgetsaresexy.com
Website: https://jmoney.biz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jmoneyyyyyy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmoneyyyyyy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmoneyyyyyy/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/budgetsaresexy @Twitter
Merchandise (Amazon)
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with J Money, award winning personal finance blogger and experimenter about changing the way we think about money and defining financial success.
In this episode we discussed:
J. Money is an award winning blogger, consultant, experimenter, and daddy of three funny boys. With over a decade of building communities online, Jay’s projects have reached 40+ million views and are regularly featured in the media. An avid coin collector, skateboarder, and yoga enthusiast, Jay loves getting people excited about finance and is best known for his personal finance blog,BudgetsAreSexy.com. You can learn more about Jay atjmoney.biz.
Connect with J Money:
Website: https://budgetsaresexy.com
Website: https://jmoney.biz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jmoneyyyyyy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmoneyyyyyy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmoneyyyyyy/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/budgetsaresexy @Twitter
Merchandise (Amazon)
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Watch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work. Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Jay Money. Jay is an award-winning personal finance blogger, experimenter, consultant and daddy times three. In this episode, we'll be discussing Jay's thoughts on how we change the way we think about money and defining financial success. Jay, welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Hey, thank you. It's nice to be here, man. It's nice to see your face from all of our communication over the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's great to hear. I mean, you're one of the OGs in the personal finance space, so you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's nothing too crazy. I'm just a regular guy and back in 2008, my fiance and I at the time are looking for a place to rent together. We're looking for one or two bedroom kind of got lost, took the wrong turn, saw a townhouse for sale. We weren't even looking to buy. One thing led to another. 48 hours later we signed, we were in $350,000 debt for this house. We were excited about it, but that kind of launched me into thinking I better get control of my money. I'd never been like really good but really bad. I've kind of just been even.
Speaker 3:But I started searching, like you know, hey, I need to learn how to budget, I need to learn how to control my spending. And I accidentally came across this whole blogging community online which I didn't know existed. I didn't know what a blog was and I just started reading people's stories of money, and mainly this guy, my money blog, jonathan, my money blogcom. He's still around, actually, all these 20 years later, but he used to share his net worth Like here's my savings, here's my debt, here's my investing. And I'd never seen anyone's money before. I mean, that was like crazy to me.
Speaker 3:You know, people talk about money but you never see real life examples. And so every month he would repost, you know, his new net worth. It'd go up and go down, he'd share what he did good, bad, but that really one on one. You know, experience really changed me and really got me to pay attention to my money. And then after a couple of months I was like, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna write a blog, you know, and I'm gonna be fun and talk about drinking beer and you know I'm gonna make it cool. So I named it. Budgets are sexy. I was like, oh, people are going to search for that, you know, sexy, or come to me.
Speaker 3:You know it's not what they're looking for, right, but that was like oh, na'vi was, and and I do the same thing I started sharing my net worth, which at the time I think was I think it was around $40,000, maybe and I started sharing, you know, like every day I would blog, by thoughts, anything relating to money. And after a year or two I started making money through advertising and it became my full time job, much to the surprise of all of us. And here we are, 1516 years later. I've done other projects and created projects, shut down projects I sold budgets are sexy. I bought it back, so I'm still there. So it's, you know, been a fun adventure. But but that's how it all started. Just from Googling and, you know, just seeing real life people talk about money, I think is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's a great story and I followed you know all your stuff for years now, and one of the things I've always loved is what you talked about is making money a little bit wider, a little bit more fun, because it's like it's super serious. Yeah, people, when they talk about their money. It's like sometimes they're going to a funeral.
