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

Length: 55:30

 

Intro: Hey, thanks for coming, welcome to the Love Shack.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 a love for a lifetime in your own life; I'm Staci, and this is my husband, Tom, we host the show together and are delighted to be here with you today inside the Love Shack.

 

Tom Bartley: Absolutely, happy New Year, if you're listening live or closely thereafter, talking about money in your 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 at 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 Rider know about that, but you know what I'm saying.

 

Staci Bartley: You're revealing a bit of yourself right now.

 

Tom Bartley: I know.

 

Unknown Speaker: Dun, dun, nice job.

 

Staci Bartley: Listen, I know that we all kind of have those emotions that come up first when we're discussing money, and I know that it can be tough. But I want you to know that if we progress forward 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 spending.

 

Tom Bartley: No, with your spouse.

 

Staci Bartley: Your spouse's spending, our partners spending, around these subjects; it's inevitable that any type of piece 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 out of control.

 

Tom Bartley: And interestingly enough, and I would say myself included, 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 certain that could be a possibility not to reduce [Cross-Talking].

 

Staci Bartley: The old adage of make more, spend less, that's how you do a budget, and off-times without a budget, we are in this pursuit of making more, making more, making more, and it just never seems to go around. If I look back at some 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.

 

Tom Bartley: 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 Staci just alluded to.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, we'll be right back, join us for this wonderful conversation.

 

Ad: I met Staci 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 Staci 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 Staci 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 Staci's brand new free workshop; reserve your seat by going to stacibartley.com/workshop.

 

Ad: Are you ready to venture off the beaten path, expand your mind, raise your consciousness and open your heart? Allow me to entice you with interviews with amazing souls from around the world, indulgent in history, mystery, science, and spirituality. There are weekly skin tips, live esoteric readings, and answers to life's burning questions, so come join me, sakura, your host, intuitive, medium, and spiritual hypnotherapist each Wednesday at 2 to 3:00 PM right here on KKNW for, Love from the Hyp.

 

Ad: 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 KIXI 880. 880 AM KIXI. Starting January 11th, we are going to be on Tuesdays from 3 to 4:00 PM, but don't you 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.

 

Ad: Going against the grain has never been this much fun, Alternative Talk, 1150.

 

Tom Bartley: Welcome back inside the Love Shack, Tom and Staci Bartley, happy New Year to you and yours. I am here with my wonderful wife and our.

 

Staci Bartley: And we are here with Amy Scott.

 

Tom Bartley: Amy Scott, absolutely.

 

Staci Bartley: Well, thank goodness.

 

Tom Bartley: Yes, take a breath.

 

Staci Bartley: She's going to help dive into our budgeting, face our financial picture, eliminate some money, fear.

 

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

 

Staci Bartley: Is money a triggering topic for you, Tom Bartley?

 

Tom Bartley: Yes.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, I bet our listeners didn't even pick up on that.

 

Tom Bartley: It is, I'm kind of the radar. If you're old enough to remember the series M*A*S*H, I am the radar of the family.

 

Staci Bartley: He is very much the details guy.

 

Tom Bartley: Sometimes my wife refers to me as being hyper-vigilant.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 have to be honest, you're going to have to help Tom off the ledge here today because when we start talking about money, he tends to get a little ruffled.

 

Amy Scott: Tom, I love hyper-vigilant I'm with you, that's me in my relationship, sometimes my husband will say do we need to look at all of this? Do we need to track all this? But I've said it before; spreadsheets are my love language, so I speak your language.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 and I know so many people friends and clients like 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. 

 

And it seems to be a mentality that we can get ourselves into where more is just what we need to solve our money problems because our lifestyles grow, our spending grows, 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 that office is always open, 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 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 have to do more and make more money and 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?

 

Amy Scott: Sure, I would be happy to, and when you were just sharing about that, Staci, 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, my personal story is so impactful because I got really clear about what it was that I wanted, that why was the grounding piece. So, I just encourage couples to listen to this conversation from a place of, well, why would we do budgeting? 

