A hearty welcome to “Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom” with your neighborly hosts, Brandon and Amanda Neely. This is the only podcast that helps you take charge of your cash flow and leverage your assets, simply and sustainably, the way Grandma used to.
Amanda: Hi, friends. This is Amanda Neely. Welcome to our Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, Episode 88. This is actually Part 2 of an interview that Brandon did with an awesome man named Mark.
I highly recommend going back and checking out Episode 87 to refresh your memory if you've listened to that episode. We left on a cliffhanger where Brandon has just announced that he hates budgeting and asked Mark, how can someone with variable income balance the kind of drive to make more money with the discipline of budgeting? And we're going to pick up right where Mark jumps in to answer that question. [01:10.3]
If you're with Brandon and you hate budgeting, you're going to love this episode. I'll catch you at the end for a recap and a couple of thoughts about implementation. Talk to you then. Oh, and this was also a YouTube live video that was originally published on YouTube. If you're not subscribed to our YouTube channel, we highly recommend checking it out. There's content there that we don't publish on the podcast. Okay, enjoy the episode.
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Mark: Two things, two things as we go through this. First of all, we dance around this, but I'm just going to come out and say it. You cannot solve a “keep more money” problem with a “make more money” strategy. I go through and talk about this in my Next Gen Budget Boot Camp and it's like an entire section is based upon this. We have to break that mentality. You can't out-earn keeping a problem. It's impossible.
Brandon: This is a quotable. Tell me. Tell me that again. [02:03.2]
Mark: Yeah, you cannot solve a “keep more money” problem with a “make more money” strategy.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Mark: And because of this, I work with people and they try to go, I just need to make more. I tend to make more. I make 50 grand and I need to make 70. I make 70. I make 100. If you make 50 and then you spend 50, you spend everything. If you make 100 and you spend 100, you spend everything. If you make 200 and you spend 200, you're still … Eventually, no matter how high you get your income to be, you eventually have to start learning how to keep more.
That's why I encourage people, no matter where you're at, if you make $2,000 a month, start putting 1% away. If you make 2,000, you can live off 1,980. If you make 5,000 a month, you can live off 4,950. What we're starting to do is to manage your emotions. You're starting to celebrate keeping money. Because what happens? We have something good in our life that happens. We get a promotion. We find out we're having a kid or our kids are having a kid and we'll be grandparents. What do we do? We go out and celebrate. We spend money. We spend money. We spend money. [03:08.2]
If we can learn to say, Wait a second, I'm happy. I remember this from an advertisement once. All you have to do is get people to start saying, if you're happy and you know it, spend some dough. If you're happy and you know it, spend some dough. If you're happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you're happy and you know it, go spend, spend, spend your money. Go spend your money. That's what we're trained to do. It's the social norm. That's what we do. We can never solve a “keep more money” problem with a “make more money” strategy.
A “keep more money” strategy is a budget and a budget is broken down into three things. You have to forecast. You have to track, and you have to manage your emotions. Emotions is the third one. No budgets that I see out there focus on all three. Some are really good at them. The EveryDollar budget is a really good at forecasting budget. The envelope system or even just a checkbook ledger is a great tracking tool. There’s Overspenders Anonymous. There is the stewardship mentality that manages the emotions of things. [04:09.5]
There are different things out there for each of these three categories, but that's something—and I'm just going to do a quick little plug here for Next Gen Money Coaching—we’ve built something called the Next Gen Budget that brings all three of those things together into a single budget. Okay? We want to make it easy for people, and the final piece of this is that it has to be customized. It has to be personalized because, like you said, from what I heard, you like seeing the reports. You like seeing, okay, this is what I would call the forecast. You're looking to see, Okay, here's my P&L. Here's what I can expect to do. I like seeing the numbers. But sitting down and actually writing out, This is what I spent here and this is how much I spent there and that goes into that category, that sounds like it's exhausting. Am I hearing you right on that?
