Money Matters in Marriage: Building Trust and Tackling Debt Together | Skyler and Rebecca Fleming

[00:00:00] A lot of people just need to start talking about money, so I try to bring conversations into an easy and digestible way. On a first date, as crazy as it may seem, I was actually impressed and I was like, oh wow, this guy's got his finances together. That's a good sign to me. Nowhere in our upbringing do I remember having the conversation like, hey, how your parents handle money will directly impact how you handle money.

[00:00:23] It took us seven years to figure out how to like really not just be on the same page but operate together and really row the boat together and do it really intuitively. Welcome to Coast FI Couple, a podcast where love meets financial independence. I'm Matt.

[00:00:51] And I'm Yana. Join us every other week as we dive into the world of Coast FI and share smart money tips for couples. We're going to be talking all about how to strengthen your bond and your relationship and bringing closer to financial independence. One episode at a time. All right, everyone. Welcome back to Coast FI Couple. Today we have Skylar and Rebecca from Money Talk. And we recently had a really great conversation with Skylar on his show and we decided to get together and have his Rebecca join us. His Rebecca. That's my Rebecca.

[00:01:20] And we're really excited just to kind of hang out, sit down, have a super casual conversation and get to know you guys a little bit more. A money talk, if you will. A money talk, yes. That's right, yes. So Skylar, why don't you do a quick introduction of yourselves? Yeah. So my name is Skylar. I host the podcast Money Talk with Skylar Fleming. That's what brought Matt and I there is our love of finance. And I've been doing it for a couple years. I found myself wanting to keep talking about money and my wife got sick of it.

[00:01:48] So I started a podcast. I needed an audience because she was done listening to me ramble about the same stuff. So that's kind of, that's kind of the funny way to explain the podcast. But I found that a lot of people just need to start talking about money. So I tried to bring conversations into an easy and digestible way. But Rebecca actually just graduated PA school and I'll let her tell you about what she does. I mean, yeah, I'm a physician assistant, just started a new job. I work in family medicine, so that's pretty fun.

[00:02:14] And Skylar likes that because it brings some more financial income for him to have fun with. So, no, it's good. Well, congratulations. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. That's a big step. Thank you. Yeah, it has been a big step. Still adjusting, but it's getting better. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you both is because Skylar mentioned wanting to bring on his partner. And, you know, I know that you guys have had a pretty interesting financial journey.

[00:02:42] And the fact that you're podcasters yourselves really kind of helps us introduce the audience in a different way. And so, I think what I'd love to do is learn a little bit more about your journeys. Like, when did you become a finance nerd, Skylar? Because I can read it on your face, buddy. As soon as I saw you, I was like, we're in the feather. When I picked it up, I started working at a credit union, I think in 2018 or 2019.

[00:03:10] And that really just introduced me to this idea that people weren't sure what to do with their money. So many of the conversations were so simple. They were just basically like, hey, you have to pay your credit card off by this date or there's a fee. Like, just things that the money nerds are like, yeah, that's how it works. And so many of those things were just easy to explain. And once they picked it up, they were friendlier, they were nicer. They made... They were more confident about their money. And that's where I kind of really got into it.

[00:03:37] I learned a lot in my training at the credit union. Kind of learning how to handle people's money and teach them how to handle it with the credit union's products. And that kind of taught me more than I had ever learned. So once I moved on from that job, I realized I wanted to stay in finance and connected with a ton of podcasts. I was listening to podcasts and YouTube videos like crazy. And that led me down the rabbit hole. I'm like, I got to track this stuff. I remember... I want to say it was probably right when I started at the credit union.

[00:04:05] I was looking into ways to build my own spreadsheets, things like that. So it kind of clicked instantly once I just kind of started in a finance job. Okay. And Rebecca, how about you? When did that journey kick off for you? Yeah. Well, I'm not as much of the money nerd. It's actually kind of funny. On our first date, he showed me his spreadsheet with all of his expenses to show how proud he was. On date one. On date one. I actually... On date one. I was going to ask.

[00:04:34] I have a question teed up. How soon into your dating did you start talking about money and who brought it up? And how did it go? A couple hours. A couple hours. A couple hours. First two parts of that question. So what's the third part? Like, how did that go? What was that like for you being on the receiving end of this amazing spreadsheet? I'm sure. Yeah. I liked it. I mean, I have never tracked my expenses like that before. But I mean, my parents' relationship with money is not perfect.

[00:05:00] But I mean, I'd been taught from like what they knew about money. And so like I always worked from a young age to save money and was taught about trying to avoid debt, this, that, and the other. And so like money was something that I had experience with already. And so on a first date, as crazy as it may seem, I was actually impressed. And I was like, oh, wow, this guy's got his finances together. That's a good sign to me. It worked in my benefit. It is a good sign.

