The Get Ready Money Podcast

The Get Ready Money Podcast with Zach Whelchel: Intentional Budgeting

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Zach Whelchel, founder at MyBudgetCoach about changing the way we think about money and intentional budgeting.


In this episode we discussed:


  • Be intentional with your money (and your spending).
  • Why budgeting is the foundation of a sound financial plan. 
  • Allocate your money to your values.
  • Why budgeting is for everyone. 
  • Be aware of your decisions. 


Zach Whelchel is a software developer, entrepreneur, husband, and father to two young boys. He’s always been different when it comes to money. In elementary school his friends built their own economic system in the backyard called Nutopia. In college Zach made over $1,000 recycling beer cups at a music festival to fund his study abroad. As an entrepreneur Zach’s passion is to help others be intentional with their finances so they can build a life that aligns with their values. Recently, Zach founded MyBudgetCoach to help the world fall in love with budgeting.

Connect with Zach Whelchel:


LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-whelchel-50858744/


Connect with MyBudgetCoach:


Website: https://www.mybudgetcoach.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyBudgetCoachHQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MyBudgetCoachHQ



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The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.

Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Zach Welchel. Zach is the founder of my Budget Coach. In this episode, we'll be discussing Zach's insights on how we change the way we think about money and budgeting. Zach, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, excited to have you on and learn more about you and what you're up to. So you know. To start off with, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

Origin story, huh, okay, so let's see. I am, let's see, in my early 30s. I grew up in Kentucky, in a small town called Wilmore, kentucky I think. We have two stoplights and there's a small college in the town and when the college is in session, the town doubles in size. So I come from a very small town. My wife and I met at university. We got married. We had two children, so I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old boy and they're 14 months apart and it is quite the chaotic scene in our house right now. They're starting to play together well and you can see they love each other, but it's also just chaos and head-butting and stuff like that. So as far as work, let's see, most of my career has been entrepreneurial. So I've started companies, mostly in the software space I started. The two biggest ones probably were a B2B company and a B2C company. I ended up exiting the B2B company and I'm still a part-time owner of the B2C company. So most of my career has been entrepreneurial, wearing a bunch of hats. I really enjoy that.

Speaker 2:

I really enjoy taking something from an idea to a reality and lately, that's been with my budget coach and this budgeting space, well, awesome, well, that's a great story.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, are you still living in a small town? So yeah, funny, you ask, currently we are in a small town. Or so, yeah, funny, you ask, currently we are in a small town. We're right next to my wife's parents, which the kids have loved because they can run over to their grandparents, which is great. But we're kind of in the process of deciding where we're going next. So we lived in London, england, this past summer for three, for three months, yeah. So we I took a sabbatical from my, but we just went to London just to try it out, just to see what it's like to live abroad with children, and we really enjoyed it. We really enjoyed the big city life. But going back to England it was kind of hard for, like, visa reasons and stuff. So we're kind of in a holding pattern, trying to decide where we're going to live next.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome, that's awesome, that's awesome. Well, I'm sure everybody on the podcast doesn't want to hear too much about where we're living and stuff, but you know it does come up for people because it impacts. You know what we do and, like you said is, you know, do we live in a foreign country? You know there are issues because I know a lot of our listeners, you know, have questions about where they live and traveling and work requirements and all that. So it gets tricky.

Speaker 3:

So that's awesome. Visas are a whole concept, right? If you want to go somewhere and work, you either need a visa or, if you're an entrepreneur, you could do that, but you have to submit a business plan. In the UK, at least, you have to submit a business plan and get it approved. There's a whole thing there. So we actually had a church that was going to sponsor a visa, which was really helpful because we'd be volunteering at the church that we went to. But again we decided probably it's best to stay in the States for now.

Speaker 2:

Wow, so you know that's a reminder with. Anything that you want to do is that you can do it, but it takes some planning and strategy. So you know which leads us right into talking about budgeting. You know which is planning and strategy. What inspired you to create my budget coach?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so my wife and I started budgeting about four years ago. We were in a season where I was just exiting one of those companies that I mentioned earlier and we had our first kid on the way and we money was tight. And we had our first kid on the way and money was tight and we had our first house. We were looking at buying a second house and we found a zero-based budgeting app and we fell in love with it and this concept of giving every dollar a job, being really intentional with your money before you spend it, was just a game changer for us.