 

Why would we have conversations about money? Why should we have that? So for me, it was, 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 actually, it was after I'd had my second son and the boys were under two 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'd 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 time but I felt like we should be able to do this. We weren't carrying this burden of tons of debt, we had made 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, I don't want to say an epiphany, but an awakening ring for us that was what could we have done previously leading up to that time that would've made that an option in front of me to be able to stay home. 

 

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'd 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. And when we dug into those income and expenses together, what we realized Staci 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, yeah, 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? How are you guys getting by just living on Mick's salary? And I said, the kids' nap between 11, 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.

 

Staci Bartley: Mm, I love that, and 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 we need more money. That 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 did, we're going to face this, 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, that everybody kind of has their pot, which is fine, dividing money, et cetera. 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. When I retire, we'll get around to all of those things without realizing along the way, all of us are missing your revocable 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.

 

Tom Bartley: Oh, and I would just add that 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 specifics in our relationship. So, this would be specifically in our money part of the relationship, our light 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 of the end of life stories, are typically around things we did or did not do in our relationships, so as you had said, Amy, you didn't want to miss out on these formative years of your sons. 

 

So, we have to face this and figure out how can we make this work? Well, the data is the data, I'm a real estate appraiser in 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. So, you come from a place of objectivity and impartiality rather than, and you are skilled like we are, perhaps sometimes you need some arms around you to help you step out of the emotional part of this and which oftentimes takes a skilled facilitator.

 

Staci Bartley: So, let's begin this conversation by looking at what do you have, and then I'm going to let you take it from there. Let's look at the why, as you said, and then let's look at what do we have, where are we, what are we spending and what is coming in? Let's just take a look, and we're going to 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?

 

Amy Scott: 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, 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 might 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, it 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? 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. 

 

We know there's 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. Just 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 like, what would your why be for us budgeting? That might be pretty cheesy to say, but like, Hey, I'd 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.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 impromptu, 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 hear you, and I would say yes, and I would like to also do this, or I would see that we could go there or could we do this? It's, I hear you, and here are my thoughts or, and here, this is what I want. 

 

And I think that's wonderful to keep in mind, instead of shutting it down because 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.

 

Amy Scott: Yes, I love that, I just listened to that episode today, and I replayed that section a few times because I'm like, and that's an exercise I use with my clients, and love that it was an actor sharing about that, but yes, that's the type of conversation we're talking about is, yes, it's important to me that we buy that lake house, and I also want to experience calmer conversations with you around money, for example. So, that's a great place to start from, and then from a practical sense, so we're going to have to get into some of these numbers. 

 

What I typically advise some of my clients to do is, I call them simple steps, but that might be a little bit of a misnomer, but what I mean by simple is, 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 are 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 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 a 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 due on the same day, you could 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.

 

Staci Bartley: And I bought those really cool new shoes.

 

Amy Scott: 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, yup, I'm going to buy me some shoes, but.

 

Staci Bartley: I have an automatic delivery, right?

 

Amy Scott: And some folks do, and I do not blame them for that, but 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 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 Hopkins, medical expenses, now I hope nobody got too worried about Henry, he's fine. But those [Cross-Talking].

 

Staci Bartley: Amy, how about Christmas, would Christmas go in this category like a whammy?

 

Amy Scott: It would, and that would be more, Staci, 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, 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 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, 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.

 

Staci Bartley: So, do you recommend that we get our statements out, 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?

 

Amy Scott: 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, we got a yellow for this, the green for the day-to-day spending and the pink for the whammies or red maybe if we're like, ah, but yes, absolutely. Some people like to print these out, in my experience, it depends on how much people like to use technology, but some people will dump that into a spreadsheet and just highlight it in different ways.

 

Staci Bartley: 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.

 

Amy Scott: Yeah, I typically say with folks, 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.

 

Staci Bartley: Okay.

 

Amy Scott: Okay.

 

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

 

Amy Scott: Right.

 

Tom Bartley: Yes.

 

Staci Bartley: Well, and the other thing that I want to highlight here, just from my own personal experience, 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, take last month's December statements and just begin categorizing them in a bucket and begin to add them up, yes?

 

Amy Scott: Absolutely, December's 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.

 

Tom Bartley: I like that.

 

Amy Scott: 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 Habits", 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, Staci 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.