Speaker 3:It's like it's horrible, yeah, and that's yeah. So I'm very lighthearted and positive and I don't know I'm not like the meats and potatoes of finance. I'm like I call myself like the dessert, like I get you excited, interested, and then, once you're interested, you kind of can deep dive from there. You know, but that's it. Like all this stuff we have, every single person has to do with money, you know, and there's more fun ways to do it. Then you know the suit and tie type of stuff. That I'm not, you can't really see I have a mall but it's a bad hair day so I'm wearing a hat, you know. So you know people are surprised that I talk about money a lot because I don't look that part. But but you know, like there's lots of us that just care about people and trying to help them with their money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, I mean, let's talk about budgets are sexy. I mean it was one of the first money blocks that I think really gained a lot of traction is like what do you think was different about it that really drove the attention to it and people loving it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I told lots of jokes and I would even like her son there every now and then. I think I think I was. I tried to be the one that was more like fun and engaging. I asked questions, I commented, like I spent hours a day responding to comments, responding to emails, which a lot of people weren't doing. Some people did, and there was a few blogs before me that were really big and you know they're very good, just very straightforward and not as like storytelling as much.
Speaker 3:And so me, like I I'm not a writer by trade, I'm not a finance guy by trade, I have no degrees, but I always just told the story of what's going on in my life relating to money. I know you say a lot of people like it. A lot of people don't like it as well. You know I've been called like many names over the years, but you know, at the end of the day, like you know, it's just I can't be anyone else but myself. So, and I think that's the beauty of the community, there's lots of like. Like money itself hasn't changed and you know, thousands of years is a very simple, you know thing. But people don't relate to some people or they need to be told differently or different, you know, told in a different way, and so we all add to that. You know a lot of advice out there, just in our own different way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I'm with you as I think you know people get tied into that, like you know being. You know we talked about that being serious. But you know, hearing the same old story in the same old way, that you know telling it in a different way, is going to resonate with different people before people are going to say, hey, you know I'm turned off by money, you know, but you know, maybe you know the way Jay is looking at it resonates with me because I kind of get him. He's having a little fun, he's not. You know the suit and tie.
Speaker 2:Financial services professional and like you said is, you know you don't necessarily have to have training because you're talking about the personal side of money and I think we forget about that, the personal and personal finance. And I think that's one thing that you've done. I know that it's resonated with me as it reminds me, you know, to be human when I talk about money and I think that's probably one of the things that you know, I feel is probably contributed to your success and I think people should remember that is, you know, be be personal with your money. You know it's part of your life, but this would have to rule your life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, well said. Oh, man, you should have a podcast or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, maybe one of these days we're, we have a podcast, Hopefully somebody's listening.
Speaker 3:That was a tweetable statement there.
Speaker 2:So you know. One of the things you talked about is if financial success is more about freedom than the dollars, can you tell us a little bit about that? Why is financial success more about freedom than the money?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us get caught up in wanting more money, more this, more this, but at the end of the day, like there's a point to money, like that money gives you something, right? Some people want the fancy cars and homes, and that's fine. Most people just want to live their ideal lifestyle. You know, they want their freedom to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and that's what money you know gives you. And it took me, I mean, when I started my blog in 2008,. Like I was very like money hungry. I was like I'm going to hustle. You know, I'm going to make money. I want to be a millionaire. Being a millionaire is cool, you know. Like I just want to say I'm a millionaire, you know, which is ironic because people who become millionaires, they're not spending millions or like saving it, you know, which is the opposite of what you think.
Speaker 3:But that's what I wanted. I was like I'm going to hustle and so I did. I just I was like I just want more and more and more money and, over the years, probably want to hit 400,000 ish, 500,000 net worth. I started realizing that like my lifestyle was changing and I started doing more on the daily. That made me happy. It wasn't like tied to a number, and even when I hit a million, like nothing crazy happened, it was still me, still my life. You know the only thing it changes in that mindset.
