Season 2, Episode 35: Making Sense of Dollars and Cents

 

0:00:00 – Announcer
We go together like peas and carrots. The Peas and Carrots Podcast, sharing life from our piece of the vegetable patch Brian and Kayla Sanders.

0:00:11 – Brian
Welcome to the peas and carrots podcast. Hi, I’m Kayla and I’m Brian. Welcome to this week’s edition of what’s going on in the world of peas and carrots what’s happening in life.

0:00:23 – Kayla
Well, you’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately, which I’m totally here for this. I love when you cook, really, but what have you been making?

0:00:32 – Brian
gumbo Mm-hmm. Red beans rice sausage.

0:00:37 – Kayla
Roasted cabbage.

0:00:38 – Brian
Yeah, I do this fried cabbage stuff with Sausage in it, which is I like that a lot. I grill where you we are actually trying to grill. Longer into the season, longer into the fall and to the winter. So yeah, I do that a good bit. I’m trying to think of what else was that about it? That’s about it. I Like to cook it’s cozy food season for me.

What aggravates me about cooking is I feel and this is just on me, I feel this pressure from myself that when I get home I want to cook instantly, get it done so we can sit down and relax.

0:01:19 – Kayla
But I need to relieve that pressure you do, and sometimes it’s just getting it started so that it can cook for a while, but yeah.

0:01:28 – Brian
Anything with rice. I’m here for. I’m here for anything with rice. So our neighbors Mike and Kim have the most amazing Christmas Inflatables they do and their front and side yard awesome and there’s a huge watt there in the side yard that you’re mumble. You are. If you know who bumble is, he’s from Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. He’s a, he’s a Yeti, he’s a bigfoot or whatever, and they have this giant and he was sprocket favorite toy.

0:02:01 – Kayla
So it kind of tugged at my heart when I saw him in the yard the other day.

0:02:06 – Brian
So yeah, and if puppy was still around, we could take him over there.

0:02:09 – Kayla
Oh, he’d bark it to death, but yeah so what if he’d attack? It Probably if we got him close enough, but we would not have done that. So, yeah, okay. So I have a question. Okay, is it, once I get home, I’m staying home season for anyone else, or is it just me?

0:02:26 – Brian
I never knew we exited that season. I just thought that was the default setting.

0:02:31 – Kayla
I just mean in the summer it’s more tempting to go back out like well, we’ll go get dessert, or We’ll run to the store, but I am to that point where, nope, I’m home, I’m changing into my pajamas and this is who we are now.

0:02:48 – Brian
You want to tell them what we did last night. Just be honest, all the time we went to bed.

0:02:53 – Kayla
I went to bed at six o’clock. I, yes, I did. We get off work.

0:02:57 – Brian
Proud of myself and so got home.

0:03:00 – Kayla
I was bent.

0:03:01 – Brian
We picked up a little Mexican pickup order and went home and ate and then like bears hibernated. Yeah, I can’t believe. I woke up at 1130, then went back to sleep, yep, and I woke up at 530. Yeah, I just cannot. I slept that long. That kind of scared me a little bit.

0:03:19 – Kayla
No.

0:03:20 – Brian
You’re here for this. I’m so here for this you can sleep that long every night.

0:03:24 – Kayla
No, not really, but I love lazy evenings like that that don’t require anything. So, yeah, it was good.

0:03:31 – Brian
I know people just love lazy.

0:03:34 – Kayla
Oh, that hits different. That’s well okay, it’s another subject for another day.

0:03:38 – Brian
You know we probably should move on from that. Yeah, money, we talked about this in a previous episode. I think it was our last episode. We kind of hinted at this a little bit. Yeah so how do we create a family budget when everything is so expensive? How do we Navigate this?

0:03:58 – Kayla
Yeah, so I I get a lot of questions about this Just because I am kind of a banker type person, but I Want to share with you what works for us, and it comes with this caveat Everyone needs to find a system that works for you, but if you have no system, then you aren’t controlling your money. Your money is controlling you, and so we’re just gonna walk through some of the things that we do. The first step, legit, is how many paychecks do you have coming in each month? For example, we’re paid every other week, so our monthly budget looks like two columns. The first column is for the first checks. The second column on our spreadsheet is for the second checks. You may have to have multiple columns on your spreadsheet if You’re being paid on offsetting weeks and have different like pay structures.