Brandon: For sure, absolutely, and I would go for [inaudible].
Mark: For sure. If you end up building a budget together -
Brandon: I'll get it wrong.
Mark: - we know that [inaudible]--
Brandon: My wife gave me a budget once and I screwed it up and she's like, I'm taking it back. [05:01.7]
Mark: And, that, hey, just so you know, every single person that I’ve ever worked with, within the first three months, they've messed it up at some point. But it's okay. It's like you’ve got to get back on it. You’ve got to get back on the horse and that it's no problem.
We're going to talk about emotions later, but that shame, that guilt, that fear that hits, there's a reason the department stores and the banks want us to feel that way when it comes to this because they want you to believe you're terrible at money, so you have to give it over to them. But what I’m going to say to you is that for someone like yourself, that's like, Look, I like the forecasting, but I'm not a big fan of the tracking. We need to make the tracking element as simple as possible, as simple as possible.
Instead of having 25 categories, we may need three categories or five categories. We don't need all this success of tracking, but we want to make sure we're doing the forecast, and you know that when you're doing it, you're like, Okay, wait a minute, I’ve got to do the tracking. How can I make this as easy as possible? Maybe I only do this once a week. Maybe I have to do it every day for the first couple of months to get the habit built. Knowing and understanding where that's at is where it's built.
But I'm going to tell you right now, budgets are not won and lost in the forecast. Budgets are not won and lost in the tracking. Budgets are won and lost in the emotions. The more that we can become aware of our emotions, the better that we're going to be able to perform with our budgets. [06:12.5]
Brandon: I think that's another quotable right there, that emotion thing, because, again, doing YNAB, their rules are to give every dollar job, embrace your true expenses, roll with the punches, and age your money, but it doesn't talk about any emotional rules there, which I think in some of them, emotion does play into it. I think, again, the reason we are in our challenge as Americans is we spend more than we make nowadays and the credit card companies have learned how to manipulate our emotions. I mean, even Dave Ramsey knows how to manipulate our emotions, right? And we actually aren't in tune with our own emotions and what we have here.
Now, man, I get profit distributions and I didn't even know what to do with that money and I'm like, Holy crap, I'm getting $3,000 and it's great. I like the emotion of winning and getting that, and then I'm, Where do I spend it? which is a better problem than I don't have any money. [07:16.6]
What else? You said budget is emotional. What would you tell somebody who is like, Man, I get it. I understand that. How do I break through? Again, we're about breaking through to a smart, stable financial future. How do you break through from that, knowing you have debt issues, you have business issues, you’ve got all kinds of psychological hang-ups? How do you help them there?
Mark: Suze Orman has a beautiful quote out there. It's a guiding principle for my life and it talks about being truly, truly wealthy, being truly stable in life, and she says that it will never occur until your joy in keeping money equals or exceeds your joy in spending money. [08:00.0]
What does that mean? That is such an abstract concept to most of us. What that means is that when you get something good that happens in your life, your direct impulse, like you said, you’ve just got $3,000 and your direct impulse is to say, stop, wait, think, what are my goals? How does this play into my long-term picture?
If you're not doing that, then what happens is you get that $3,000 and the emotion kicks in, and you start wanting to celebrate and you're going, Okay, I'm going to go buy this. I'm going to go do this, or worse yet. I'm going to put a down payment on something and then that 3,000 should be coming every six months for me now, so I should know that I could take on a $300-a-month payment. I'll be just fine, blah-blah-blah, and so we do things like that as we work through it.
If you can learn to go through an entire day without spending money, your life will change. We talked about the negative thing earlier like, what was the moment where your life fell apart? Let me tell you how my life came back together now.
Brandon: There you go. I should have asked that.