Speaker 3:You know, over the years my mindset changed and I realized, oh man, now I feel more comfortable. Now I could, you know, you know, not work as much as I don't want to, or take more risky, you know, investments or risky jobs or whatever, but that was freedom. So the more I made up to a certain point, the more freedom I got. You know, and some people we're talking about traveling, some people want money so they could just travel the world, you know, and that's great. Others don't want to travel, but they want to, you know, fancy motorcycle or whatever, it doesn't really matter what you want. But the point of money is to be happy and, to you know, live your life the way you think is fit. You know, and the nice thing is some people can be happy with a lot less money and some people need, you know, $10 million to be happy. So hopefully you skew on the lower end and you don't need to, you know, make as much to be happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you said so many wonderful things there, but I think you know that ending point is that it's your own personal definition of financial success. You know, it doesn't matter what somebody else views as financial success. I think one of the other things you talk about is that people constantly stay in an accumulation mode and they have a hard time switching to spending mode. And you know, and that's the whole point of accumulating money is that you can spend it later on, you know. So don't be scared to spend a little bit, and I love that you talk about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's a new trend in the blogging in the fire, financial. You know, early retirement genre that many of us are in is now is like great, you've hustled a lot of us. We've seen our journey, making money, making money. Then we hit it, we're retired. But now, like, what do we do? And some of us have hard time spending that money, so you know. So now, like there is a big shift to like spend, spend, spend, even though the famous book that's out now die with zero.
Speaker 3:You know, the whole point is to do like give it away and be happy and live your life and don't have any money in your bank account when you die, which is pretty extreme, you know. But like that mentality is starting to starting to come back, of course, like if you're just starting out on your journey and you don't have any money, you know, then you know it's just you know so. But yeah, you do want to get in the habit of enjoying your life and a lot of the stuff we think more money will bring us, like we can actually do now. You know, like take time off or do hobbies and stuff. You can work it incrementally into your life daily, whether you have a million dollars or you have, you know, a hundred dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think one of the other things that you talk about that I think resonates with people more than traditional financial services is that you're talking about goals and things that money can do for you, rather than about specific products, because nobody wants to talk about a 401k. It's not very exciting, but that's a lot of the financial education out there. But I think what's happened with the personal finance community is they talk about concepts like fire, and we can talk about extreme fire or slow fire or coast fire and which one's better. But I think what's important is that it's helping people achieve a goal rather than saying, okay, well, here are the tools that you can use, but it's something that you can achieve, and I think that's what resonates with people. So it's awesome, it's out there. So one of the things you talk about a lot is your health, and how has health tied into your money and your financial journey?
Speaker 3:Well, I would say, up until two years ago it didn't really. I'm 44 now, but when I was 41, 42, I had a health scare. I started having these sores in my mouth and these blisters and then at one point I couldn't swallow and I'm like, oh, I should probably go to the hospital. I'm a typical guy. Took me forever to start looking for health but turn out I have this rare disease, autoimmune disease. But it also happened to be we were talking about Motley Fool. I worked for the Motley Fool for a little bit, building out a website for them, and then that contract ended and I happened to be when I had a couple of months window of no work that I got sick, and so I had time to recuperate and to figure out what was going on. And so lifetime disease.
Speaker 3:But at the time it was like the hardest part when you don't know, you don't have any medicine, your life's turned upside down. But it was horrible. But financially, I didn't have to think about money one time. It was just not an issue. I didn't have to worry. I had all that set up and so it wasn't additional stress on top of health issues. So that's the perfect road. You only get sick when you have money saved up and you don't have to worry. It's not reality, obviously, but that is the power of money too, like, yes, it can buy you stuff, it can accomplish these goals we're talking about, but then at the end of the day, it can also just give you peace of mind, knowing it's like one less thing to worry about. As a human, for the most part you always worry, but it gives you a lot of peace of mind, definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, let's dive into that just a little bit is did you have health insurance? Was health insurance helpful for you? Yes, I had health insurance.
Speaker 3:My wife still works, she enjoys it, she is on her plan and so that covered a lot. It took months to diagnose, so there was tons of copays and all kinds of stuff in there. But yeah, if it wasn't for health insurance, yeah, so the medicine that I have to take once every couple of years whenever flares up, I have to do two injections, and each one's $20,000. So I've done about four of them so far. So that's what 24, that's $80,000 that we would have spent, and I think we ended up paying $3,000, which is still a lot, but obviously not $80,000. So insurance definitely helped in that regard and, honestly, before that I've had insurance my whole life, but usually I'm like, oh, I'm healthy, nothing's going to happen. I'm typically that kind of person, and so now I'm like, oh man, stuff can happen, because no one ever expects it, of course. But yeah, health insurance helped with that.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes people miss that is the value of protecting against certain risks. You can look at that when you think about your investment portfolio. You hedge against the downside, maybe by buying bonds and stocks. I mean, we're definitely this is way beyond my expertise as well as talking about portfolio structure but through your financial life. It's just like if you're driving somewhere, you carry a spare tire maybe, and it's just like that happened with your health. Is you had the spare tire, so it helped you? Hey, maybe that's a horrible analogy.