[00:05:26] It's interesting because normally, at least in my experience, you know, people, they zone out pretty quickly. He's talking about me. My eyes would just glaze over it. It took me several, I would say several dates, if not maybe four months. Dates? Months? Years? Yeah, before we could talk about it like openly. Yeah. So, but that's a great time. I mean, that being said, we've, of course, had some struggles. We've had to work through in more depth, of course.

[00:05:54] But yeah, I wasn't afraid of his money nerd side and spreadsheet. Yeah. Well, kudos to you for kind of following his passion a little bit and being brave enough to come on a show like this where we can talk about the communication part of it. Because that's honestly the reason we started this show was because it did take us a long time to get on the same page and feel like that conversation wasn't taboo anymore.

[00:06:19] And the more that we kind of look for other couples out there that are experiencing similar things, like everyone's got a different story. And I think you said it yourself, like personal finance is personal. And, you know, we all have a story to tell here. And so, it's interesting to learn kind of the dynamics between or I guess behind the curtain of a couple's relationship, especially when it comes to money. Yeah. I think having more conversations with people just provides more examples and more role models for listeners and audiences. And even myself, I'm still learning.

[00:06:48] So, it's really helpful to get an idea of what other people have done and how they communicate around money. I find it really fascinating. Yeah. Rebecca, you mentioned that your parents kind of opened the door a little bit for you and kind of showed you your way with money. Like, do you have a – I'm going to use a coined term from Skyler's show, actually. Do you have a money memory that you might want to share that kind of helped, you know, paint the picture? I mean, yeah. I have money memories.

[00:07:13] Some of them, I guess, are learning experiences because it showed me what not to do. Yeah. But, I mean, like I said, my parents always encouraged my siblings and I from a young age to, like, work, save money, to be able to buy the things that you wanted. So, like, I was the strange kid who was up delivering newspapers every morning at a young age. And I paid for my band trips. And I paid for my school clothes. And I paid for my sports fees and things like that.

[00:07:42] Because my parents were like, well, if it's something you want to do, like, you can save the money and you can pay for it. And so, that was, like, a good skill, I think, that I learned from them for sure. On the opposite end, though, their communication about money wasn't always the greatest. And I think that's kind of bled over into our communication about money as well. And we've had to kind of overcome some of those obstacles because of what I had observed in my parents.

[00:08:07] I mean, mainly, my dad was very much a Dave Ramsey, get out and stay out of debt guy. At all costs. At all costs. No matter what. And so, they would, like, have their mortgage payment. My dad's like, okay, extra money. Nope, going straight to the mortgage. We're getting this paid off as fast as possible. And my mom didn't always like that because she wanted to have more fun with the money at times.

[00:08:31] And so, I watched a lot of disagreement and debate about how the money should be used to a point that my mom would sometimes hide stashes of cash in the house that my dad didn't know existed so that she could use it to buy things that she wanted without him necessarily knowing. Because he would be like, well, no, it should go towards paying off the debt. And I remember one time my dad found the cash stash. And then they argued about it.

[00:09:01] And he left and didn't come back that night. And I was like, this is the end of my parents' marriage. But, I mean, they worked it out. They're still together. It's all great. But that definitely had bled over a little bit into our initial conversations about money because I watched my parents kind of have poor communication about their goals and how to work through some of that. And I mean, they still struggle with it today, but I think they're improving. So, I mean, 20-something years it's taken for them to work through some of that still.

[00:09:30] Yeah, I can only imagine how having that kind of example impacts you in the way that your parents prioritize their finances differently. Like, obviously, they were making choices together. But it sounds like maybe their priorities were not always 100% aligned. And maybe they really struggled with having that kind of communication that was healthy around that. And so, I could see how that really does become the foundation of how you approach money with your partner in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like a...

[00:09:57] I mean, what you took away from that was probably... Yeah, I could see the attraction then all of a sudden to finding money. Not to do. Yeah, what you said earlier. Somebody who could... Well, to add on to it, how it impacted us, I wanted to make sure to share this because I came into our relationship with my spreadsheets. Like, I had total control over my money. And I knew what I wanted to do with it. I counted for every penny. And that led me to kind of... Instead of shuffling it all towards debt, I had all these other things in mind.

[00:10:25] Which is where that kind of, I guess, triggered her black hole memories is what her parents would call it is the black hole as the money goes in and doesn't come out. And she was worried that that was going to start happening to her. So, that was our realization. Thankfully, it was very early in our marriage that I was like, Hey, this is happening because of what you experienced with your parents and how they handled money.

[00:10:46] And we were able to identify that and put things in place to help her work through that and help me maybe take a step back from being so eager and fast to control our money. And we honestly probably took a couple months where we were doing our money not entirely together. We're at that point now where all our direct deposits are going to one place. But at the beginning, she still had her separate account. We were doing all the money together. We were talking about it together. We were putting all our numbers together.