Speaker 3:

As working together as like a couple, it's awesome to get to sit down and say what are our priorities, you know, where do we want our money to go.

Speaker 3:

So we fell in love with budgeting. We were kind of that couple that had to tell all of our friends and family. We started teaching a class at our church, so we had, you know, younger couples, older couples, everybody in between, coming to our class and learning from us at church, which was super cool, and basically we got to the point where we realized that budgeting is awesome but there's a huge learning curve, like most people say. They want to start budgeting, get into it and then just either get discouraged or they fall off the bandwagon or they really need help. And so what we're doing with my budget coaches, we're building kind of an alternative to those budgeting apps that exist, and the difference is you're connected to a coach, to those budgeting apps that exist, and the difference is you're connected to a coach, a real life coach, from day one Turns out there are a lot of really great budget coaches out there. They just needed a place to be brought together, and so that's what we're trying to do here.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome. Well, to back up for a minute, let's talk about zero-based budgeting. What is zero-based budgeting?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there are a couple of different forms of budgeting. Like when somebody says like, yeah, I want to budget or I keep a budget. The first one that I think a lot of people think of is just what's called expense tracking. So you'll say like, yeah, I want to spend $600 on groceries this month or whatever. And then you track your expenses and if it's above 600, you're like, ah, shoot, I went over. And if it's below 600, you're like, yeah, I did good. And that's one form of budgeting. But it's not really a holistic view of your money, because if you go over, there's a consequence to that right when does that money come from? You spent more than you planned and if you go under, what are you gonna do with that extra money? So zero-based budgeting is great because it keeps track single dollar that you own, and the reason it's called zero is you want to get to the point where you have zero dollars that aren't planned currently.

Speaker 3:

So the analogy I usually use is imagine you go to your bank account, you grab all of your dollars, you bring them home, you dump them on the kitchen table and you say, okay, this is all the money we have currently sitting here on this kitchen table. How are we going to spend it? So you get envelopes, you start divvying up the money into different envelopes and at that point you have a plan for all of your money. None of the money is on the kitchen table, it's on an envelope. It all has a purpose. If you want to change that purpose, you can. But you get to make a real trade-off decision, right. If you're running out of money for eating out and you can take money from it if you want to. But that's a real trade-off decision you get to make, right.

Speaker 3:

You get to say yeah, eating out is more important to us than extra clothes this month, whereas people who don't budget, they just look at their bank account balance. They're like, well, I guess I have a couple of hundred dollars, I guess I can eat out more. But they don't realize what they're actually taking from themselves in the future. And that's why I love zero-based budgeting is because it helps you realize those implications of what you choose to do with your money.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, you know, and I think that makes sense for people. Is you know? And it gets back to what you were talking a little bit earlier about budgeting it's a little bit like dieting, is you know? People don't really move forward because it's like it's a lot to take in. It's a lot to take in, I think, with a clear definition, like you're talking about, with zero-based budgeting. That's something people can understand. Is you know? You only have so many resources and if you pull from here, I mean, if you want to do this, you have to pull from there, but people don't. It's too abstract sometimes, yeah, so it's hard to make.

Speaker 3:

The truth is, we make decisions with our money all the time. We just might not be aware of it. Right, by choosing to spend your money here on that thing you see on Amazon, do you know what you've given up and choosing to do that? If you have a plan for your money beforehand, then you know what you're giving up and it might be worth it and it might not be. If you don't have a plan, you're just kind of hoping everything works out, right.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, definitely, yeah, you of hoping everything works out right, definitely, definitely, yeah, you need a plan and we're going through that. Uh, you know, I have a son who's in his late teens and we're going through some of those spending choices, so, yep, and not spending money you don't have yeah, teens, I mean those are the years to learn.

Speaker 3:

For sure, we've started teaching our three-year-old how to budget. Every time we go to Walmart he gets $2. You can either save those $2 and add them up or you can spend them. The highest he's gotten is to a $10 Lightning McQueen purchase. He saved up five times to get to $10. We're hoping to build in some of those delayed gratification and those things early. Of course it's hard with a three-year-old and I'm sure it's hard with a teenager as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, it's just bigger numbers, you know. Yeah, for sure, although with the low one. That's admirable with their attention span and their time frame. You know, because it's like you tell them you're going to do something this weekend. They're like this weekend. Is it here yet? Is it Saturday? Is today Saturday?

