Mindy & Carl’s Spending Summary: March Money Madness Edition

Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast show number 292, Finance Friday edition, March Money recap edition.

Carl:
Wait, shouldn’t we call it, they’ve got that basketball tournament. I’m not a big sports fan, but what is that? March Madness. So, this should be March Money Madness, right?

Mindy:
Ooh, yes. Because, shocking nobody, we blew our budget again. Oh, wait spoiler. Anyway, welcome to the show.

Carl:
We have a good money relationship and a good relationship, but money-wise, we don’t really put restrictions on what each other can purchase. But just out of respect, if I want to buy something that I might think is a little bit ridiculous, if we’re sitting next to some fancy stereo equipment I bought. I’ll run it past you. And I know you’re probably not going to say no, but I still feel like it’s our money and I still need to let you know about it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We have combined finances.

Mindy:
You said the R word, it’s respect. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. Joining me today is Carl Jensen, also known as my husband also known as Mr. 1500 from 1500days.com, the comedic genius behind the dinosaurs and fart jokes on 1500 Days. And every once in a while, he’ll talk about Teslas. Oh wait, all the time he’ll talk about Teslas. Did you do anything fun last weekend, Carl?

Carl:
I did. I got a ticket, I call it the golden ticket to the big Tesla factory opening in Austin, which was… I still can’t believe I was able to go. It was so cool. We could just do a whole episode on that. Can we record for four hours? We probably have to be a two-parter at that point, because-

Mindy:
Don’t turn off the show, because we’re not actually going to do that. He went to the Cyber Rodeo. Yay. He’s got a video about it. Yay. I’ll link to it in the show notes, which can be found at biggerpockets.com/moneyshow 292. So, you can see his recap of the Cyber Rodeo. Shout out to JT for getting Carl into the rodeo. And thank you again for not having a ticket, so I didn’t have to go.

Carl:
JT, I love you in a Tesla way.

Mindy:
Okay. Before we jump into today’s show and tell you all about the money mistakes that we made this month, March Money mistakes, we could just do M’s the whole time. Mindy’s March Money mistakes. Before we jump into that, I want to share with you that BiggerPockets has a new podcast. And yes, it’s about real estate, because they all are, except this one, which is kind of about real estate anyway.
But we have a new podcast with Dave Meyer. You might remember Dave Meyer from the Deal of the Day show a few years ago. His new podcast is called On the Market and it is a perfect confluence of real estate information and spreadsheet nerdery, because Dave is a huge data nerd. He uses his big data analyst brain to dive deep into numbers and real estate trends to keep you up to date with this ever-changing market.
But it’s not just Dave. We have a whole panel joining him, Kathy Fettke, Jamil Damji, James Dainard, and the Henry Washington. So, the show is called On the Market. It released this past week. And you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay. Normally, on a Finance Friday, I am joined with Scott Trench, who helps me and together we give not advice, suggestions, research opportunities, learning opportunities for our guests. And we have to give a disclaimer. And I haven’t memorized that disclaimer yet, but the contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice and whatever else you should consult tax accountants and attorneys for your real advice. So, you have the disclaimer from all the other episodes and we’re not giving advice anyway, we’re just telling you all about our mistakes. So, should we jump into our mistakes?

Carl:
Scott Trench sounds like Scott Tesla, would he change his name? Would he consider that?

Mindy:
Scott Trench doesn’t sound anything like Scott Tesla. That was a horrible joke, but a very good substitute for Scott, because he also does very bad jokes,

Carl:
But Scott has joked around how… I don’t remember how the conversation was set up, but he was talking, we were talking about last names and he said, “My last name is a hole in the ground.” So, Scott Tesla sounds like futuristic and all that. I think it’d be a good publicity stunt for him and a good change.

Mindy:
Okay, Scott, let’s reach out to you and ask you if you will change your name to Scott. Well, is Elon Musk behind this or is he just going to change his name for no reason?

Carl:
Does Elon Musk want Scott to change his name?

Mindy:
Yeah. Is he going to give him anything for doing it or is it just Scott going to be, “My name is Scott Tesla from now on.”

Carl:
Yeah, no, I don’t think he’ll get anything out of it, but I’ll-

Mindy:
Oh, I think the chances of Scott changing his name have just plummeted to zero.

Carl:
Okay. Well, I’m sad, but it’s okay.

Mindy:
Hey, people are going to turn off this show. We need to get meat of our mistakes, Carl, where’d we go wrong.

Carl:
Well, first, I think we should say what the big number is, what we actually spent for the month. Do you remember what the approximate number is?