 

Staci Bartley: Well, it's kind of in our work 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, 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, 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, yup, that's the case, I'm going to probably do it again, 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.

 

Amy Scott: Exactly, yeah, and I think this piece around, I like to call it values-based budgeting, so looking at that, let's use the shoe example. I like to say to folks all the time, who I work with, your personal finances are personal to you, but as a coach, they're not personal to me, they're just numbers there, you tell me you spend 32, $3400 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, there's that quote, don't tell me what you value, show me your checkbook and your calendar, and I'll tell you what you value.

 

Tom Bartley: Exactly.

 

Amy Scott: So, if you look at that Staci 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 it 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, Staci 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. Or we could help this person in our community, or we could do this home improvement to our house. 

 

Let's attach that choice, that change we're going to make around how we spend to something we really want to create for the future, that's a why that'll 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.

 

Staci Bartley: I can avoid the conversation of Tom saying, Staci, I see the charge.

 

Tom Bartley: No, I.

 

Staci Bartley: How many times do we need to talk about this?

 

Tom Bartley: I love that, should does not carry the debt.

 

Staci Bartley: That is so good.

 

Tom Bartley: My gosh, we should be shouting that from the rooftops, you know? And it's, oh, boy, most of us, oftentimes we behave like should does carry the debt, right?

 

Amy Scott: Yeah.

 

Staci Bartley: 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, you could bribe me, might get two times out of me, but that's so profound. Okay, so I have gotten [Cross-Talking].

 

Tom Bartley: I have my three buckets, yeah.

 

Staci Bartley: Yep, I've printed out the sheet, I have the highlighters out.

 

Tom Bartley: Do we total them up?

 

Amy Scott: 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 whammy's of life in the same way. They just pay for them in and out of their typical checking account, I will call the bill account, but the thing is, these kinds of expenses happen to us in different ways we can't treat them all the same way. 

 

Day-to-day, spending happens very differently than a bill that we pay month-t- month, so we need to deal with them differently moving forward, so the first step is just to really be conscious of 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, and 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 have this income, we have 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 swipe 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 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.

 

$200 Co-Pay 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, it's not going to be the same every month, this is why a few months of data can be helpful. It should not be a, well, I think we should spend a thousand dollars 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 have 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 can go pull $2,000 out in cash, then they've turned it into a fixed expense. All right, Staci, we only have $2,000 a month, it's going to be in this envelope, I'll allow Dave Ramsey and his team and what they do, I don't find many folks want to deal with cash, especially in the 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 first 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 then 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.

 

Staci Bartley: I love that so that then there's never the worry as you put things up on automatic withdrawal that there's not in there because Staci bought her shoes.

 

Amy Scott: Yes.

 

Staci Bartley: Tom has to scramble to transfer money.

 

Tom Bartley: No, I really like that, I've never heard that anyway, that's very creative and sounds very effective. And do you find this when people get successful as you say, get that muscle memory, so to speak from the athletic metaphor, if you will, that brings a lot of calm to their picture that was not there prior?

 

Amy Scott: 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.

 

Tom Bartley: Oh yes, that's correct.

 

Amy Scott: Right, okay, so I just kind of made that assumption, in my house it's me, there's always going to be something, I want to normalize, normalize, normalize it. Typically inside of couples, one person is more interested in managing the finances and that's okay, again, I want to normalize that, but here's Tom over here, making sure everything's lined up. And then Staci, 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, I had everything lined up, I had everything paid, we were good. 

 

I was going to 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.

 

Staci Bartley: One, I love that you don't, when I think of budgeting I think about getting all the bills and all the accounts and everything out and having to itemize it and then having to add up all the columns. You could spend an entire evening if not an entire weekend kind of digging it all out and figuring out where we are, 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.

 

Amy Scott: Yup, 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 because the thing is, we put a thousand dollars in there the first and the 15th, that's what we're doing for you two. You just spend down from there, that's the only account you're really looking at, how are we doing? Should we go out to dinner tonight? I don't know, 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. 

 

So, when they say, mom, can we get pizza tonight after school, they can look in that spending account, 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? Well, it's the sixth. 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.