0:04:56 – Brian
What if there’s a third paycheck in a month?

0:04:59 – Kayla
we usually use that to grow our savings, or we will say I will set that aside. That’s usually where our vacation fund comes from, oh, so I try to. Obviously, things like church tithe and groceries still need to come out of that check, but then for everything else there’s no recurring expense. So that’s how I typically grow our savings. Or well, if we have a trip coming up, I’ll put aside a chunk of money for that.

0:05:30 – Brian
All right, very good. So what’s your first step in all this? What are you writing down?

0:05:38 – Kayla
So the first thing, and I prefer an Excel spreadsheet I also have it as a Google Doc so I can share it with you, but it’s private to the two of us.

0:05:49 – Brian
That’s some, that’s just some fascinating reading right down.

0:05:53 – Kayla
Yeah, you don’t ever want to see it. You need to sit down and write down all your static expenses, and what I mean by this is what are your bills that repeat each month? And here’s a trick If the bill amount is going to fluctuate, I Calculate it for 12 months, based on the highest amount that bill ever was so in December of this year, I will sit down and create 12 spreadsheets for next year. Oh, and so our like our electric bill. I will put what the highest amount ever was and multiply that and I put that on all 12, it comes in less.

You got well then we have savings, but the worst thing is to go with what the lowest bill was and Then you come up with a shortfall. So I typically calculate our January or February bill, which is our highest bill coming out of Christmas and winter, because it’s a blasted colder.

Mm-hmm. So that’s one way to keep yourself from getting in a bind. A great idea. So another thing that we do and this is just our preference is a couple we determine what amount is reasonable, what amount do we want to end the year having saved, and that is a line item.

0:07:12 – Brian
Does that ever change?

0:07:13 – Kayla
I mean it. It tends to go up. There is a minimum amount that is transferred twice a month behind the scenes and it goes into our savings account, but often it’s more than that so, and we can circle back to that, but yeah, Okay, why do you assign certain bills to certain checks?

0:07:33 – Brian
Like I find that a little fascinating, like you have written out like this is checks number one.

0:07:38 – Kayla
Well, our mortgage is always due on the first of the month.

0:07:40 – Brian
Yeah, but why do you do so?

0:07:43 – Kayla
because of how the bill falls. It comes out of our first check.

0:07:47 – Brian
Y’all. This is why she keeps this and I don’t yeah.

0:07:50 – Kayla
So if the mortgage is due on December 1st and our first check in November is like November 10th, then I know I have buffer to get the mortgage paid, so it comes out of the first check rather than waiting until the second check, which may end up being too close to the first of the next month. Okay, so basically it was a painful transition, but I made sure that everything is paid one check ahead, which it’s hard to do that If you haven’t already set yourself up that way. It was tight for a couple of months for us, but once we got to that pattern then I’m never panicking oh, something’s doing two days kind of situation.

0:08:35 – Brian
Somebody’s gonna say I don’t have enough money to meet all of my bills, and that is a real problem. So here’s one tip I want to give Okay, that if you have debt, you have this credit card debt, that credit card debt, this. Possibly go to a bank and try and do a consolidation loan to where you can put all those in one and then lower your payment so that you can create a little bit of breathing room. Now, this is the danger Don’t go back out and make more debt and make new debt.

0:09:06 – Kayla
Or there’s the option to pay off the smallest debt and then work towards the largest debt. But you said something very poignant there. At some point you have to stop choosing to make debt, and we’ll talk about that in just a second.

0:09:21 – Brian
You have to start living for tomorrow and not today.

0:09:23 – Kayla
You do so once you’ve assigned out all of your bills. These are your things that are gonna be every month your electric bill, your mortgage, possibly your car note. I even go as far as to list groceries. This is how much we’re gonna spend on groceries. This is how much our internet’s going to cost. This is how much our cell phones cost. This is how much we spend on streaming.