Mindy:
Like almost 10,000. It was like 9,900, 9,946 or something like that.

Carl:
Yeah, I think that’s right. So yeah, we almost spent 10,000. Even though I knew it ahead of time, that sounds a little bit [inaudible 00:05:25].

Mindy:
Yeah. I like the nine a whole lot better than I like the 10.

Carl:
Well, even that, it seems like too much. I’m frugal. God, for many years of my life, I made less than 9,000 the entire year. Now we spent more than that in one month.

Mindy:
In one month. But 60% of that 9,000 came from two categories.

Carl:
Yeah. And part of that was an experiment. So, first we bought a new couch.

Mindy:
You can’t see it, it’s upstairs, but it’s beautiful and it fits the space that we were looking for. And we haven’t bought a new couch, I think… What if, that’s like our third couch? Oh, the orange couch. That’s our fourth couch being married for 20 years. And we know people who get new couches a lot more frequently than that, maybe four is a lot. We only had the orange couch for a little time. That was really big though.

Carl:
Yeah. And that was only 200 bucks too.

Mindy:
That’s true. That was used. The other ones were new though.

Carl:
Yeah.

Mindy:
But we have been looking for a nice couch. We found a nice couch at Macy’s. Oh, that was a funny story. We were at Macy’s. Both of us have 800 plus credit scores and we go in and the woman at the couch department said, “If you apply for a credit card, you can get $100 off.” And we’re like, “Sure, we’ll save $100. Here’s my information.” And they said, “Sorry, Mindy, you don’t qualify for a Macy’s credit card.” And I was like, “For real, okay. Whatever.” And then, I have a job. He doesn’t have a job. I’m sorry. He’s retired, unemployed. And he said, “Okay, well I’ll try. And then he doesn’t get a credit card either.” So, thank you, Macy’s, we don’t get a credit card for your company. And I thought that was really weird that we didn’t get approved.

Carl:
Yeah. Do you remember what the reason was?

Mindy:
No.

Carl:
Oh, I do. It said, so the reason they wouldn’t give it to you was because they said they couldn’t verify some of the information and that might be because we moved. I don’t know.

Mindy:
We moved two years ago.

Carl:
Yeah. I don’t know, but IKEA-

Mindy:
I have open credit cards since then.

Carl:
IKEA denied us for the same reason. IKEA and Macy’s, I’m sure we love you. BiggerPockets would still love to have you as the show sponsor, but I just… And the reason they denied me was because they said I was associated with you. Can you believe that?

Mindy:
Wow. Look at you, casting aspersions upon my character.

Carl:
No, I just made that up. Of course. That’s not true. I got denied for the same reason. It said they could not verify some of our information, but yeah, we have solid credit.

Mindy:
That’s so strange.

Carl:
But thank you, Macy’s, the woman felt bad and gave us the discount anyway. So, I appreciate you. I don’t remember her name, but, couch employee, you are great. Thank you for 100 bucks off.

Mindy:
Anyway, the couch is perfect. It’s exactly what we wanted, but it caused our household spending to go over budget. And we had budgeted $2,000 for the household category, because we knew we were going to be getting the couch and the couch was like $1,800. And I don’t know what we spent extra money on.

Carl:
Toilet paper and toilet brushes probably.

Mindy:
Oh, shut up. Toilet brushes have their own category.

Carl:
Wait, I bought a bidet, I haven’t installed it yet.

Mindy:
Ooh, but you haven’t installed it.

Carl:
No, I’m going to get to it any day. I know you’re looking forward to taking it for a test drive.

Mindy:
Oh, ew, stop. This is my show. You can talk about that on your show. I forgot to say he has a podcast too. It’s called the Mile High FI Podcast.

Carl:
Maybe the bidet company will sponsor BiggerPockets Money, BiggerPockets bidets, Bigger Bidets.

Mindy:
Shush, edit that part out.

Carl:
No, this is good. That’s why I’m here.

Mindy:
Okay. The other category that we spent, that contributed to 60% of our spending was-

Carl:
Travel.

Mindy:
… travel. We went to Seattle for spring break, which is cold. But anyway, it was still beautiful. We went and visited some friends, who were getting ready to move here. And before they had bought a house here, we had already planned our visit there. And it was a lot of fun. And we have always vacationed frugally, buying breakfast and lunch at the grocery store and maybe doing a very inexpensive dinner or even cooking at home for the dinner. But this time we decided that we would be less frugal.