Speaker 3:

Might as well be forever in the future. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2:

So you know one of the things that you you know my budget coach is different and it's in the name. Is what?

Speaker 3:

is a budget coach and how does a budget coach help? Yeah, so when you think about I mean coaching in general, there are all sorts of facets of our lives where we say, you know, I need a coach. Right, with exercise, coaches are popular because exercise itself isn't that hard to know what to do. Right, like you just get out and run or do strength training. But the truth is like we need motivation, we need guidance, we need somebody to help us along the way, and so we think that that concept should be popular in cash flow as well, in budgeting and what you do with your money.

Speaker 3:

And in the money space, you've got financial advisors and financial planners and people that help you with investments and retirement, all those things. But we think that there should be a category for financial coaches in the budgeting space, because the budget is such a foundational thing. If you don't control your cash flow, how will you ever be able to have the money to invest or have the money to save or any of those things? So we think learning to live by a budget is so important that it's something you really need to master, and so we want to help coaches help you do that.

Speaker 2:

Essentially, Well, I love that and I love that budgeting is the foundation of a financial plan, because if you don't know your resources and you're not allocating your resources properly, you know, like you mentioned, you're not going to be able to meet your goals. You know that all those other things are great, but people oftentimes, you know, get too caught up in, like you know, their investment allocation for the 401k and, while that's super important, you got to make sure you have money going into your 401k in the first place.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, and there's all sorts of reasons why different people need to budget, and it's not just people who are making a small amount of money or people that don't have a plan. We actually have a money quiz on our website. You can go and take and it'll break down your personality and you know, by each of these personalities there's a reason why you want to budget. If somebody's super meticulous and wants to really get ahead or reach fire or whatever, you still want to budget because you want to eke out every bit of value you can. So, yeah, there's all sorts of reasons why different personalities should budget, but, like you said, it's the foundation. If you don't do that, how are you going to move to the next level?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's such an important point. So you know, one of the things that you talk about is letting your budget work for you. So why should somebody let their budget work for you, and how do they get their budget to work for?

Speaker 3:

them don't tell you what you should do with your money. Our coaches don't tell you what you should do with your money. All we're here to do is to help you do with your money what you would want to do. We want to hear what your priorities are, hear what your values are. Build those into your budget so that you can spend according to your values.

Speaker 3:

And I think a lot of us, if we look back at the month statement that's passed, we didn't spend according to our values, right? We look and say, wow, I spent that much on this. I really that's not that important to me, like I really wish I could have spent it on this instead. And so when you build out a budget and you make a plan and you put all of your money into digital envelopes so that we call them, so that you have $0 in discretionary funds or zero slush fund, you have a plan right. And so at that point, the budget is working for you because it's helping you know how much you can afford in any given category and, like I mentioned earlier, like if you want to make changes, you can totally make changes on the fly, but you get to know what those real changes are, and that's that's really helpful.

Speaker 2:

That's cool. Well, you said something I love there is about values, and I think that's important. But you know, I do want to come back, because this is a question I have and I'm sure other people have is why shouldn't you have a slush fund?

Speaker 3:

Okay, so you can. If you want to right, you can make a line item in your budget called stuff I forgot about, or slush fund or whatever, and it's really up to you as an individual to decide how you want to spend your money. If you want a portion of your money to be something that's not tied to anything, you can choose to do that. But the cool thing about a budget is you can choose how much is there each month, right? Certainly, it probably wouldn't be wise to have all of our money be a slush fund that doesn't have a plan, but certainly it might be good for you to have a percentage of it, and with a budget, you can at least control that.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome and that's a great idea. You, Well, that's awesome and that's a great idea is, you know, if you do want some sort of un-earmarked cash? I didn't say that very well, but I think that's important is that, like you point out, is that you put that aside, and I know a lot of financial planners do that with their clients. Investment portfolios will say you know, we'll manage 95% of it. 5%, you can invest wherever you want.