[00:11:13] But she still needed the direct deposit to go to her separate account. She wanted a credit card in her name, which I thought was just crazy at the beginning. I was like, It's all our money. And then once we realized where that origin story came from with that emotion behind it, it unlocked it for us, to be honest. The more that Jan and I simplify and automate our finances, the happier we became. And this is the single greatest finance budgeting tool that's come out in recent times.

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[00:12:05] And it requires a category to be opened from your personal budget before you can spend with the card. And then once you spend, it deducts it all in real time. This single feature has made Cube the safest card in the world to use. If you drop it, it always has a zero balance on it unless you open the budgeting app. It's been extremely handy for us, and it saved us actually several instances of fraud. And we're never going to go back.

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[00:12:58] This is the tool that helped us get a handle on our family spending and made our journey to Coastify so much easier. So if you're ready to take your budget to the next level where you truly can automate it, you truly set it and forget it, then you're in luck. Because Cube Money is offering an exclusive deal just for our listeners. Go to cubemoney.com. That's Q-U-B-E money.com. And at checkout, use the code COAST.

[00:13:25] You can try the premium or the family membership for free. And again, we highly recommend it. It's a personal endorsement. We know that if you use the program, it'll work for you. Enjoy. Wow. What a story. Because I can see the connection. And we've got similar stories. Yeah, a little bit. We definitely have different upbrings around money for sure.

[00:13:52] I think that there's all of this baggage that you bring into a marriage, whether or not it seems very obvious or not. And money really touches all aspects of your relationship. And so I think it's a really healthy exercise to sort of... What did you call it? Money origin? Figure out what your money origins are. Yeah, your origins are very good. Yeah, I really like that phrase. I might nick that one from you. And what about you, Skylar?

[00:14:18] I know that we sort of had our two-on-one conversation where you kind of got to interview us on your show a little bit. But I'd love to hear more about your money origin story and what led you to be the super saver before you were doing your work at the bank. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. What led me to want to save money was I think the lack of security that I saw my parents have.

[00:14:45] My parents always seemed like they were borrowing money from my grandparents. They were never financially self-reliant for the most part. And one of the main stories that I tell as an early money memory for me is having to go inside to the gas station with just a $20 bill. I never really saw my parents fill the gas tank. So I, from a very young age, always wanted to make sure I had enough money to fill the gas tank. And that kind of led me to probably save more than I should. I'm sure I could have spent more money.

[00:15:14] But it instilled in me that I need to make sure I have a baseline amount. Like I need to make sure those needs are always covered. And that's the basics of an emergency fund. Yeah. But for me, it was just a gas fund, I guess, so to speak. I always wanted to make sure that no matter what I needed, there was at least a full tank of gas because that was something I observed was maybe a struggle for my parents. And then it bled over into other things and so on, spreadsheets and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:39] We don't often link up the parental experiences we have with money. Because I know that we talk about the impacts that we have from our parents. Like a lot of us end up being similar to our parents, good or bad, right? Like we try and take the traits that we find are valuable. We try and work on the ones that we feel like are amiss. But nowhere in our upbringing do I remember having the conversation like, hey, how your parents handle money will directly impact how you handle money.

[00:16:08] And I have a similar origin story for you, Skylar. I remember being 13 and my dad lost his job for a couple of years and my mom was working night shifts at a hospital. And I remember just the stress that came with that, like the unknown. And that was my kind of origin story where I, as soon as I started working, was saving as many pennies as I could because I never wanted to be put in a position like that once I had a family.

[00:16:36] And so I can see, I can see this. I know that you guys have experienced this with other couples too that you've talked with where they must have either good examples or bad examples and we're all kind of working on it. And I'm terrified that we're overlooking something and our kids are going to get, you know, some crazy... They're going to be sharing a story on a podcast like this. Yeah. Exactly. So... My parents had a budget for everything. They must have been so dirt poor or something.

[00:17:05] I guess we'll find out. I, you know, I tell Matt all the time is at some point we're going to get our progress report when the kids are like 20, 25. And I'm genuinely really looking forward to it because I think it'll be really interesting. Well, we'll mess them up somehow. So we just got to figure out where. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. But I'd say, I'd say it's interesting too with the parent aspect because Skylar has a sister, but the way Skylar handles money and then when his sister handles it, it's super different. And she's not great with money.