 

Tom Bartley: Oh, that's awesome.

 

Staci Bartley: So, you're teaching money literacy.

 

Tom Bartley: Well, and some project management and projection, those are all important vital financial skills.

 

Amy Scott: Yes, exactly.

 

Staci Bartley: That's so great.

 

Amy Scott: So, this is a cool game changer, can I tell you the third step?

 

Tom Bartley: Yes.

 

Staci Bartley: Yes.

 

Amy Scott: Now, I'm all 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 as Tom was saying, building that muscle memory, making those transfers, seeing like, Hey is 2000 a month 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, actually I think it should be more like 2,400 a month, let's plan around that or we have some bigger expenses coming up next month, 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 75%, if we can get 75% planned, 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, we are 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. 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 get 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, 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, car, house, kids, et cetera, is to set up separate savings accounts, each one with a specific purpose. 

 

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 savings account just for car repairs called The Car Repairs Account, and then every month, like a bill that you can plan around, transfer $200 to that car repair account. 

 

So, it's building up to that 2,400, 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, 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 One 360 because they allow you to set up as many savings accounts as you want and give each one a specific purpose.

 

Tom Bartley: You were reading my mind, Amy, because I was saying though, how about all the fees associated from all these different accounts, but all the new online, you had mentioned Ally and Capital One 360.

 

Staci Bartley: I want you to mention those again, tell us where to go find them, people want to go research it.

 

Amy Scott: Sure, the online banks are just becoming more and more popular out there, so there's a lot of them out there, my two favorites are Ally.

 

Staci Bartley: Is that A L L I E?

 

Amy Scott: It's A L L Y

 

Tom Bartley: Oh, A L L Y, thank you, okay.

 

Amy Scott: Yep, or Capital One, which a lot of people know Capital One, but it's Capital One 360.

 

Tom Bartley: Beautiful.

 

Amy Scott: All affiliated, what I'm saying is it's all part of the Capital One family, but these accounts, because the brick and mortar banks love to charge you for savings accounts.

 

Tom Bartley: Oh my gosh, yes.

 

Amy Scott: It's crazy, right, 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 Staci's shoe account, if she wants to go shopping quarterly, for example, or even bigger things, I have folks who pay car insurance every six months.

 

Tom Bartley: And let me ask Amy, so do you have clients, which I'm thinking are our own, so may you have a traditional 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.

 

Amy Scott: You got it, Tom, that's exactly what I do, and what my clients do, I've had Capital One 360 since it was ING back in the day, so I've actually been doing this for 15 or 20 years, but 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 there are 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, and 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 aren't necessarily a regular transfer, yeah.

 

Tom Bartley: Beautiful.

 

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

 

Tom Bartley: I would concur.

 

Staci Bartley: You too?

 

Tom Bartley: Yes.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, you're the one that gets a little sweaty under the armpits, what was that like for you?

 

Tom Bartley: It was awesome, and we're going to be doing it.

 

Staci Bartley: Yes, I'm excited.

 

Tom Bartley: Again, Amy, the reason why we so appreciate your body of work and how you come at it is that you come at it from the feeling side, let's be honest, there is so much energy charge to money in our sphere. Oh my gosh, it's all an individual road and we could have many episodes just around that, but 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, thank you so much.

 

Staci Bartley: And if you want to work with Amy personally, we would highly recommend her, Amy, remind us all of where we could reach out to you? And 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?

 

Amy Scott: The best way to find me is just on my website, I keep it really simple it's just amyscottcoaching.com.

 

Tom Bartley: amyscottcoaching.com.

 

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

 

Tom Bartley: It's beautiful.

 

Amy Scott: Oh, perfect, you guys go get that.

 

Tom Bartley: You betcha, amyscottcoaching.com, let's get to the three buckets, and let's get to becoming less stressful and bring some ease. I love that word, E A S E, bring some ease back into this process.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 with this whole money conversation.

 

Tom Bartley: So, make sure, yeah, there's going to be a quiz and homework, it's right now, so.

 

Staci Bartley: Thank you, Amy; it's always so wonderful to spend time with you.

 

Amy Scott: Oh, it's the best being with you guys, thank you so much.