Speaker 3:People know where.
Speaker 2:I'm going with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, same with car insurance, home insurance, flooding, I mean gosh, there's like a million insurances. I think I even have umbrella insurance which covers stuff that other stuff doesn't uncover. I will say a lot once you have a certain amount of money, because usually it covers big catastrophes, like for car and home stuff. Some people in fire is like we don't even use insurance, so we just self-insure at that point because you have the money to cover it and so you don't have to keep spending money every month. So interesting, a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 3:You start out even budgeting. A lot of people track their finances, budget, budget, budget, reach financial independence and they're like I'm not going to budget anymore, you know, like I'm done. You know which is cool, it's ironic because you spend all this time and then you don't have to do it. So there is hope for people like I'm tired of budgeting, tired of insurance, tired of thinking about it. At a certain point, if you keep going strong and it works out, you don't have to think about it anymore, you know. So that's the perk of it all down the road.
Speaker 2:Definitely, definitely. Now, that's a great thing, and you know, just talking about umbrella insurance, since you have three boys, it's good because if they're being boys and you know they have a friend over who gets hurt on your property you know for all insurance is going to take care of that.
Speaker 3:Right, right, yeah, yeah, three feisty boys, that is something. Yeah, it will definitely happen.
Speaker 2:I don't know when, but sometimes yeah, the twin tree boy, something's going to happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So you know, let's get into the get ready questions, and you know, the first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Speaker 3:Um esteem. I already talked about a little bit, but that spending or saving aspect Mr Money Mustache is a really good person that explains this and has lots of good articles. But basically, the less money that you spend, the less money you need to earn, which is a very simple concept. But usually when you start getting a job and making more money, usually the more money you make, the more you spend. So you're always breaking even. Even if you're making $200,000, you're usually spending a lot more than you are when you're making $20,000. But if you are able to be happy spending less monthly or yearly, you don't need to kill yourself earning a ton more. Or you can earn a ton more and bank it and bank it and then after 10, 15 years or whatever, just not work anymore. Again it goes on priorities and what you want out of life. But that really even for me.
Speaker 3:I've been blogging for three or four years until I had the epiphany of that and I was like, oh my gosh, what could I get rid of? I used monthly recurring fees. I was paying $150 for an iPhone and I don't know I'll spend $300 a month on stuff and I'm like, is there anything here that gives me happiness, that's less. And I did this challenge everything. I went through all of my recurring bills. I was like what can I do? Cut and get rid of, because every month keeps compounding on top of each other. And so I cut out $300 or $400 a month, which that was seven, eight years ago, which I don't know.
Speaker 3:That's a lot of math. It's thousands of dollars that I haven't had to spend and also which allowed me to hit the fire and to be somewhat retired right now, because I started cutting back earlier, so now I don't have to work another five years just to keep up with expenses. So as simple as that is. I mean, if you really wanted to get hardcore, you can just bare a bone at like, what do I need to spend to survive? And then could I cut everything else and be happy, or maybe 80% happy. Maybe you can't, and if you can, it's like well, hell, you can have so much more life later on by cutting things now and then just letting time do its thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, what that reminds me of is Conmary, the whole Conmary method. Yeah, the magic of tidying is that's exactly what you did. Is you reviewed everything and go? This is springy joy, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean that's exactly what Marie Kondo teaches and I think for people, as you can tidy up your finances that way and find things is you may not be able to change what you earn, but you can change what you spend and you can avoid lifestyle creep, which is what you were talking about earlier. You get a raise, boy, let's get a new car right away, or we can upgrade our house or whatever it's like. Maybe don't change your spending right away and put that extra money into savings and see where that leads.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or just compare it. If you want to take a dream vacation, or because most of the things are, dreams, are long term, like a dream vacation, retirement, they're so far out and it seems like it takes forever. But your car example upgrade a car, spend $20,000 more to get a car, or take a trip around the world Well, there's your dream. If that's your dream, you could actually do it. But comparing it it helps me at least, especially if I'm shopping Like, oh, I like this shirt, like would I rather have this dream or even cash than this shirt. Usually I pick the cash or the dream, but it's hard to. But you can start comparing early on until you're like, oh man, I got this down, definitely.