Carl:
Yeah. I remember, real quick, the last vacation we went on, we actually brought a cooking appliance with us. Remember this? We brought our air fryer with us and we felt kind of self-conscious carrying it through the lobby like, “Oh, what are they going to think? We have a cooking implement in the hotel.”
So, we stopped at Costco. We bought chicken nuggets or we bought wings and we cooked those to have with our pizza, just because that’s how we’re probably usually not that frugal. But most of the time we are. We’ll bring sandwiches or lunch meat, buy yogurt, stuff like that. We still go out to eat occasionally. But this time we decided to go nuts, we just let it rip. Our friends were nice enough to host us, so we took them out to a really nice dinner. And I think that was almost $200 after beer and appetizers and kids. There were a lot of us.
And then, we rented a Tesla, right? And that’s a luxurious thing. It came with free charging. But even with that, the savings on fuel, it would’ve been probably $100 cheaper to rent a fuel car. I rented that [inaudible 00:10:30] and car rentals are still expensive. So, it wasn’t the difference you might think it would be or that it normally would be, but it still was a luxury item.
And then we went to that fancy hotel in Friday Harbor and we went out to eat an awful lot. So, this was an experiment in spending money. We said, “Let’s do the opposite and see how it works when we just do whatever we want.” And how do you think it worked out?

Mindy:
I felt very relaxed on our trip. And I don’t know if cooking has always made me nervous or not relaxed, but I didn’t have to prepare in advance. I didn’t have to start cooking three hours before it was dinner time. I didn’t have to plan ahead or do anything like that. I could just be in the moment and then go out to dinner and we didn’t have to really plan anything. And that part was really, really nice.

Carl:
Yeah. I guess I didn’t think of it like that. We were in this beautiful place. So, by eating out, we were able to spend more time enjoying the place than preparing food. And you made a good point too. We had a little kitchen night in our place, but a lot of those aren’t equipped well.

Mindy:
Or at all.

Carl:
Yeah. So, that would’ve added to our pain and you can always get stuff like a frozen pizza, but that’s not so great. So yeah. Would you do it again? What are we going to do for our next trip?

Mindy:
What’s our next trip? We’re going to see your sister. So, we’ll be staying with family. So, that’s not really an issue. And then we’re going to Camp Mustache. So, that’s I think food is provided.

Carl:
Yeah. We’re Camp Mustache outside of Seattle. They provide food there.

Mindy:
And then we’re going to CampFI in CampFI: Rocky Mountain, and food is provided there too and it’s good food. What’s our next trip? Oh, we’re going to San Diego before BPCON, BiggerPockets conference is October two to four in San Diego. And we are going the week before to just hang out and relax before the conference. I don’t know what we’re going to do there. Maybe we will do kind of the same thing.

Carl:
Yeah. You forgot our big vacation though.

Mindy:
Oh, I forgot. We’re going to Europe and I don’t know anything about Europe.

Carl:
Yeah. You’re lucky, because I’ve done some research and I didn’t tell you this ahead of time, but I found a brewery there that has, it’s a German brewery. It’s in Germany. That was a stupid thing to say, but anyway, I like sauerkraut a lot and I found one place that has all these different types of sauerkraut and I don’t know if Mindy is as enthusiastic about sauerkraut as I am, but are you going to try some when in Rome?

Mindy:
I don’t want to try sauerkraut.

Carl:
It’s probably better there. I think you’ll like it.

Mindy:
I bet it’s amazing. I’ll let you have all of it. I don’t want to take it away from you.

Carl:
Oh, is it because of the sauer in the name? For a while, Mindy had a mental block where anything that had the name sauer in it-

Mindy:
For a while when I was little.

Carl:
You went through a something recently, you wouldn’t eat. And then I, sauer-

Mindy:
Sauerbraten, because it’s-

Carl:
Sour cream.

Mindy:
No.

Carl:
Then, I called it special cream.

Mindy:
Oh, shut up.

Carl:
Okay. We’re going off on a tangent.

Mindy:
Okay. Let’s talk about the wins that we had this month.

Carl:
Well, the thing I want to say about our budget is we spent almost 10 and we had six in, well, four of that was luxury spending, we didn’t have to take the vacation. And 2,000 was for a couch. If we would’ve been diligent, we could’ve got one on Facebook Marketplace or Boulder Craigslist, that probably would’ve been bedbug free and probably would’ve suited us. So, if we would’ve lived on our normal budget, it would’ve been like $4,000 for the month. And that includes our mortgage and everything else.