[00:17:33] And she's definitely said, well, it's because my parents were bad with money and I learned from them. And then we're like, well, you guys have the same parents. And so it's kind of like what you take from that and what you decide to do with what you learn from other people or from your parents. Learn what not to do. Yeah. Yeah. Learn what to do or what not to do and what you do with that knowledge, I think is important as well. Yeah. So I can see the exposure to the credit union when you're, when you're working young and

[00:18:00] seeing how people talk about money and how kind of frightened that initial exposure can be. And then once you learn more about it, you start building up that confidence. Do you, you said you were avid Dave Ramsey fan as well at some point? Yeah. I was, I was at first, I was all Dave Ramsey so much so that like, I wasn't going credit card routes or anything right at the beginning. And then I graduated from it, but yeah, right at, right at the beginning, I was big on Dave Ramsey. It was her dad was also a huge on Dave Ramsey. Sure. I bet he loved that. Right. You guys had that.

[00:18:31] Yeah. Yeah. We, we, it was something we could chat about when he was nervous when we were getting married. There's funny stories behind that. Her dad's very quiet, but yeah. You guys hold hands and do the debt scream together, you and her dad. No. We'll both go on the beach together. Yeah. Excellent. So for those maybe that don't know yet who Dave Ramsey is, just kind of a quick caveat for the audience, right? He's a big money coach himself. Who's I think coached maybe at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of

[00:19:01] people to climb out of debt and to start building a financial foundation, which is what you guys have done too. I was a big Dave Ramsey fan myself for years as well. We did Dave Ramsey's financial peace university during our engagement. So it was a good foundational place to start for us when we were just getting. Yeah. That's how we felt as well. Cause we, we, I think we spent the first six months or eight months of our marriage only using a debit card, which honestly I recommend to people because it comes straight out. You're able to see your numbers so fast.

[00:19:30] I know we talked about that on my show, but like if you're getting married, just starting out with the debit card makes it so much easier and less complex. Yeah. Adding one extra person to the mix does complicate things in ways you don't participate. Right. And kind of the open floodgates that a credit card offers, it's easy to spiral. And, and so I think we talked about this earlier, but you know, if you can, you can always out earn some of your spending, but if you don't track it up front, you're, you're always

[00:19:58] in this really aggressive race to just breathe, kind of keep your head above water. And so keeping a foundation talking together and building out that, that budget or maintaining your, your understanding what your expenses are really does help. How are you guys talking about money today? Like what is your touch base look like? Yeah. Yeah. We have a monthly money talk. It's a budget meeting. I like to call it money talk because it goes with the podcast, but yeah, a monthly monthly

[00:20:27] budget meeting is how we do it last Sunday of every month. She knows that's when we're going to sit down and I'm going to make her talk to me about money, but it's become a joint affair over the years. Um, we've learned a lot doing that. And honestly, it's helped set us up for countless things like her student loans, dealing with those going through school, saving for trips and things like that. Like so much is easier when we, when we have those monthly budget meetings, I don't know if we've missed one ever. It's done them a lot. And I mean, I find the monthly helpful.

[00:20:57] We've of course like sprinkle in money conversations intermittently as well, but the budget meetings or money talk wants to call it, um, is extremely helpful for us because, um, as Skyler is definitely more of the money guru and he's learned a lot. He's always learning new things and new ideas. He would come at me with all of these ideas all the time and I'd get extremely overwhelmed, maybe, maybe glazed over eyes a little bit.

[00:21:22] And so instead of having those big conversations constantly, um, he's able to kind of save up and think about it until those monthly money talks so that we can actually work through some of those topics in a time when I am ready and prepared to do so. And it goes much better. Oh, that's, that's really smart. I did not do that. Skyler kudos to anybody. Um, I have a tendency to just talk about it when I'm thinking about it. And that, that was overwhelming for Yana, uh, initially, because I was talking about

[00:21:52] all the time I was in the middle of that climb. Right. So, you know, this is a strategy we genuinely just started kind of implementing where, because my job has been very, very busy lately and I feel just really overwhelmed with work a lot. And so, you know, Matt's got a bunch on his mind. He wants my opinion. He wants to talk about it, whether it's money or the podcast or whatever it is. And literally just the other day I came out from like a break between meetings and I said, I don't want to talk about anything. I won't talk about podcasts. I won't talk about money.

[00:22:21] I won't talk about anything. I want to talk about this TikTok video and I want to talk about our cat. That's all I want to talk about. Yeah. So I think early on, it would have been really helpful if I had said, or if we had decided this is a time that we're going to talk about this thing and present to me your data and we can talk about it. PowerPoints and everything. That's what these things contain. I would put slideshows together to show my ideas. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I want, have you ever posted one of your slide decks? I'm curious if like there was a resume.