Speaker 2:I think you said something very important. There is that dream, and the vacation that ties into the health care you had is take the experience right now while you're able to, because a lot of people say, well, I'm going to travel when I retire at age 70. Age 70 may not even be up to traveling when you get to be age 70, you may just be tired, so have some joy while you're working.
Speaker 3:Let's say, I'm extreme fire.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just came back from a yoga class before hopping on here and the lady literally told us that she was glad she hiked Machu Picchu when she was younger, because now, like, her bones ache and she can't like do any hiking anymore. And exactly what you said, like just do it while you're young and you're able to, you know, and even going to debt. You know, like Obviously you don't want to go crazy and be stressed and have loads of debt, but if an opportunity came that was special and you did go in debt, I honestly would probably take it myself. If it's something like that, that is a rarity that comes up and that makes you super happy. The trick is you just don't go crazy and go in debt over. Every. Every single thing can't make you happy. Like pick the ones that really make you happy.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's like anything is you have to prioritize, and that's what we're talking about, is setting those priorities. So the next question is what is one simple thing that you can do each year to set yourself up for financial success?
Speaker 3:I'm going to go back to your boring example before when you mentioned 401k. So for me, one thing that stuck we had a 401k plan and this is going to sound crazy but they matched 100% of 100% you put in up to the legal max, so I think it was like $15,000 at the time. So if I put in $15,000, they would give me a free $15,000. Like not even invested in, Like it's crazy, which is really rare. But that example I was like oh man.
Speaker 3:I remember someone saying look, if you just maxed your 401k every year and did nothing else and just blew the rest of the money, like you'd still be fine, You'd be a millionaire next summer of years. And that was like oh man, because that is just simple math, Math. And obviously, like if you invested in the stock market thing, you'd be in crash for 20 years in a row, but you would eventually be perfectly fine by doing that one thing. So that motivated me and I remember at the time I was like, well, I'd have to jack my percentage of my paycheck to like 90% or 60%, and so I did it and I had to figure out how to survive for a handful of months until I hit my, Because I wanted to get it real fast in case it changed. So I just like maxed it whatever I could max.
Speaker 3:For like three or four months I didn't have money. I would pull from savings or like eat cheaply or whatever. But then every year from that point forward, while I was working, I maxed out the 401k even and they did get away with get rid of the cool plan after a while, but you could still. I just maxed it out every year. Now that I'm self employed, I maxed out my SEP IRA instead, since I don't have the 401k, but you could do it with the Roth IRA or traditional IRA, right Five or $6,000 a month or a year. Just max it out and just make sure like that's one thing you do, so even if you don't do anything else, like it's compounding over time.
Speaker 2:And that's something that's a recurring theme is compounding interest. That comes up on this podcast. Half of the guests bring up compounding interest For people who are watching. You may get a theme there, but I think the other thing too is 401k match what you were talking about. You are getting a hundred percent return on your money guaranteed. There is nowhere else that you can legally get a hundred percent return on your money and even if your employer is only matching you 50%, you're getting a 50% return on your money automatically besides whatever the investment brings you. So it's like that's free money. Never walk away from free money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other thing too, which I didn't catch on and again is super simple and makes me sound so stupid, like if you don't touch your money, it just goes up over time, and because so I had a savings account and a checking that was like throughout my whole life and I put money in savings and then I'd run out of money and send it back to checking, so I'd play this like transfer game, but I never just left alone and the 401k or IRA or anything where there's rules and penalties, you don't touch it because you don't want to get dinged and cause a mess, so you just leave it alone.