Mindy:
Yeah. I think that would’ve been about right. 4,000 or 4,500, depending on… We did, while we were on vacations, the restaurants out, we put those in the vacation spending instead of in restaurants out. If you want to follow along at biggerpockets.com/Mindysbudget, you can see exactly where my categories are being spent. And we did go over on restaurant food anyway. And we did go over on groceries, but only by a little bit. And I really do feel that 750 is our grocery number. And I’m going to try very hard this month of April to come in under 750 for the groceries.

Carl:
Yeah. Maybe we have to adjust a bit for inflation.

Mindy:
Maybe, but right now I want to see, I’m still going to keep that number at 750.

Carl:
Okay.

Mindy:
I did adjust some other numbers in our spending for April in our projected April spending, because we are planning a couple of big parties. We’re planning to go out to tap rooms more. It’s getting nicer where we live and we want to be out and about in the outside doors, in the outdoors.

Carl:
Yeah. The outside doors. Okay.

Mindy:
Shut up.

Carl:
But I think what this all comes down to is, save on what doesn’t matter, so you can spend on what really matters to you. Like I don’t really care about, I guess I do care about toilet paper. I was going to say that. You can’t get the cheap stuff here. Fingers will go right through through then.

Mindy:
Oh, stop.

Carl:
That’s bad. We have the bidet, so soon we won’t even need that. Yeah. We’re pretty frugal most of our life. We’re just unfrugal in these very specific areas.

Mindy:
Well, we’ve gone over budget every single month, and we’ve gone over by $1,000. It’s almost like we don’t like being told what to do and we’re going to spend $1,000 more. But it’s always been something weird that’s happened. April’s our month. April, we’re going to do it.

Carl:
We should have a frugal month. We’ll pick a month. That’s not May, because we have a vacation. June, we have a vacation.

Mindy:
June, we have a vacation. July, we have a vacation. August, we have a vacation.

Carl:
Okay. So, October, you heard it here first. October is super frugal Mindy month.

Mindy:
And super frugal Carl month. Let’s make sure you get it on that super frugality.

Carl:
So, yeah, six months from now or whatever that is.

Mindy:
But let’s look at some of our wins. Gasoline price-wise is going up, but we came in under budget.

Carl:
Yeah. We spent 50 bucks on a tank of fuel, which was kind of shocking.

Mindy:
I don’t even really look at the price. It is what it is.

Carl:
Well, you never pump the gas. So, that’s why you don’t [inaudible 00:16:57].

Mindy:
I pump the gas sometimes.

Carl:
Mindy has a superpower in that she can bring the car back in such a fashion that it’s my turn to drive next and it’s got about three miles before it’s on fumes. But the gas light’s been on for like 20 miles.

Mindy:
I really do hate pumping gas.

Carl:
The mileage thing is negative too. I’m just kidding. It doesn’t go to that. But if it had that, it would do that when you’re driving.

Mindy:
So, we came in under our gas budget. In fact, we came in under budget on most categories. There were just five categories that we came in over budget, which kind of stinks. And two of them were the big ones that made up 60% of the budget. So, like you said, this was discretionary spending. We could have stopped. We could have not gone on vacation. Should the markets have completely tanked, we could have canceled that vacation. We could have not bought the couch. We chose to spend the money. We know we have the money to cover the expenses. So it’s not like we’re going to be eating beans and rice for the next three months to pay for the couch or to pay for the vacation. And I think that’s an important distinction to make.

Carl:
Yeah.

Mindy:
Our utilities projection is going down next month, because it’s getting warmer where we’re at and we have solar panels.

Carl:
Yeah. So, the way our city does it… Well, first I’ll back up a second. What I did is, since our city pays the market rate for any excess production, I did the panels myself, it would not have made sense to pay someone to do them. They would’ve cost like four times as much. But luckily our city lets them do it myself. And from watching some YouTube videos, I was able to figure it out.
So, anyway, I put twice on as many as we need and what our city does is, with the excess production, they give you a credit towards all your other bills, except for the gas bill, which is a separate entity. So, it’s been sunny out. I mean, we’ve been producing way more than we’ve been using. So, from here on out, we should never have an electric, water or a sewer bill again. I think the only bill we’ll have from here on out is the gas bill. And that’s it. Which is pretty cool.

Mindy:
I think that is correct. And I do want to point out that even though we aren’t going to have utility bills going forward, except for the gas bill, which I think is going to be like $130 or $150 a month in the cold months. But again, I don’t know, because I don’t have the history and the billing was weird the first couple of months, because they charged me a deposit.
The repayment on the solar panels is still an extremely long period of time. And our solar panel project was DIY almost the entire thing. What did we have to hire out? The electrical panel? Johnny came over to help with the electrical panel upgrade and Todd came over, Todd’s going to be on the show in a future episode, Todd came over to help you do the installing of the panels and you went to his house and helped him put on the little cleats. And then, of course, Eric and Travis and who else was up putting the actual panels on?