[00:22:50] No, I, maybe, maybe I should do like a blog post around one of those, like how to present your wife with saving in an IRA or something like that. Or the evolution of the Excel spreadsheet. Yeah. That might be a fun one. You know, cause I, I look back on our old Excel spreadsheets that we used to do all of our budgeting on versus like what we're doing now, which is not even in Excel, but I think it would be really interesting to see how basic it started and how it just really evolved over time. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:16] The longer we're together, the more things we want to do and try and build together. Right. So yeah. Interesting. So how long have you guys been married? Just over four years. Four years. Okay. Okay. Excellent. And gosh, yeah. First date. I'm impressed with talking about money. I was, I was going to try and tease that out of you, but you know, again, kudos for bringing it right out of the gate. That's amazing. What, uh, what was one of your biggest financial challenges or hurdles and how did you guys overcome it together?

[00:23:46] Or are you still working on overcoming it together? Yeah. I would say there's kind of two that I think we could talk about here. One, I'll, I'll start with kind of the emotional versus math side of things. And you can probably guess I'm the math guy and. Not the emotional one. You got to have one of each. I think that. Yes. I want to optimize all the math and I want to put it out in my spreadsheet. Here's the formula. Here's the calculation. And let's do what this plan says. And Rebecca helps me bring some of the reality back into it.

[00:24:15] And that's mainly around her student loans. That's where we saw it come up in the biggest way is that she went to PA school. It's not cheap. At first I didn't want, I was like, we're not getting any student loans, which was crazy of me. It was unrealistic. So I kind of set us up in that first part to, Hey, let's avoid them all together. And she helped talk me into, Hey, it's probably going to have to happen, but we found a middle ground of saving for it. We came out with far less than most of her peers, thankfully, because of the plan we had put in place through talking about it together.

[00:24:42] But the real struggle came when she was about to graduate. We were talking about what we were going to do with them. There was several potential repayment plans on the horizon that could have helped us. And I want to say one of them was something around minimum payments and saving on interest. So I was like, let's do that. It's going to be the cheapest interest rate way. We'll save the most money and we'll just pay it off minimum payments because then we'll save the most money. And it was with some repayment plan.

[00:25:08] I can't remember what it was, but to her, those student loans were tied to her. And maybe I'll let her share a little bit of the emotional side of it because I was all math and ready to go with taking a long time to pay them off. Sure. Yeah. Because he talks about like at different interest rates, how much, which ones you need to pay off and the smartest way to get the most bang for your buck, I guess. And, but for me, I mean, as much as we do our finances together and we're on board and

[00:25:35] on the same page in that regard with me being the one who went to school and basically accumulated that debt, I feel this emotional tie that I'm like, well, I need to work to pay off those student loans, even though we do our finances together. And so when he's presenting to me, oh, we can just keep it taken as long as it needs to take with minimum payments. To me, that is him saying, you're going to have to work until these are paid off. And that could be much longer than I want to.

[00:26:04] Not that that's what he meant, but I think that was something we kind of had to overcome where I'm like, listen, as long as we have these loans, as much as we're doing it together, there's that emotional connection that I have and that responsibility I have to work to make the debt I accumulated worth it and paid off from the career that I decided to choose. And so we've had to kind of... And we're still working on it. It took several months. Yeah. It wasn't one conversation where we were able to say, here's the emotion, here's the math.

[00:26:33] It was several months of me trying to get this out of her. And I'm like, why is this a sticking point? And we were sitting down at one of our monthly meetings. And I turned and she made the connection. She was like, these loans are me. It feels like I have these loans. And I was like, well, there it is. We need to pay them off quicker. It was obvious. The math didn't matter at that point. If it's an emotional burden, right? Yeah. 8 to 10 years of paying these off slowly to her meant I have no flexibility to

[00:27:01] point to Coast Fi and stuff like that. We were tied down by that debt. I see. Wow. I see. Wow. It's really insightful that you were able to recognize that in her and in yourself and make that connection and maybe not make the choice that makes the most math sense. But there is something to be said about the emotional interest incurred on holding debt. And so that actually

[00:27:30] makes a lot of sense. Kudos. Yeah. One of the things that I think I talked about on our show is how difficult it was for me to recognize what was important for someone else in this castle that we're trying to build, right? I like to optimize too. I was the money nerd. I'm not so much the money nerd anymore. I think Jana's taking reins on that lately. I wear the hat. Yeah. You wear the hat lately on that. And that's partly because you're the one making a lot of

[00:27:58] income these days, right? So you have, I think, innately some understanding of the basics. And now you're just charging ahead with these really fantastic plans. But it took me a while to figure out that I needed to prioritize what you wanted to prioritize. And it wasn't just the math. It was like, hey, family trips. We got to prioritize family trips, right? Because I think to Rebecca's point, the black hole is absolutely real. I would throw every extra penny into this hole and would

[00:28:28] just sit in the bank and wouldn't do anything for us for years, right? Like, and so it being in this black hole is definitely scary. And I think it was for you because you had this term where it's like, hey, I know that this is going to help us in retirement. And I'm real excited for them. Yeah. You know, like 30 years from now. I'm so excited for them, meaning the future us, but we're going to be different people. So it just