Speaker 3:

Yeah just scratch that itch right Because you want to make sure that you can invest wherever you want. Yeah, just scratch that itch right Because you want to make sure that you can be out there playing the game as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I get that Exactly. I love that, and this way people are doing it intentionally. Which is the next question is why should people live intentionally and practice intentionality with their money?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean living intentionally to me is it's just one of those like core values of life. It's like one of those morals that you should, you should strive for right. We either live in a way where things kind of happen to us and we're just reactionary, or we live in a way where we go out and try to, you know, be better, try to try to make the world a little better and make our lives a little better, you know, strengthen our position to help our families and our communities and all those things. So I think being intentional is just, you know, a good virtue to have in general and with money. You know we have tools that help us do that right With like spreadsheets and budgets and all those things right. They help us be intentional. With other things, like being intentional with your time or your effort. Those are a little harder to measure, but with money it's super clear to measure because it's numbers and you can, you can track those numbers and plan for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, that's awesome and that's what you said at the very beginning. Coming back to that is, being intentional with your spending, is you know, thinking about the choices that you're making, because choices do have ramifications. I may not be buying, you know, a candy bar, but you know if you're buying a candy bar every day. Or you know, like they talked about Starbucks, buying coffee, you know that's not necessarily a bad choice, but you just have to be aware that you are making that choice.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah. And again, like, we're not here to say what you should or shouldn't value, right, some people should value a coffee every day. Some people probably shouldn't value that, right? Like, it's up to you, like what you value and what you value more, right, we live in a society that there's so many things and the cost is somewhat affordable on many of these things you can enjoy, right. So, like, you probably can choose to choose what it is you want to value.

Speaker 3:

You just can't take all of those things right. What it is you want to value, you just can't take all of those things right. And so making those decisions ahead of time lets you enjoy where you want to and it also lets you spend guilt-free because you know you've set that money aside for that right. A lot of people probably buy a coffee every day and they feel bad about it. They're like, ah, I know this isn't smart, but if you've set aside the money for that and you know that you've also set aside the money for everything else you need, you can spend on those things that you enjoy guilt-free because you know that you've planned for it.

Speaker 2:

Exactly and, like you said is, you know, getting back to the zero-based budgeting is, if you're putting money in your coffee envelope, that's fine. Put money in your coffee envelope, enjoy your daily coffee, not, you know? That goes against what some popular money gurus say, but I think this is more real and it's something that people can live with. So it's awesome advice. So, you know, let's jump into the get ready questions. Uh, the first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?

Speaker 3:

oh goodness, what basic money concepts. Um, I feel like I'm always trying to tell my friends and family about just delayed gratification in general. Right, money is a long game that you have to play over the course of your life, and all of those tiny decisions that you make along the way build up over time. Right, like you know your budget, you can only save a couple hundred dollars a month when you're younger or just getting started and it feels like what is that even going to do? But those things just stack up over time. I mean me and my wife in our personal story.

Speaker 3:

You know we made a lot of sacrifices early on, saved money as much as we could, and it put us in positions where we were able to purchase real estate when, you know, interest rates were super low, and so what we've done is, when we move out of a house to a bigger house, we keep the previous house.

Speaker 3:

We've done that twice now, so we have two properties that we lived in and then we've kept, and so we always buy houses that are smaller than we can afford. We always save as much as we can, and now, because of that, things just stack and grow over time. We're in a position now where I was able to quit my full-time consulting job in order to build this company, because we have rental income from these properties, right. So you know, it's obviously not as much as working as a software developer, but it's enough to keep us kind of going in a float and getting to work on things that we feel like are helpful in the world. So I would say just that concept of delayed gratification, having a plan, and just the little wins build up over time, and so it's really worth it to start to start that journey.

Speaker 2:

I love that little wins build up over time and I think people you know underestimate that is that all these little decisions can help you over the long term. You know things that you're thinking about, so that's that's awesome for people to know. So, zach, what is one simple thing people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success?

Speaker 3:

Hmm, each year let's think, well, I mean, my obvious answer would just be budgeting right. Because if you budget something at the end of the, we do at the end of the month, as we call it, like sweeping our money right. So you get to the end of the month and in a zero based budget, when you have underspent in categories, you get to choose where that money goes right. And so at the end of the month it's super fun. My wife and I sit down, we look at the budget. You know all the transactions are in. We say you know we save 30 bucks, here, we save 100 bucks, there we save 40. Where's that going Right?