Mark: No, it's all right. It's all right. My life came back together when I started doing something called zero-dollar days. It's a very simple concept. This is for the person who says, I don't like budgeting. This is easy, easy, easy, easy. [09:09.0]
How many days a month can you give me where you spend zero dollars? You don't spend any money the entire day, okay? Really simple, really easy, but very, very hard to do because what happens is you start thinking, Oh, man, I just picked up the kids. I'm tired. I need to go home. I'm just going to stop at McDonald’s. But you've had a zero-dollar day the whole day and you go, Man, am I really going to blow my zero-dollar a day at 6:00 p.m.? Am I going to do it? It starts curving your behavior naturally, not by focusing on not spending money, but by focusing on having days where you spend no money.
There's no white paper written on this. I can't prove it. It's a personal belief based across who I’ve come across so far. I'm going to ask you your opinion on it. If I put two people in front of you and one person spends money 30 days a month, and one person spends money 25 days a month, which one do you think is more likely going to have more money leftover at the end of the month? [10:01.5]
Brandon: The 25-day guy.
Mark: The 25-day. If we did the same thing and we say, Okay, you have a 30-day person and you have a 20-day, this person will spend money 20 days, which one do you think is going to have more money at the end of the month?
Brandon: You asked the question, if you have a …
Mark: Somebody who spends money 30 days, every day of the month they spend money, and you have somebody who spends 20 days, who do you think is going to have more money at the end of the month, probability?
Brandon: The 20-day guy.
Mark: The 20-day, right? To be the 20-day guy, you only have to not spend money two times a week. Give your wallet, give your debit card, give your cash a break two days a week, and by doing that, just statistically, you're going to end up with more money.
I'm going to take a jab now as my shot or I'm going to start throwing, why do I believe what I believe versus YNAB? YNAB says give every dollar a job, right?
Brandon: Yeah.
Mark: At the end of the month, if you've given every dollar a job, how much money do you have left at the end of the month?
Brandon: None, because you've allocated it all. [11:00.0]
Mark: So, where's your feeling of winning, that feeling of winning that you had that was, Oh, I’ve got $3,000 and I don't even know what to do with it. If we can start bringing that feeling into every day and to every month where you're like, Wow, I was able to end the month with an extra 100 bucks. I was able to end the month with extra $5. I don't care how much it is. You feel like you're winning and that vision gives the pain the purpose of going through the zero-dollar days. I'm not a fan of giving every dollar a job.
Brandon: My allocating, giving every dollar a job may be put towards savings or to my life insurance policy, for example, and it is not spending. I’m allocating it to something besides just in a savings account, right? Does that make sense?
Mark: Absolutely, and I agree with you. In our budget, you still have money that you keep, your money that you give, your money that you use to pay off your debt. Those are still included in it, but what this is at the end of the month, when you go to McDonald’s and you get the fry and you eat all the fries out of the container, and you're like, Man, I just had one more fry. [12:01.8]
You look at the bottom of the bag and there's one more fry, there’s that bonus fry in the bottom of the bag, that's what this is. It's I had money I planned on keeping. I had money I had planned on investing for retirement and those things. But I just had this little bit of extra at the end. It gives that a little bit of … it's the extra fry at the bottom of the bag. Does that make sense?
Brandon: Yeah, so you're building your budget, and then if you do this, you're going to also have extra. You're going to just feel even better or a small success besides that. I think that's powerful.
Mark: And if you don't, no big deal. You’ve budgeted for it. You know what I'm saying? You're either awesome or you're awesome. Which one do you want to be?
Brandon: Yeah. What do you say for the spenders? Man, I need to keep growing my business. I can't pay myself. I can't do these zero-dollar days because I'm a business owner and I need to reinvest in my business. I mean, I hear this all the time. [13:02.8]
Mark: This is where we're going to go back to our thin blue line right here. I need to get a really cool graphics guy, like in the NFL, that could shoot the line across the screen. We go back to our thin blue line. Who's saying that is? Is it personally you as an employee saying that or as a business owner you saying that?
Because what's actually happening in that conversation is the business-owner you are telling the employee-you, I'm sorry, I can't give you a raise. I'm sorry, I can't take care of you as my employee. You're just going to have to suck it up and deal with it because there's just no money in the budget and we can't have you do that. Nobody else on the Planet Earth would have worked for that boss.