It literally has its own line item that we eliminate any surprises, have a line item for things like birthdays, anniversaries, taxes, christmas. You set yourself up for success if every expense you can imagine has been added to the particular month where it needs to be paid. I know that first week of December every year we have property taxes. Those are budgeted in November every year, so that it doesn’t catch me by surprise If items for us like date night, bookstore hobbies, if those things are important to you, create a line item for them as well. And here’s the thing everything needs to be accounted for Because that way you know that you’re keeping. You’re kind of keeping a control on how much is going out the door.

We even have a coffee budget.

0:10:47 – Brian
We knew some folks at one point in our lives who would actually call the bank and see how much was in the like, how much was in their checking account, and that would determine for them If they could go out to it was like a game of Russian roulette. They were hoping something wouldn’t clear. And my question to them one night was this well, do you have checks written against that amount? They’re like, yeah, but it hasn’t cleared yet and I about died. It was terrifying, yeah.

0:11:13 – Kayla
So there are some conversations you need to have. Decide as a couple what you will do with any surplus. Now you may laugh and say what’s surplus, but if you do once you have plugged in every expense you have, then it’s grown up time. It’s time to sit down and say what is luxury, what is need versus want, and maybe some things do need to scale back for a season. If you’re constantly going over your grocery budget, then maybe you need to look at. Well, for us it would look like giving up coffee. Coffee out is a luxury, it is not a need. I know some people would disagree, but I can make coffee at home much cheaper than I can go through Starbucks.

0:12:00 – Brian
So as a-, but who’s gonna ride on that little cup?

0:12:03 – Kayla
Well, I can do that, Okay, but keep in mind that there are things you may have to relinquish if you’re not meeting your set budget. This is a hard truth to say, and this is where you were talking earlier. We create our own stress we really do when we don’t hold ourselves financially accountable.

0:12:27 – Brian
Truth.

0:12:28 – Kayla
If every single month spending is exceeding income, you’ve gotta reassess things.

0:12:36 – Brian
You’ve gotta cancel something. You’ve gotta get out of something.

0:12:38 – Kayla
Early in our marriage we learned that for a season we could not have a credit card.

0:12:43 – Brian
It was too tempting.

0:12:45 – Kayla
It was oh well, it’s Friday night and we deserve this. We wanna go out to dinner and it went on a credit card. Well, before you know it, we had credit card debt that we had to deal with. We also learned it saves a whole lot of money to eat at home and we like cooking. So that was a change that we made. There was a point early in our marriage that you and I made the decision. Credit card debt is not debt that we are going to carry beyond the time the bill comes due. Now somebody may be sitting there saying, well, this is all well and good, but I don’t obviously have the kind of disposable income that you do. I get that. I really do get that. When I first started working, did I make like 14,000 a year? Yep, that’s how much I made. Even then, we had a budget that we lived by.

And, yeah, you got paid once a month, so we had to really stretch to make that grocery budget last. It’s being realistic with yourself and the hardest question to ask is what are the things that I feel I deserve versus what our family absolutely needs? In this season and for us that looks like food. Food is always gonna come first.

0:14:03 – Brian
Housing.

0:14:04 – Kayla
Paying our mortgage, paying our bills, and then, if there is anything extra, then we can look at having fun.

0:14:13 – Brian
I guess what Ms Kayla is saying is that you have to learn to live within your means.

0:14:16 – Kayla
Yeah.

0:14:18 – Brian
And.

0:14:18 – Kayla
Or you are gonna be stressed all the time about money.

0:14:21 – Brian
Yes, you’re gonna be stressed and you’re gonna be strapped. So yeah. These are great little tips, ms Kayla, and thank you for what you do for our little family and how you take care of us. But great little and it’s hard. I mean we’re not gonna sit here and say it’s easy, no, and it’s been a learning curve for us.

0:14:37 – Kayla
I mean, we admitted there are things we had to say no to and there was a season for us where, because we did not have children, we tended to gravitate towards older people because we were more comfortable there. Well, one of the key takeaways is they were more established than we could have ever hoped to be in our early 30s. These are people who were in their 50s. We could not keep up with them and that was okay. We weren’t meant to Be mindful of what expectations you’re putting on yourself based on who do you run with? Because You’re not meant to keep up with the Joneses. You’re meant to keep up with what your checkbook says.