Speaker 3:

And towards the bottom of our budget we usually keep our fun things or our savings or investments and we get to make the decision together like let's take that 140. And let's put it on. We just bought like a blow up kayak because my wife really likes going out in the lake and standing up and doing the thing and my children try to. You know, hang on and go with her and it's, it's pretty fun. But you know we just bought one of those because we were able to sweep money down. So that's something we do at the end of every month, but it's also a concept you can do at the end of the year, right, when you've been intentional throughout the year. I mean something like cutting a single subscription cost by the end of the year. That's hundreds of dollars, right, and being able to sweep that to something that you want or enjoy can be really powerful.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's awesome, you know. I want to dive a little bit deeper on one of the things you said, so people can be clear on this. As you know, you talked about savings and investing. That's also one of the budget items that you set up right, or that you recommend people set up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So as far as like what budget items that you set up right or that you recommend people set up, yeah, so, as far as like what budget items we recommend people set up, like every user is different, every coach is different, like we as a platform exist for coaches to come and bring kind of their ideas. But, yeah, most of our coaches would say like, yeah, you should be saving, you should be investing, but first let's get a hold of your cashflow. First, right, let's pay off all your debt, let's make sure we're not going into more debt. And then, once you have positive cash flow, yeah, let's put it into, I mean, at least right now. Like I mean, all these savings accounts are getting like 5% with the interest rates, what they are right. So that's, that's a pretty obvious win. And then, beyond that, you know investing in the market and such. I should say that as budget coaches, you know we aren't credentialed to give, like, financial investing or insurance advice. But in more of a general sense, yes, that is a good thing that you should do eventually.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and one of the things you talked about again that you know it's sort of priorities and I think that's important as well. As you know, pay off debt, pay off, you know, do the things that you need to do according to a plan, and I think that's important for people to take away. You know when you're talking about these things, so you know. Next question is what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?

Speaker 3:

Hmm, I was just answering a question online about this earlier today. I mean, my obvious answer would be to start budgeting, but I feel like I keep harping on that one, so we're going to change something different here, that's all right.

Speaker 3:

So I'm going to say, whenever you make a purchase, just be really smart about shopping that purchase around or looking for discounts or buying it secondhand off of Facebook or eBay or something Facebook marketplace or something like that. We are, my wife and I are constantly doing this game and we are constantly saving money. I have a friend who lived in Asia for a period and when he came back I remember he told me that you know, america is a bartering system too, just like you know Asia and these other places in the world. It's just a little bit of a fancier barter system. You just have to use the language of like customer service and whatever.

Speaker 3:

But, for example, this past month we I signed up for a service that gives me like aligners, because I haven't worn my retainers in years and my teeth need to be aligned a little bit, and so like Invisalign is the standard, but it was going to cost about $6,000. I found an alternative that I liked that was going to be about $2,000. I found a promo code that saved me a hundred, and then, when it came time to actually purchase, I was chatting back and forth with support and just kind of got them down to like $350 off Right. So, like in the process of that, we went from like 6,000, potentially to like 1700. Potentially that's just because we put in the effort. We put in a little bit of effort, shopped around, we asked customer service and if you make a habit of that over time it's huge the dividends that pay off.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I completely agree is I've written countless articles on life insurance and that's you know. One of the standard things that I always tell people is you know you have to check with multiple insurance companies. You know they don't all price the same and, like you said is one of the things you were talking about, it's discounts. You know, especially like auto insurance, homeowners insurance, you know there's a lot of discounts, but sometimes you have to poke around a little bit and be aware of the discounts. You know and I think that's the other thing that you were talking about is do a little homework, be an educated consumer, like you know. Other people would have gone just straight with uh, was it visalign?

Speaker 3:

I can't remember the name and I'm not going to make any judgment.

Speaker 1:

Calls right like it might be worth the money.

Speaker 3:

But for us, we decided to do that. But yeah, um, and also, the other thing is like, when you're budgeting, you have all that extra motivation. Right, because we had a line item for like this, this concept. We originally had put about six thousand in there and we got to see that if we chose something else, all that extra money gets to be swept somewhere else, right? So, like because we're keeping track of all our dollars and we have a plan for all of our dollars, when you have a win, that win gets to go somewhere else, and that is super motivating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's awesome and you know to back up to something you said is, choosing Invisalign is not a bad choice either. It depends if it's the right choice for you. So I think, that's an important takeaway, and that's all that you're saying, if I understand it correctly, is that it just wasn't the right choice and you were able to save money there, so you were able to have money somewhere else, you know, so it's a trade-off, so that's awesome advice. So, zach, what money myth are you trying to break?