Speaker 3:But by leaving alone it just keeps growing. And I remember I hit like $50,000 in my 401k and I was like, oh my God, like I just felt so rich and I was like this is so crazy, I don't have to do anything. It just keeps growing because I'm not touching it and I keep contributing, you know, and to this day I haven't touched it. So obviously it's gone up a lot in 15 years or 10 years or whatever, but that like small, like I don't know, like a little light bulb went off. I was like don't touch it and just keep adding and it grows, but it's hard for us, and so the 401k and IRAs and any instrument like that. They give nice barriers where they make it annoying for you to pull from it because you're going to get penalized, which is good because then you don't hopefully pull from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it changes. Your habit with the money is because when you think about that, even with other money, it's like if I take from it, it's not going to grow, and I think that's a trade off for people. So what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?
Speaker 3:I think for me it was being more conscious. You know, because of the whole network thing I saw people doing online, I decided to track that and like see where my money was going every month. And then you know, like I could, I know if I go and buy something it's going to be reflected in that next monthly report because, like you know, it doesn't lie, it's just their facts or numbers. You know, here's my debt, here's my checking account. It's going to change depending on my actions that month. So I think tracking that once a month really even more than budgeting, like I budgeted, but that like net worth, like the overall snapshot of my money, that does you know all the savings, the debt, everything really helped me like stay on track and be conscious of it.
Speaker 3:I started, I started thinking about before I'd, you know, put out my credit card for something. And then I'm like, well, hey, you know like I need to find ways for to have more savings, right, for example, or to pay off my debt. And you know there's. You know there's only two ways you just spend less or you earn more, you know. So I started working on it and when you work on it you could see like if I paid more debt than like, those numbers would change and my net worth would go up.
Speaker 3:If I earned more, you know the numbers would change and the net worth would go up. So it's cool that you could work on all these different variables, you know, and have a visual snapshot and then track your journey over the months and over the years too. So that net worth tracking was huge for me. And then you know, I started, you know, going through my, my recurring expenses and like I need like I started like making it a game, like how can I get my net worth up higher? Like what else can I do that I haven't done? So it really changed my brain and I stopped spending as much, just basically because I kept thinking about it. I was conscious of it, you know.
Speaker 2:And I think you know a lot of us. You know, because where do you learn this? There's no place that you learn this, but you know. It's like having a map, you know and understanding like you're here and if you want to go there, these are your steps. And you know, like if you're looking at the map and you know if you circle back in the other direction, you're not going to get to your goal, and that's that's essentially what you're doing, is you know, if you spend money, well, you know may put you on a different path that doesn't take you to your goal. So it's like there's nothing wrong with that, like we've been talking about spend the money. If you want to spend the money, it's your money, but just understand it may change your journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And, like I said, there's some people who are talking about the different types of fire, you know, like what's I always forget the name the one where they're like it's like I don't know like wealthy fire or something. Like they want to spend millions of dollars a year, which means they need to earn a lot of money, you know, but that's like their choice, like, well, I want to live this way and I don't have a problem with trade off, working more. Other people like I want to work less. Okay, well then you spend less. You know it goes back to that whole. You know the whole thing of your, your personality and your lifestyle. You know goals 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:So, jay, what money myth are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:Probably the biggest for me is the whole home ownership stuff. Everyone says you have to own a home is the best thing for you financially and I don't necessarily agree. Like I love to rent, I like the freedom of renting and I like using whatever money you save from from you know spending on the home, you know investing it instead and having you know index funds and the stock market be where my you know quote investments are versus the house, and I think a lot of people get sold, hey, like that's the American dream, that's like how you make it adult. You own your home, which is fine and most people probably would be better owning their home for sure, like I definitely think that. But I think some people are like to travel, like the freedom, that are very minimalist. You know they don't. You don't need to own a home in order to be successful. I guess is my overall you know thing here.