[00:28:55] felt like such a, I felt really disconnected from our long-term savings goals for such a long time. And I knew it was important and I knew we're going to do it, but I didn't feel like it was giving me any kind of reward. I need to be rewarded in a shorter, maybe I have a shorter attention span. No, not at all. I do. I really think, and I think this is what you're getting at too,

[00:29:19] is you need to be able to put in the budget wins, like things like rewards that you can get for coming together and doing this together. Right. Is there something that you guys have like a line item for that you're kind of excited about? Like every quarter or something? Yeah. A couple of things. Like we have our vacation fund. It paid for Hawaii a couple months ago and we saved up for years. Amazing. Yeah. We went to Hawaii like two weeks after she graduated from PA school.

[00:29:49] And she had mentioned... That was awesome. Yeah. She had mentioned like when she started, she's like, I want to go to Hawaii. And I said, I'll take you when you graduate. And that kind of... I was like, done. I can't back out now. Wow. And we saved for that for years. And we went into it spending guilt-free because we had saved for a while. But line items like that are those couple year things for us. And we also have one... We have a Skylar fund and a Rebecca fund that we don't have to ask each other to spend. We'll talk about how much we want to put in there each month together. And then

[00:30:16] if I want to go buy... I usually buy things that are several hundred dollars. We send it differently. His saves and saves and then he buys a big item. I'm definitely a monthly spender training it. But that's okay because that money is... Yeah. It's designated for those purposes. And so we know we can use it. I mean, for whatever we want, because it's not allocated to any other budget category. I think that is the way to build a lasting strategy.

[00:30:44] It's recognizing the very human experience that we have and the behaviors that we are going to operate as. And really putting them into the budget in a way that is going to work long-term for your relationship. Yeah. It also makes life just a little bit more fun than just sitting on all the money that you're accumulating. What do you call it? Scrooge McDucking? Scrooge McDucking. Yeah. Must have been interesting for all of your friends at PA school

[00:31:12] just to have you go to Hawaii after graduation. I'm sure a lot of them were stressing out because they didn't have such fun for travel. Yeah. They weren't as lucky as we were. Or they just accumulated more debt to do their trips, but ours is debt-free. It must have felt really, really good. Congratulations. It was awesome. It was amazing. First time I hadn't studied in years. It was awesome. How long were you in school for? So it's a 27-month program. Okay. But it's like eight to five classes for Monday through Friday for over a year.

[00:31:42] And then you're doing rotations. Working. So basically working for free. And every month you switch locations. So you're starting a new job every month for a year, which... Was draining. Draining. Wow. Plus then you have tests in between all of that. So it's a lot, but... But you're done. Now I get paid to do it. You did. I know. Yeah. I did. So what's on the horizon for you guys now in the next couple of years? I know... What's next? I know that you're on the fire path as well, Skylar, right?

[00:32:10] Where do you guys stand on that journey? If you're willing to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. We are definitely in the beginning stages because we came through PA school knowing that that was going to be a time where that's where the money was going. And that's where I had to go. So now we're targeting the loans. We just paid off our highest interest rate one. So that was great. We're making good progress on those numbers. And I think for us, really, that's kind of the balance we're trying to find is which goal do we prioritize?

[00:32:37] Because there's going after fire. There's saving for a house if we want one. Kids are expensive. When those come, things like that are really the bulk of our conversations. We're doing good hitting savings goals with 401ks and things like that. So we have the good foundation there. But I think that's what we're turning to other people listening to other podcasts and things like that to say, how do you cross that threshold to start moving towards those longer term goals?

[00:33:05] Because we've been caught in this, I guess, student loan college savings mode for so long. And we're trying to push past that. Well, and I'd say we're at an interesting point too, because I mean, people have heard of dinks or we, I guess, are dinkwads, dual income, no kids with a dog because we just got a puppy. I've not heard of dinkwad. I'm going to definitely mention that. We're dinkwads.

[00:33:29] And so it is an interesting point because there's so many different directions our life could go as we're just establishing like, okay, I just started this new big job and Skyler's got his job and we just moved to a new place and trying to figure out where we're going next and what we want to do. And it's a unique situation because we have all this income. We have short-term goals and long-term goals. And I think right now we're kind of trying to figure out which goals to prioritize.

[00:33:54] And that is something we're struggling with because Skyler's pushing the coast by and I'm totally on board. I would love to take a step back a little bit. But I also get very worried about some of the closer goals of like, when will we buy a house, like you were saying, and kids and this, that, and the other. And so we're trying to figure out the best way to optimize our dinkwad status while also trying to pursue some of those goals. I do have a tip. Yes. Great. That's what we were hoping. Please, please.