0:15:22 – Brian
Well, something got said there. We’re gonna get to know you a little bit. We’re gonna get to know each other a little bit. We want to kind of let you get to know us just a little bit. So also okay.

0:15:35 – Kayla
These we thought would be some great questions for conversation starters as you know. At your going to holiday parties or your welcoming guests to your home. So we thought we’d make it fun. We’ll have a game of get to know you. But also these are some good questions you could ask if you’re stumped for conversation. So me, what are you most afraid of failure? Oh, I thought you’d say spiders. Failure you Getting lost.

0:16:10 – Brian
Yes, yeah, I see yeah we have lived that a few times.

0:16:14 – Kayla
Yes, I can’t handle when I don’t know where I’m going.

0:16:16 – Brian
So, yeah, failure for me getting getting lost. For you, I’ve got a yeah. I’ve got to figure out how to win. I got to figure out how to have a success out of a situation. What’s the bravest thing you ever did?

0:16:29 – Kayla
Walk into a gym.

0:16:31 – Brian
Wow, going to see a therapist. Mmm bravest thing I ever did. Yeah, Jim would be right up there next to it because I was oh, I was terrified.

0:16:41 – Kayla
I still am, but yeah, I feel like a monkey on a trapeze.

0:16:47 – Brian
Stop it.

0:16:49 – Kayla
If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

0:16:54 – Brian
gosh, I don’t know have I have no idea Maybe Vincent by Josh Groban, something like that. It’s probably one of my favorite songs and it’s a song about suicide, where Vincent van Gogh could to take his own life, but just love the melody of it. I love the mess.

0:17:13 – Kayla
Yes, sad it and I’m afraid of that, okay, yeah, I would probably have to choose. This one is hard and I chose the question, but I would probably choose goodness of God by CC Winans.

0:17:25 – Brian
Well, here I am going with Josh. Groban your little morbid, but yeah, let me, let me. Let me switch my answer. I think that probably my or summer win by, like Frank Sinatra.

0:17:36 – Kayla
I could see that, okay, that’s a better choice. I love that song, favorite Christmas movie of all time.

0:17:44 – Brian
National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation. All-time favorite Christmas movie. Love it oh it’s a good one. I love with the scene when he’s in the attic watching the whole movies and he’s got that little turbo.

0:17:58 – Kayla
I love that, yours that was a good one, but I would have to say white Christmas. These are some hard questions, but yeah.

0:18:09 – Brian
I might switch to white Christmas best book you read this year so far.

0:18:14 – Kayla
Yours. Oh, I’m asking you this oh, um, I would have to say Sean and me quest book. I guess I haven’t learned that yet.

0:18:24 – Brian
Oh.

0:18:25 – Kayla
It was a really impactful book. Give me one takeaway that there are gonna be Events in your life that you may not feel ready for, but just keep navigating them and things will begin to reveal themselves. All right, but be okay with what you don’t know in the season that you’re in.

0:18:48 – Brian
For me how to how to know a person by David Brooks.

0:18:51 – Kayla
Mmm. We talked about that one recently love that book.

0:18:54 – Brian
Yes, loved it.

0:18:56 – Kayla
What is your favorite core memory from traveling?

0:19:00 – Brian
Seeing you hug to Baca Disney World.

0:19:03 – Kayla
That’s too funny, I was gonna say watching you do a meet and greet with Darth Vader at Star Wars.

0:19:09 – Brian
Just uh, mm-hmm loved it, I absolutely loved that I love Chewbacca.

0:19:13 – Kayla
What’s one lesson you are carrying into next year?

0:19:18 – Brian
Life, business leadership doesn’t matter one lesson.

0:19:22 – Kayla
We’re limiting you to one.

0:19:25 – Brian
Be as passionate about the organizations finances as I am about its culture.

0:19:31 – Kayla
Mmm, mmm, that’s a deep one, you didn’t you didn’t know, see that one coming. No, I did not. For me, it’s slow down. Stop going at a frenetic pace all the time and learn to slow down. Be in the moment.

0:19:53 – Brian
Are you a morning person or a night owl?