Speaker 2:Well and I think that ties into everything that you've been talking about there's no one path to financial success and no one tool or resource it's going to help you get there. And it's like like you talk about is what's right for you, is owning home, the right choice for you, and only you will know that. Nobody's going to be able to help you make that. I mean, people would be able to help you make the decision, but nobody's going to have the answer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you don't have an answer, if you don't know yourself, other people are going to tell you one way, and then you're probably like I did. Like when we bought the house on a whim. It was mainly because everyone said this is what you do is you own home? So instead of renting, we bought, like I was miserable.
Speaker 2:But how would you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it was good. It was a good thing to do.
Speaker 2:So, and that's a value of the work that you and other personal signing it's bloggers, you know, like Mr Money Mustache, you know are doing. You know he's one of the pioneers. For people who haven't checked him out, I'd also recommend checking out his stuff. But I think you know you can't have these expectations yourself that you should know something like owning home, not owning home. But I think what you should do is change the way you think about money to know what questions you should ask, because I think that's the big key is okay, what questions do I need to know to have the answer to decide whether I should own or rent? Yeah, how do I figure that out? So you make the decision for yourself, and I think that's a value for everybody, and the message you know that, I think, is everybody learn the question to need to ask. Make your own decision yeah, find your own path.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and don't be afraid to like change. Like we go in different seasons, you know, like some years, like we rented our whole life, or after we bought the house, we ended selling it. We rented for a few years and then for my family it made sense to buy again and even though I did not want to do it, I was in a different position. I had more money. We know we were going to be long term and I was like, okay, fine, so technically I still own right now, but if I could change it, I'd go back to running it. Everyone in the family allowed it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and that's just it. It's things change, circumstances changing. You have to go back and look at things and reassess them. You know you can't make a decision with your money and never revisit it again.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no everything. Yeah, saving debt, investing everything. Life just keeps changing and you have to change with it as best you can.
Speaker 2:Definitely, definitely. So you know, let's get out the time machine for a minute is what advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?
Speaker 3:I don't know if it's money. Well, it does tie to money a little bit but I got into minimalism about 10 years ago and that has really helped me change habits and lifestyle. I stopped, you know, just walking into stores and just buying because I was bored. You know, I stopped accumulating, even like electronic stuff, like I have like one inbox and I get inbox zero every day. Like I'm very methodical and I set up these systems that are very simple. I only have one credit card, one savings account.
Speaker 3:You know, like everything is minimal, which helps me to save my brain and help save time, but then also does affect money as well. You know, and even you know, if I could go back right, like I was on that chase of I want a lot of money, I want a fancy home, you know I want this, I want that. I'm also 80% perfectly fine, as is. You know, those are just like niceties and I should have focused more on, like you know, being content than chasing. You know, I think minimalism for me is really helped that and you know, applied to all types of, you know, even career I had lots of. I mean, we've talked about other websites that I'd owned. You know, at one point. I had about 13 or 14 different sites, websites that I own online, you know, and your brain gets fragmented and and so I whittled it down to just like one or two, and so that, like you know, minimalism, learning that early on would have affected a lot of changes faster, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome, and I think that ties into everything that you've been talking about is thinking about what you really want and what's really important and cut out a lot of the rest. You know that's an easy way to get ahead, not only with your money but in life. Yeah, you know, to cut out the stuff that's not going to help you achieve your goals. Think about the right tools and resources to get to your goals.
Speaker 3:I think it's easier to cut out stuff than to add stuff to. At least for me, I think it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think people overlook that. You know it's like, you know, if you get rid of, you know, like we were talking about earlier, you know some subscriptions, yeah, like when was the last time you watched Paramount Plus?
Speaker 3:you know, maybe it's yeah, Okay, love to pick on Paramount Plus, but you know, and I'll tell you this to, like you know, and I say, I see all the good things they do, which are a lot, and then I do you stupid stuff too. I found out a couple months ago that I had a subscription to a vast you know for the computer, for spyware or whatever, and I did it like four or five years ago.