[00:34:24] It's simple. Get a whiteboard. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I was about to pull it out of the closet. I was about to pull it out. Ours is on wheels. And anytime I'm like, I have an idea. And he's like, I have no idea what you're saying. I just put it on a whiteboard. We were going over some different life plans recently. And we literally just mapped everything out on the whiteboard and had our pros and cons and did the math together. He's doing the math on the calculator. I'm writing it on the whiteboard.

[00:34:51] And something about seeing it visually and having it there in our living space for several days so we can look at it, we can talk about it. And it's in none of our decisions. We very purposefully craft our lives in such a way to where we don't have to make any of our decisions right away. I don't like to be forced to make a quick decision. I want to have plenty of time. I know he needs it and I prefer it. Right? And so it makes it a lot easier when I want to have a soft landing when it comes to any big change that we're going to make.

[00:35:19] It sounds like you just finished school. So give yourself that time, that grace to just sort of take a few months to figure it out. I think that's perfectly normal and healthy. You've just gone through the gauntlet of school and you might not really... The experience that you have right now under your belt, you're probably still reeling from that quite a bit from school. So give yourself a little bit of time. You might feel completely different in three months from now and that's okay.

[00:35:49] It's not a race. It's a marathon. Isn't that the thing that people say? That's exactly what they say. Yeah. And it sounds like... I mean, you guys are money nerds too. So you know about maxing out the accounts as much as you can and just now what to do with that excess. And it's just a time situation now. So yeah, I mean, we did the same thing. We both were in school and trying to pay off those loans and then finally had this freedom of time in the evenings with big shovel jobs was like glorious.

[00:36:19] There was this point where we finally made it, but then we burned out. Then it all comes crumbling. Yeah. And it's just kind of like, oh gosh, I can't wait to end until the next phase. Well, we were working towards fire during those years. And so we were just... We had higher paying jobs, but we were just putting everything into the black hole, not really... Balancing it out. We weren't... We didn't have that balance. We weren't allowing ourselves to have really any lifestyle creep. And if we did have any lifestyle creep, man, did we...

[00:36:49] Did I hear about it from this one? So it was really... We had to find that balance over time. Yeah, sure. And we did. And it... I mean, it took us seven years to figure out how to really not just be on the same page, but operate together and really row the boat together and do it really intuitively. Yeah. And that's okay.

[00:37:11] Well, what I really love about your journey in particular is because you're constantly producing content yourselves and sharing what you've learned along the way. Like I've read your blog posts, Skylar. They're awesome. Like you're trying to teach people and you're a money coach yourself. So you have this knowledge and this willing to share it that is so desperately needed.

[00:37:34] And so, yeah, bravo for you guys for coming on the show and also producing the content that's just so valuable right now. Yeah. What is the next short trip that you guys have got planned? What's something that's... What's the next thing that you're going to reward yourselves with or celebrate with? Yeah. We're planning to go to New York in September. Yeah. Hopefully. So... Great. We've been saving for that. Yeah. And we love to camp. Like I think finding those...

[00:38:01] Finding those like slightly bigger hobbies that are maybe take a couple days instead of those big trips, I think are the big are the wins for us. Like we try to honestly probably go on two or three of those a year where we're either going to visit my mom in Vegas, but making sure to do a couple fun things around that trip. Or we're going to go to the mountain range a couple hours away, go camping for a long weekend or something like that. I think those for us are the things that we look forward to most because it's a chance for us to get away. We leave the stress behind.

[00:38:30] Honestly, we just go and enjoy the mountains. That's... We like to be outdoors a lot. Nice. I guess if you don't like to be outdoors, find that kind of little bit extra of a hobby that's not quite the big giant spending things, but something that you can put some effort into, like maybe a couple hundred bucks into that you can reward yourself with every couple months. That's I think how we like to try to balance it. That's a great tip. Yeah. I think a lot of the FI community are big campers. Yes. Big hikers.

[00:38:54] We went on a camping trip with some FI friends and it was so much fun watching everyone bring out their cool camping tools and their gear. Yeah, we're competing with like how frugal these... It was amazing. Yeah, it was really funny. How they were... Everyone had their system for cooking and everything was so unique and I learned... So, I've been camping my whole life. I love to camp, but I mean, these people really know what they're doing. It was impressive. It was impressive. It's fun. So... We're kind of rookies still in the camping. Yeah, we way over pack. We...