Speaker 3:

Ooh, okay, a popular money myth that we try to break is a lot of people think that budgeting is just for people that don't make a lot of money. Right, you know, if they're struggling paycheck to paycheck. But there's a myth right there, like the concept of living paycheck to paycheck is everyone not everyone, but a ton of people. Right, you can make a ton of money, and I have friends that make lots of money and I know people that make tons of money and they're still living paycheck to paycheck. Right, they're still reliant on that next paycheck to cover everything, and if they were to miss one, they'd be in trouble, right? And so, you know, it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much money you keep over the long run in order to build wealth and kind of have that buffer.

Speaker 3:

And you know, wealth to me means the ability to craft the life that we want, right? Or the life that we think is meaningful or valuable. So, like I shared, you know, my wife and I have invested in real estate. We have a little bit of buffer there, and we've chosen to use that buffer not to get rich, not to, you know, be super wealthy and live a fancy lifestyle, but to start a company like this that we believe in and we think can help other people as well. So putting yourself in a position of strength can be great for you know, helping those around you as well.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and I you know just what you're saying. It's with the lifestyle creep. I've seen that so often. You know, somebody starts making more money and it's like, oh well, we can get the new car now and you know, or we can move in until you're quite ready to do that. And again that gets back to what you've been talking about. Is making a plan. Is you know? You know whether you call it a budget or not, you know? You know, do you have enough money to afford it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and if you make more money and the car is like your thing and it's like you want it so much, like, yeah, it might be a good, a good way to spend your money, but like when you keep, when you have a plan and you get to see the implications of that, do I want that car more than I want this? Right, and and that's that's all we're asking is that people would really allocate their money towards what their values are. If your value is a car, go for it. If your value is something else, do that instead.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you mentioned values again, and I think that's so important to allocate your money to your values. That's so important is to think about what's important to you, and it gets back to the intentionality that we've been talking about. So, zach, let's get out the time machine for a minute. What advice would you give your younger self if he could go back in time, knowing what you know now about money?

Speaker 3:

Wow, Okay, yeah, I'm getting old enough. So I'm getting to the point where I'm like, huh, there's probably some things I could have done better. Right, there's a way I could have done that better. The point where I'm like, huh, there's probably some things I could have done better right, there's a way I could have done that better. I'd say that the order in which I tackled things in life was probably not the optimal order.

Speaker 3:

So I came right out of college and started doing entrepreneurial things, building companies. And when you're building companies right out of college, you know we had a 3000 square foot office. We had, you know, staff on that. We were paying salaries. You know these people had families and kids and it was a lot of pressure and we didn't have any sort of cushion to make sure we'd be fine. So there were periods of my life where, you know, my wife and I were covering the payroll of others at our company and we weren't being paid for six, nine months at a time, right? So I think after that, after I exited those kind of hard years, I went and got a corporate job and I made really good money for a while and then I left that.

Speaker 3:

So I think maybe reversing those would have been good, right, coming out of college doing a job that you know you can make good money in and then using that money to do the entrepreneurial things probably would have been less stressful and more healthy all around and more healthy all around, but again, I mean who's to say?

Speaker 3:

Because I learned a ton of lessons and it kind of shaped my character and who I am and put me in a position where I can start this company at this point. So I think one of the phrases there's a song by Ben Rector that my wife and I like and he says something about like enjoying the fruit that is in season, and I feel like we've been trying to live by that recently, this idea that there's a season for this and there's a season for that. Right now, our season is two kids that drive us crazy and we love dearly, right, but eating the fruit in season means just enjoying them in this stage, and if that means we have less time to do X, y and Z, well, this just isn't the season for that. So, yeah, it's hard to say what I would change going back, but maybe the order of things. So that would have been a little less stressful when creating companies.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's cool, and I think one of the things you said in there, too, is important is to think about the cushion that you have when you make these decisions. Is you know that everything's okay, but sometimes it's nice having a little bit of a cushion or something to fall back on, which some people might call an emergency fund or a liquidity fund or a rainy day fund. Whatever words you choose is you know, give yourself a little cushion, one piece of thing not to do with money, but, yeah, enjoy your little ones while they're little. It's a special age. The energy is draining sometimes. Yes, yes, it's.