0:19:55 – Kayla
I’m a permanently exhausted pigeon. I Love early mornings, just because, but you also love a nap, but I love staying up late and watching movies. You’re out by 8 30.

0:20:18 – Brian
So yeah you’re definitely Clock. Somebody better be dead or something better be burning.

0:20:23 – Kayla
There’s that.

0:20:24 – Brian
I’m a morning person.

0:20:26 – Kayla
You are good if.

0:20:27 – Brian
I wake up and it’s 4 30.

0:20:29 – Kayla
You’re ready to have a conversation? Well, I’m usually hiding behind a cup of coffee trying to work on that.

0:20:35 – Brian
but I do love early mornings, I love the quiet, I love the peace.

0:20:39 – Kayla
Mm-hmm. I am a morning person, I’m really particularly love them this time of year, with the Christmas tree lit, just sitting Before daylight. Just sitting with the tree lights, sipping coffee, yeah, doing my devotional. It’s great stuff. If you could learn another language, which would you choose? I?

0:21:01 – Brian
took four years of German, mmm, and I enjoyed it. It’s very difficult. If I could go back, I would also do Latin. Oh, because Latin would allow me to read certain historical books in their original language. I know, I’m just crazy or not?

0:21:20 – Kayla
I wish that I could learn French. We and not sound Crazy. I took four years of Spanish, two in high school, two in college and Spanish just came a whole lot easier to me and with my accent it didn’t sound as crazy as me trying to speak French, but I think French is a beautiful language, so okay, if money was no object, uh-huh, you had all.

0:21:45 – Brian
you had unlimited resources. Where would you travel to?

0:21:49 – Kayla
who? Probably Austria or Ireland.

0:21:54 – Brian
Now hang on. I need to pause here. I just said I would I had four years of German. She’s going to Austria. We are not Nazis, let’s go. No, I did not know, it’s just.

0:22:06 – Kayla
I think it’s beautiful there and I would love I’d love to spend time in that countryside, yeah, Switzerland going back.

0:22:15 – Brian
London, italy, mm-hmm, those, those places I have nothing in me wants to go to Russia or China or Japan. I just don’t have nothing personal maybe Australia, but that flight, oh my gosh. There are snakes and spiders there.

0:22:33 – Kayla
That just bigger than us. Yeah, no, yes, that’s just kind of that just kind of wigs me out.

0:22:37 – Brian
So there you go.

0:22:38 – Kayla
So there you go. There’s some good questions. Feel free to steal some of those if the conversation is stagnant and you’re trying to fill the air at a holiday party.

0:22:49 – Brian
There’s one more conversation starter that that we’d like to give you, and that’s appeasing carrots coffee. That’s right you could be using that at a Christmas party and somebody oh, what’s that about? And then you can talk about the podcast. So, a matter of fact, the first two people to go to our website, we’re going to give you a peas and carrots coffee mug and accompanied with that.

There are peas and carrots stickers in there as well, but you’ll have. That’s how you get the coffee mug and the stickers. You go to our website, look for the trivia button Click that okay, when you get there, you have to answer a question. This week’s question.

0:23:26 – Kayla
If money was no object for you, where would you travel?

0:23:29 – Brian
Okay, so where would you go if you had unlimited resources? Somebody might say, nowhere, I’m staying home, so just so good on you.

0:23:38 – Kayla
Yeah, just go to our website peasandcaredspodcastcom.

0:23:42 – Brian
Click on the trivia button and answer the question.

0:23:44 – Kayla
If money was no object for you, where would you travel?

0:23:48 – Brian
Yeah, answer that question. We’ll send you a pack of stickers and a coffee mug. Thanks for listening this week.

0:23:53 – Kayla
You can search peas and carrots podcast wherever you get your podcast, or visit our website peasandcaredspodcastcom. And when you do, please don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast.

0:24:03 – Brian
You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Just search for the peas and carrots podcast.

0:24:09 – Announcer
For more about the Peas and Carrots Podcast and to reach out to Brian and Kayla, visit peasandcarrotspodcast.com  Life’s not perfect, that’s why God gave us friends like Melody and Candy. Check out the Quirks, Bumps, and Bruises Podcast, or search Quirks, Bumps and Bruises wherever you listen to podcasts.