 

Tom Bartley: You betcha.

 

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

 

Tom Bartley: Yeah.

 

Ad: 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 the 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 love and connection. Yeah, you can get your cards at stacibartley.com,

 

Ad: Working hard to put a smile on your face, Alternative Talk 1150.

 

Tom Bartley: Welcome back inside the Love Shack, Tom and Staci Bartley, we're going to step right into the follow the fun if you will.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 follower of our podcast, we've been doing this weekly now because we gave away something the whole month of December in honor of the holidays and.

 

Tom Bartley: 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.

 

Staci Bartley: And we're not giving them away today, we're going to give something else away, it's January.

 

Tom Bartley: But they are for sale.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, that's true.

 

Tom Bartley: You can buy them.

 

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

 

Tom Bartley: Yeah, and how about a home film festival, pop the popcorn, clear the calendar, stream the shows, and, ooh, baby, let's roll. I can just say the week between Christmas and New Year, Staci and I took a kind of a much-needed down break and we did have some film festival nights with a very soft blanket and it was awesome.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, that's kind of what the inspiration was for our giveaway today, so we're going to have our wonderful extraordinary engineer pick a number between one and a hundred for us today. And we are going to give away this incredible throw that you two can use to have your own cuddly film festival.

 

Tom Bartley: Or anything else that you like.

 

Staci Bartley: Pop popcorn.

 

Tom Bartley: With the throw, we'll keep it radio-friendly, don't worry. So, Mr. Eric extraordinary Rider, what is your number, sir?

 

Eric: Let's go with 17.

 

Tom Bartley: Oh.

 

Staci Bartley: Oh, wow, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, oh, my, my, my, it's P O R R A S, Porras Mariola, I'm not going to give the rest of it. Porras Mariola, congratulations, you are the winner and you are going to be 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 your old throw, whatever that is for you. How about Along Came Polly.

 

Tom Bartley: An Officer and a Gentleman

 

Staci Bartley: I liked that one. Ghost, do you remember the pottery thing?

 

Tom Bartley: Somewhere in Time.

 

Staci Bartley: The Way We Were.

 

Tom Bartley: And When Harry Met Sally.

 

Staci Bartley: That's a good one too and if romance isn't appealing to you right now, how about what we did is we actually picked our favorite actor, actress and we had a whole series of Sandra Bullock.

 

Tom Bartley: They really, yeah, there were ones I wasn't even aware that she had made.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah.

 

Tom Bartley: Very talented actress.

 

Staci Bartley: We found old ones, new ones, it was incredible, so you can create your film festival that way, or you can simply just select a genre that you're feeling in the mood for, whether that be action or comedy or sci-fi. There are all kinds of ways to create your own in-home film festival wrapped up in your little cozy blanket, what I want you to do is as you're hearing this, do it, set aside the time.

 

Tom Bartley: Just like our assignment that Amy gave us, you know what, none of it works unless we step in and do.

 

Staci Bartley: So, we end every episode with a wonderful can you feel it, it's 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 today, we've stimulated your logic, now we want you to feel some things. And today we've chosen a song it's from Blank & Jones and it's called Glow, and I chose this 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. 

 

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.

 

Tom Bartley: And this is a tremendous song for so many, in so many ways for me, but, yes, let's be honest, environment matters, and as we share, this can sometimes be a little a bit of an intimidating place to step into at the beginning of 2022. So, let's do everything we can to make this environment and really create the conditions that make this result inevitable, getting these three buckets in place and just taking a look, 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.

 

Staci Bartley: We do have a lot of faves; Blank & Jones has incredible relaxing music.

 

Tom Bartley: They're master mixers, they're European and they're just very, very incredible how they do things.

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, so put it on, pull out that paper, pour your favorite beverage, and 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.

 

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

 

Staci Bartley: Yeah, that's it for today's episode and 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.

 

Tom Bartley: And if this particular money conversation is bringing up a lot of things, which it often does and you need 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.

 

Staci Bartley: 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 Tom and Staci 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 look forward to being back here with you next week.

 

Tom Bartley: See you next week everybody, buh-bye.

 

Staci Bartley: Buh-bye for now.