As entrepreneurs, we're sometimes our own worst terrible boss, and so what do we do? We have to tell ourselves, Hey, look, Mark. Owner Mark needs to come down to Employee Mark and say, Look, I need to bring stability to you. Here's what it looks like. I'm going to tell you right now, Brandon, as we're talking about this, a lot of people try to run out and they try to do 15 zero-dollar days in a month. I say, Look, give me three, and if we're at the end of the month, give me one. Just try it. [14:06.2]
It’s like building a muscle, three, then four, then five, work your way up to it. Go through and do it because it's so difficult. You're retraining. You're not just retraining behavior. You're retraining emotions, which are the most powerful thing on the Earth right now. It's the driving force in change.
Yeah, the entrepreneurs out there like, I need to be able to spend my money, that probably means that you don't have it planned the best and I'm saying this with love, like, hey, I appreciate you. I am glad that you took the risk to step out to be a business owner, but if I go to the grocery store every single day and you find out the reason I have to do that is because I don't own a refrigerator, you probably should tell me to go buy a refrigerator, so I don't have to go to the grocery every day.
Brandon: Right.
Mark: I would say the same thing to business owners. Okay, you need to look at what you have in your business and start planning, and then it's okay if you don't hit your plans, it's all right, but let's start building a plan. Let's start getting those things in place. Then, now that you have a place to store those ideas, you have a place to store those goods and services and all the money you need to spend. [15:11.4]
What happens when all of your bills come out of the account on the same day of the month? Now, all of a sudden, wow, your life is easy. You don't have to go every day and spend money. You don't have to do your bills every day. You don't have to. It becomes so much easier.
Now, we're talking personal finance 301 and 401 at this point. I'm kind of dabbling in that, but really what I'm saying is this is the easiest thing. Zero-dollar days. Get days where you don't spend money. Watch how your emotions change.
Grandma always said, “Eat your vegetables. Look both ways before crossing the road, and never risk your financial future on elements of the market you can’t control.” That Grandma, always good for some tried-and-true advice, and although some of her wisdom seems to have skipped a generation, you don't have to be left behind.
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Brandon: Something I had thought about and Suze Orman is all against it a lot, going out and spending money on coffee and I’m like, dude, I used to own a coffee shop. I want people to spend money on coffee. That is the worst thing for a business owner like that. Come in every day. I’m okay with it. But then, at the same time, as a consumer, if I’m buying venti lattes, and I would never go to a Starbucks, but if I’m buying from those every day and getting these extra-large things and saying, I deserve it, gosh darn it, there is a problem there on the flip side. [17:00.5]
Even in a budget, I have their coffee and I won't go every day, but Sundays I will go get something. Some people will look down on me because they think, You could have used that money and invested it. I’m like, It's four bucks and I still want to live. How do you balance that? The ones that are like, Man, I deserve it, and you see them, they’ve got the giant cups. Then you’ve got the other ones that are like, I guess, Grandma. I'm going to keep it all and put it under my mattress. How do you balance that in the budget?
Mark: It's funny to me on this because everybody seems to have their opinion about the best way to do it. Everybody does. Oh, you’ve got to do it this way.
Brandon: I love coffee.
Mark: I love coffee. I'll be able to do it. I have a lot of grace and compassion for people like Suze Orman that come up and say, Look, this is the way. We’re very Mandalorian in this like, Yo, there was no way. There is nothing else. You have to do it this way. [18:06.4]
There is no one-size-fits-all budget. There's not. If you want to go spend money on coffee, go spend money on coffee. Just because the markup on an item is higher, does that mean it doesn't bring you the same amount of joy? If I can go get a cup of coffee in my house for 25 cents or I go spend $5 on a venti iced frappe with no milk, no skim, skinny—I don't know all the terms. There's all this stuff out there—if I can go get this crazy thing that's got a list this long on the side of it, what difference does it make?