[00:39:24] Our whole car is full of stuff. We way over pack. It's one of my favorite things. I just imagine what 10 years of this journey with you guys is going to look like though. You know, you'll be such camping pros come another decade under your belts, right? Yeah. The van life is a thought we've had. Yeah. Yeah. There's potential there. While you're still dink wads. Dink wads. That's... Van life is the way to go. Consider it. Yeah. Our dog can tour the country with us. She'd love it. That's great. Well, I think I've got... I think one more question I was going to ask is,

[00:39:53] what is one maybe actionable tip that you've learned on your journey that you would want to share with an audience out there that's just getting started? Yeah. I think I'll go first. Give Rebecca a chance to think. Okay. I do this a little more often than her. I would say it sounds businessy. That's always how I present this one. But an agenda is super helpful for our money meetings. Like, that's where I write it down. And she's like, if I bring up a topic to her that's maybe going to be a little bit too much

[00:40:23] of a sudden conversation, she'll say, put it on our budget meeting agenda. Then she knows it's coming up. So it's going back to that same tip of have a regular money meeting. But have some place where you're writing things down. We even some... We write out our financial plan, which I know... If you meet with a financial planner, they're going to write down your financial plan. But even just having your ideas, your goals, those couple little things written down on a piece of paper commits you to them. Because we found that I was bombarding her with anxiety and ideas.

[00:40:51] And especially when crypto a couple years ago was really going, I was like, we need to do this with it. And I was... Every couple nights, it was a new idea. And she's like, didn't you just say this idea? Wouldn't that counter this one? And that's where we're like, we got to write this down. So we update that quarterly to stay on a cycle. But I cannot change things on there except quarterly. We have a little bit of a bigger meeting where it's... Those are like the investing ideas. Those are what's our asset allocation, things like that. Nice.

[00:41:19] Those bigger long-term things that if you touch too much, it's going to come crumbling down because you don't want to mess with that sort of stuff. Where I was bombarding her with ideas, she made me write it down. And I cannot change it except at those regular intervals where I can come and bring ideas to her. So writing things down is the biggest tip for us because it gets it out of here and somewhere where we can talk about it later. I love that tip. That is really smart. That's why we started writing on our whiteboard too.

[00:41:49] I can see that because I also have an ability to change my mind all the time and have buyers regret and go back and create a spiral. So I love that you've created this way of communicating that's going to work for you. Rebecca, I bet you love having that, that he can't change his mind for a cold quarter. It is nice. Sorry, not a quarterly meeting. Come back to me later. That happens probably every other time. Love it. Love it.

[00:42:18] Well, how about you on your side, being kind of the free spirit? What is one tip that you might help another couple with? I mean, I think it would just be making sure that you're open. It can be hard to have these conversations because it does require some vulnerability. But having opportunities and creating opportunities to just be open and be vulnerable, because I think that's how we've been able to come to understand where each other are coming from.

[00:42:45] Because I've had, I've shed many tears, Skylar less so, but... That's okay. That's okay. And that's okay. We can have those hard conversations. But because we've had those hard conversations, and we've been vulnerable, and we've been open, our communication has improved drastically. And instead of shutting down when things get hard, we've been able to work through those. And I think going back to my parents, I think that's why it's taken them as long as it has to get to where they are.

[00:43:12] Because when those hard money conversations would come up, they would shut down, go opposite directions, and not necessarily readdress it or try to understand each other. And I think they're finally getting to that point. But luckily, we've been able to get to that point sooner because we have been open and worked through those hard times and circled back when emotions have been calmed and settled. And we've been able to look at things. So just being open, being vulnerable, and knowing it's okay to have hard conversations

[00:43:41] because you can work through them. So... Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. Wow. I want to do the poetry snap. Well, thank you both so much. This has been such a great interview. I've really enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed meeting you, Rebecca, and connecting with you again, Skylar. I just really appreciate the time you guys coming on. Yeah. Can we maybe have you take a moment and let the audience know where they can find you? Yeah. My podcast and website is called Money Talk with Skylar Fleming.

[00:44:11] We keep it simple. I like to keep it to the basics to help people learn what they didn't know about in school or didn't get taught about in school and help them start those conversations. I love to offer on each episode, money talking points. And those are questions that people can take directly with their friends and start a money talk because that's really the way we get better with money is by having conversations like this. Because there's ideas that Rebecca and I got from this interview. I'm sure you guys got ideas from us. And none of that's possible if we don't talk about money. So everything online is just Money Talk with Skylar Fleming. And that's where you can find me.

[00:44:41] And you can find me on a handful of his episodes. Here and there, I come in as a guest. Quarterly. Quarterly. Exactly. We've thought about doing one of our budget meetings, recording it before, but those would be way too long. Oh, we would definitely attend that. Maybe too many years. Yeah. Can we come? We'll live stream one. We'll live stream it. Beautiful. Awesome. Well, thank you guys both so much. I really appreciate the time tonight. It was great to talk with you both. It's great to see how well you communicate.

[00:45:10] And obviously, this is a tough journey. And I think all couples have to go through this at some point to be able to make it out healthy on the other side. And you guys are doing a wonderful job. And thank you for sharing it with the audience. Yeah, thank you. It's good to meet you guys. This was fun. Yeah.