Speaker 3:

It's an awesome time because you're just learning and so much fun and everything yeah, and I mean you probably gathered from me so far, but my, my personality has always delayed gratification. Right, I want to delay gratification, I want to save for for a better future, like that's just kind of been ingrained in me for whatever reason since I was a kid and I've always struggled to live in the now right, so like focus on the now and allocate time and energy and money to the now. Having children solves that, because these kids are only this young for this long right, and so every day I know that, I feel that and it helps me reorient myself not just towards the future future but towards the now. So that's been really helpful for sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, when I think that sound advice to you is to you know, think about the future but also to consider the present. Because I do know some people who've gone like extreme fire and for people I think everybody watching and listening knows, but just to remind them, fire is financial independence, retire early, and extreme fire is where you're like putting everything aside and at the end of 10 years they're mostly miserable. I don't think I've talked to many people who've done extreme fire and said you know, like hey, that was a great experience. I mean, what have you heard on that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean I think for some people their path could or should be that, and for some people it shouldn't. I mean it's an attractive idea, right, you work really hard, especially for someone like me who's like delayed gratification, it's this very tempting idea of like, well, let's just, let's slave away, let's get to the point where we never have to think about it again. One of the things I think, though, is I think people enjoy contributing, they enjoy working in a meaningful way at some point. So, like I don't think I ever really want to get to the point where I'm just not contributing or not working, or I'm not, you know, giving in some way, and so the retiring early isn't super valuable to me, but the financial independence I mean the idea that I could continue to start work on this company without, you know, kind of fear of it having to meet certain benchmarks or anything like that's it's very attractive.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, the fire, I'd say for some people it makes sense, for some people it doesn't. And learning to balance the future and the present that's just a thing that we have to do as humans, right. All the time, we have to make decisions between the future and the present. So I enjoy keeping a budget. It helps me do that, it helps me feel a little bit calmer about that, and so that's kind of where I am.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, so you know. Wrap up, zach. What is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, it would just be to have a plan for your money before you spend it. So many people spend and then they deal with the consequences of that and I just don't think that's a way to be intentional or to get ahead or to, you know, build wealth over time for you and your family and your community. So I would say to have a plan for your money and then spend it according to that plan, and your plan doesn't have to be rigid. I know a lot of people think of budgeting and they think, well, I made a spreadsheet and I typed in some numbers and they were way over optimistic and then I blew through them and then I gave up because I was frustrated, right, Like I don't think that's what budgeting is.

Speaker 3:

I think budgeting is a living document that is really flexible, that you can change at any given time, but it allows you to keep track of what you're spending, how you're spending, according to your goals, and to make adjustments in real time, and that's kind of you know what our service is? We have coaches that help you learn how to do that, learn how to do that and give you the tool to do that as well. So that's, that's kind of. My main advice to people is just you know, have a plan, be intentional, decide where you want your money to go before you spend it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's awesome advice and you were talking about that earlier as a flexibility If you can draw from one envelope to fund another one, if you need to. Just need to think about the overall picture. So that's awesome advice. So, zach, where can people learn more about you, where can they connect with you and where can they check out my budget? Coach?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so if you're interested in connecting with me, I'm on X or Instagram, my handle is just Zach Welchel, and if you're interested in learning about our company, the website is my budget coachcom. We're on all the socials with at mybudgetcoach HQ at the end, so just put an HQ at the end. We have lots of content on our socials. We're always promoting different coaches or sharing funny memes, or we have a lot of great blog articles that we write are helpful in this area, so I'd encourage you to follow us. Check out the website. There's a free trial. Just give it a try. On the website. There's a free trial.

Speaker 2:

Just give it a try Start a budget and try to live according to a plan. Awesome, awesome, well, thanks for sharing and for everybody watching and listening. As always, there will be links to Zach's social media profiles, as well as the profiles for my budget coach and to the website in the show notes. So, zach, thanks again for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was a fun conversation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this was great and I hope everybody got something out of it and, as always, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something that changed the way you think about money today, please subscribe and be sure to tell a friend. Until next time let's change the way we think about money today, please subscribe and be sure to tell a friend. Until next time let's change the way we think about money. Bye.

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