Okay, let me give you an example this way. The traditional mindset, let's talk about the Grandma’s wealth wisdom, not you guys’ program, but Grandma. What would Grandma say? Go, buy a house. Go, pay off the house, and make sure you only get 15% of your income in the payment of your house. The bank will tell you to go up to 25%. Some banks may even do more on there, but the traditional wisdom is 15% on the house. [19:11.8]
Wait a minute, what if I like to entertain? What if I want to have people over more? What if I don't? What if, instead of going out and spending $100 every Friday night and going out to eat, I stay in and I invite people over to my house? I've now put $400 back in my pocket. Can I have a bigger house then? Can I have a higher house payment for that, because I’m not going out to eat and doing that? What if coffee for me is a social interaction? What if it's how I interact with the world around me? What if I get my work done there? I’m an entrepreneur. I need to do that.
Now, that's the difference in the thin blue line. Coffee may be a business expense and it may not be a personal expense. You’ve got to look at the difference there. But what I’m saying is what difference does it make whether I spend $4 over 100 days and buy coffee and manage my emotions on a day-in, day-out basis, or I spend $400 on a one night hotel and get away for a night? [20:03.0]
Depending on your personality style, who you are, it can vary, and I pause when I talk about this because it gets my blood to boil. It gets me frustrated. Why I started Next Gen Money Coaching is because everybody wants to come out and say, This is the way you’ve got to do it, and if you don't do it, there's something wrong with you or you suck. It's just not true. It's just not true.
Brandon: That's why I wanted you on here and why we connect well, because, again, I do life insurance and annuities, and building stability is what we think a lot about for entrepreneurs and business owners, and just thinking about those things, right? I mean, again, buying a house and paying off your mortgage may be good, maybe as powerful, but I do think, hey, the interest rates in Grandma's generation on a house were higher. They also didn't have expenses that were needed, quote-unquote, “needed” expenses like Netflix and Disney+, and everything else that we, all of a sudden, need now, which is really interesting. [21:13.4]
I think that, again, knowing how you're wired emotionally, what brings you joy, because, again, that fear of missing out versus the joy of missing out, maybe that joy and holding your money, saying, Is this really going to bring me joy? having those zero-dollar days will probably, I bet you, make you think through that. I’m going to hold this and I’m going to buy this.
You think through it and then you really see what brings you joy, versus I’m going to go fill up with empty calories and this is a dieting thing, sacrifice and calorie costs. I’ve been doing some of that lately, but I still like to eat, right, and so I’m like, All right, how do you balance that? It's the same kind of thing. Same emotions with dieting. Money is the same thing. [22:05.4]
Yeah, I was just thinking about that and how we're wired. Do you think there's ever going to be an emotional budgeting app? Are you going to create one? Maybe what you do is you have an app that zaps them, if they think like that, when they do something like that?
Mark: Oh, man.
Brandon: They have a watch, right? And you can tell. The ring lights. I’m just giving you some ideas. You can tell your every mood by the mood ring, so maybe you have an app that then if your mood is really bad and you're about to go use your credit card, it'll zap you or something. That would be fun.
Mark: I know there are some people out there listening to this right now. They're like, I would buy that. I would get that. I would do that.
I'm going to tell you this, though. Everything we do right now with Next Gen Money Coaching is all built on paper because there's something emotional that occurs when you actually handwrite things down, as opposed to hit into your phone. [23:05.4]
Will there be an app at some point? If possible. We look at those kinds of things, but there's something really specific. If we were talking about behavioral change here, what you just defined was external stimulus. External things determine my behavior. What it's saying, and I know you’re joking, but I think there are some people out there like, Man, I could really use that, but what's happening is I need someone else to manage me. I need something else out there.