Speaker 3:Not only was it not using, I never activated it four or five years ago it was like $30 and I, my brain, said I activated and I did it, and then it went up to like 100. I had spent, I calculated, like over $500 on nothing. And I just caught it, like like a couple months ago. And so he still make mistakes and things slip through because your brain plays tricks on you. But I was like, oh man, $500, like I didn't even use the stupid thing. On the plus side, maybe it's not that necessary if, like my, I haven't had any problems with my computer not having that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I think you know one thing a takeaway for everybody out there watching and listening is like Jay is somebody who thinks about money. Yeah, it talks about money and things slip by. Things slip by for all of us, you know, even if this is our career. So, you know, don't don't judge yourself and say God, you know I did something stupid. And I was like just correct it and move on. And it was like but we all do have decisions that we regret. Yeah, so that would be another podcast decisions we regret.
Speaker 3:Oh, I bet you that would explode. People love to some of my most famous articles or when I do something stupid. People love reading. It makes you feel so much better.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean that's what the time machine question is. You know people say you know it's really geared for people to say, ok, well, this is something. You know that wasn't quite the right decision, but you know it was the right decision at the time. Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's important at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's important, so I think people need to realize that. So you know, to close, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money.
Speaker 3:Oh man, I already gave you all my number one tips. That's right, I don't know the lifestyle one. You know it's because I keep harping on it, but like that's like the thing. And so I've been blogging and thinking about money for over 15 years and it always comes back to like your dream lifestyle and what you want, and money, and like working, because we spend so much of our time working, you know, and so like you should be working towards something that is actually moving something forward, like, yes, your money and survival, but something that makes your heart happy.
Speaker 3:You know, like I don't know, like it's taken me years to come to this, and now that I'm more financially free, obviously I have the time to think and I'm in a different position than many people, but that like once it dawned on me that I didn't have to work 24 seven and I could cut back things and I can minimize and still have all this happiness with less money, like that, like it was like a epiphany, you know.
Speaker 3:And so I think, kind of all this stuff we're talking about, you know, comes together, but think about you know what you really want out of life and where you are now and again, like every day you can work on stuff that makes you happy, with or without money. You know, like, even for me, like going on a walk, like that, to me, is like so it brings me so happy. I could do that, or I could go spend $50 at a bar or something that makes me happy, but they're equal happiness, you know Like, you know so, but remembering, yes, money is important, but like, at the end of the day, like your life is more important than that, you just have to figure out the money part for a while until you get, you know, pretty secure, yeah 100%, and I think you know that's that old saying is you know like nobody you know on their deathbed goes boy, I wish I'd spent more time working or accumulating or anything like that.
Speaker 2:It's more like I wish I'd spent more time with my kids or you know whatever. Yeah, doing whatever brought you joy, so that's awesome advice. So, jay, where can people learn more about you now and what you're up to?
Speaker 3:Oh sure, well, my blog that I talk about money at every couple of weeks. I don't do it daily anymore, but it's budgetsrsexycom. You can see an archive of my net worth reports and just life. In the last you know, I think there's 2,000 articles that I've written in 15 years. I do other projects too, consulting type stuff. I have like an online resume, I guess you can call it. It's called jmoneybiz, just the letterJ, then money and then dot B-I-Z and that has like current projects. I'm working on retired projects that I used to work on, some other bio stuff about me, and then Twitter or X, whatever it's called at budgetsrsexy, are you?
Speaker 2:moving to threads.
Speaker 3:I'm on there, but I just forget Every now and then a little message will come on and it tricks me into going to threads. I'm like, ah, dang it. And then I, you know, I haven't been on like a month. Are you on there, have you done?
Speaker 2:it. I'm on there and I was just thinking maybe I need to actually post on there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, right, right. There's so many, it's like everybody's there, but nobody's posting. Right, I know it's a tricky one.
Speaker 2:Cool, cool. Well, thanks for coming on today. It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is great, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of the Get Writing Money podcast. If you learned something today, please subscribe and let's change the way we think about money.