What it does is it puts off the mentality of actually dealing with the emotions that are in there and it can also cause more damage. We see this a lot in dieting with a yo-yo diet, like, I'll get on the diet, I’ll follow the path, but the minute I get the diet, I put the 50 pounds back on and I’ve got to go back on the diet, and back and forth.
The whole point of the Next Gen Budget and what I do, this is my life’s passion, helping people deal with the emotions around the money. That way you can make, you can continue to make solid financial decisions going forward, if you can learn how to manage that. [24:02.8]
It doesn't mean you get it right every time. God, even I don't get it right every time. I’ve hit my head on the stupid ceiling a few times on these things, but where I fail, I can help teach others and I can help people learn on there. As that happens, life changes. Things get better, and instead of having to have that external stimulus, whether it be a spouse, a phone app, whatever it is, you can start to manage and understand that, in the same way that if you start changing your diet behavior.
When I’m young and I don't know the difference, and you put a chicken breast in front of me and you put a slice of cake, and I go, Oh, a slice of cake. I'm definitely going to eat that, whatever. As I get older, I start to realize, okay, wait a minute, that probably has 20 to 25 grams of protein. That one has probably 20 to 25, maybe 40 grams of sugar in it. Proteins can be better for my body. I can start to understand that, and the more I can internalize that, the more successful I’m going to be, be it food, be it money, any time you're talking behavioral and emotional change.
Brandon: But, and I think about this again, Mike Michalowicz talks a lot about this with emotion in Profit First and what he says is that what we need to do is have smaller plates, right? When money comes in and if it's a big plate, then we're going to assume I’ve got variable income. I’ve got $40,000. I’ve got a big thing of money coming through. [25:16.3]
What I’m hearing as you make smaller plates to then making sure that you are set in a positive way, and so it's highly emotional, but by having smaller portions, that's why we have so many banks, bank accounts and all that, and it’s because we are making smaller plates. Then, by having smaller plates, and, again, I’m going through this whole thing of not dieting, but portion control, right now I'm like, Man, this plate is so small, but it's actually healthy. Anyway, smaller plates are helpful. I'm sure that’s what you're talking about.
Mark: They are. They are.
Brandon: How can people get to know you? I know we did not go into a Dave Ramsey rant as much. We'll have to have you on again for that. [26:10.7]
Mark: I’ll do a Part 2 that's just based around Dave Ramsey and insurance and financial advice. Yeah, you and I could probably do a whole show just on that alone.
Brandon: Oh, yeah, and I think that's, again, thinking about how it all plays in. It’s powerful, life insurance and annuities and savings versus investing. That was one of my questions, what's the difference between saving and investing for you. Those are all powerful emotional questions, too, by the way.
Thinking about those things, and, really, for our listeners, remember you're making emotional decisions every day with your dollars. Even though you're using a credit card, it is an emotional decision when you type it into your computer to buy an Amazon thing. It's ridiculous how easy it is. [27:02.8]
Stick with your emotions and be with the … What do you call it? Wrestle with it is what I’m saying here. Wrestle with your emotions and ask, Do I really need it? Can I do, for every one of us, have a zero-dollar day? Even if you're really rich or you think you're really rich, do a zero-dollar day and see how it works. We'll get to know you, where do I want them to go?
Mark: We've talked about a lot of things here today as we've gone through it all. We touched very surface level on it. If you want to know more about zero-dollar days and the three parts of a budget, I have a course called Next Gen Budget Boot Camp that we do. It's a virtual course that you can take on your own time. You go to NextGenBudget.com, click “Get Started” with one of the classes on there. Take your time and it's built on your schedule, little three- to five-minute videos, adds to be about three hours of content, but by the end of it, you're going to have a custom budget built and personalized just for you. [27:58.8]
If you're still just kind of sampling and you want to know a little bit more, we have a Facebook group called Zero-Dollar Partners. It's just a group dedicated to the zero-dollar day concept. We want to help people build a community around zero-dollar days and help them build and grow that out. Zero-Dollar Partners. The subtitle is living intentionally and budgeting purposefully. We want to make sure that we're doing these things out. I haven't heard anyone ever say, I accidentally started a budget. Zero-Dollar Partners and NextGenBudget.com.
Brandon: They do say, I accidentally got into debt and I don't know how to pay $30,000 of debt. I'm like, Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Oh, I accidentally created a banner.
With all that, thanks for joining us. You guys, don't forget to subscribe to Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom. Write a review. Share this video. Again, both Mark and I are here to help you break through to a smart, stable financial future, so you don't have to go through the pain that we went through and living above a Papa John's or wherever you live. Hey, make different mistakes and all of that. Learn from ours. [29:08.6]
With all that, thanks again, Mark, for joining us. We'll have you again soon. And thanks, you guys, for being part of our life. See ya.
…
Amanda: Okay, such a fun conversation between Brandon and Mark. There are a few things that I wanted to highlight here, and this budget is forecasting, tracking, and emotions, that we can't leave our emotions out of the budget because—I’m going to use this phrase—emotions are where budgets are born and lost. We have to manage those emotions, sometimes even more so than we're actually managing the numbers within the software or on the piece of paper, or in the spreadsheet or wherever. I think that's such a great point that a lot of us forget.
Then, I had this big aha moment with these no-spending days. Totally have heard that concept before. I love it. I think that's an amazing idea. I’ve been experimenting recently on the nutrition side and fitness side with intermittent fasting, and I feel like the reason intermittent fasting works is that you don't have to actually change what you eat, right? You just limit when you eat. [30:20.4]
I feel like the no-spending days, that's kind of how it works to do. You don't have to limit what you buy necessarily, but you limit, how often do you buy? I think that could have some real merit to it and I know there's lots of science behind intermittent fasting that backs up why it works and all of that. It'd be interesting to try some experiments and see if we can actually prove some science between intermittent spending, if we want to call it that. Maybe if you do intermittent fasting, that might be an interesting way to think about how to budget with variable income, like Mark shares about it, or with regular income, too, if that's you. [31:01.5]
Then I also liked this. Mark compares the $4 spent over 100 days or $400 spent over one night, right? It's both $400, but which one is going to bring you more joy? I think that totally has to do with trade-offs and priorities, and there's a huge dieting example there, too. Do you want to have one cheat day a month or do you want to have one little morsel of chocolate each day after dinner, right? Which way is going to help you stick to your nutrition plan, right?
If that's the kind of strategy that works for you, then maybe thinking about your money in those terms could work for you, too. You're the same person. Maybe what's working for you with nutrition could work for you for budgeting, or maybe if you need to work on both or want to work on both, you try similar strategies with both or with one actually, because it's the same kind of emotions that are tying into both, your money and your nutrition. Just thought I would kind of put that out there that I thought that was a cool diet and example as well with the intermittent fasting. [32:05.5]
Yeah, those are my recaps there. If nutrition is not your game, maybe think about some area in your life where you've seen positive change happen, where you've been able to move from one way of doing things that was not healthy for you to a way of doing things that is healthy for you and ask, How did that transition happen? Was it all of a sudden? Was it over time? What did that look like? Then ask yourself, Okay, the change I want to see with my money, how could I make that change happen in the same way?
It might be an interesting thought exercise for you. Do some journaling about it. Think about it. Talk with your loved ones about it. That might be a great way to apply what Mark and Brandon talked about, as well as check out Mark’s Next Gen Budget Boot Camp and his Zero-Dollar Partners Facebook group or whatever that was. We'll include links to that in the show notes here, as well as the link to the YouTube version of this episode if you want to watch the conversation between Mark and Brandon. [33:11.2]
Okay, that wraps up this interview. We'll talk to you next time in our next episode. Be sure you hit subscribe, so you get awesome updates on how you can build wealth that would make your grandma proud.
The topics presented in this podcast are for general information only and not for the purposes of providing legal, accounting or investment advice. On such matters, please consult a professional who knows your specific situation.
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