Carl:
That was it.

Mindy:
Yeah. They came over to put the actual panels up on the thing, but that was more just friends helping friends. It wasn’t hiring that out.

Carl:
Yeah. The only other thing we paid for was you have to have a structural engineer certify your roof. And I think that was $200.

Mindy:
Oh, okay.

Carl:
So, yeah, that was it.

Mindy:
So, we were able to DIY it and even then, what is it out of pocket? Was 13,000 and then with the tax credit, it’s going to be 9,000?

Carl:
Yeah, slightly under 10,000 with the tax credit. So, I think the payback period is… And we’ve gone back and forth on this, it’s, well, I guess we’re not exactly sure what it’s going to be, but we spent $1,000 dollars on electric last year, so all that’s wiped out and then whatever we manage to put back into the grid.

Mindy:
Yeah. So, nine years of paying out is our payback period. And then, we will have the excess that we’re paying, that we’re putting back into the grid, so that we’ll cut down on the payback period a little bit. Or maybe a lot, depending on how much we can generate. Colorado does get a lot of sun. But, again, this was our cost. And what was the quote that you got to put the solar panels on?

Carl:
26,000 after the tax credit for a system that was 50% smaller.

Mindy:
Yeah. That’s shady all the way around. First of all, tell me what it’s my total out of pocket, don’t tell me what it is after the tax credit. And well, I guess, it’s not shady to quote half the size of what we put on, but I mean that’s twice as much as what it cost us for half the system.

Carl:
Yeah, it was a lot more. And don’t forget the entertainment value that the solar panels provide us with. I love to watch the meter go backwards. The sun comes out and the thing just starts going crazy. It’s awesome. Isn’t it?

Mindy:
I’ve mentioned the entertainment value that I have found. Did you hear me talk about it?

Carl:
Oh, we should put a link. Let’s put a link.

Mindy:
Oh my God.

Carl:
So, there’s a public website to our solar panels, that will be in the show notes too. Unless I get edited right now, which is a strong possibility.

Mindy:
No, I’ll put a link to the solar panels. You can follow along with Carl and watch the solar panel production. It’s thrilling.

Carl:
Will Scott change his last name to Solar Panel?

Mindy:
Probably not.

Carl:
No. Will you change your first name to Tesla?

Mindy:
Me? No.

Carl:
Yeah. Oh, it’d be kind of cool.

Mindy:
Maybe he’ll be Solar Panel Trench.

Carl:
Solar [inaudible 00:22:49].

Mindy:
You could be Solar Panel Jensen.

Carl:
Yeah. If you change your name, I could tell people I’ve got a Tesla, if I cared about those things.

Mindy:
Oh my goodness. Stop.

Carl:
And then they’d be like, “No, my mind went to a bad place. This is a PG podcast.” So, nevermind.

Mindy:
Stop. Okay. So, let’s get back on track, mister. Let’s talk about out the purpose of tracking our spending and the benefits that we’re finding in tracking our spending.

Carl:
Oh, and this is great because, JT, thank you again for the Cyber Rodeo, JT. JT was asking us about that again like, “Why do we do this? And why do we bother with spending our time doing it?” Do you think it’s been a valuable exercise so far?

Mindy:
I do, because it makes me conscious and here I have to choose my words carefully, so you don’t sound like an ogre, it makes me conscious of what I’m spending, because I know that I have to share it with you. I am logging every purchase that I make. So, if I don’t tell you about it, you’ll see it in the credit card reports anyway and ask me, “Oh, you didn’t put this in. What was this?” And it isn’t that I’m trying to hide things from you, because you don’t care. And it feels weird to say, “Oh, I have to tell you that I’m going to buy something.”
I don’t have to tell you that I’m going to buy something in that you’re like limiting my spending. I have to tell you, because we’re being open and honest with our spending. So, that makes me, at the point of sale, question, “Is this worth talking about?” And it isn’t like groceries. You’re not questioning me, “Why did you buy groceries today?” “Well, because we needed them.” It’s little weird things that you’re asking me about, “Why did you go to Taco Bell again this month?” “Oh well, because they have the nacho fries out now and they’re really good.”

Carl:
Yeah. I’ll give you a pass on that one.

Mindy:
But I could drive by Taco Bell 16 times and be like, “Ooh, nacho fries.” And you’re going to say, “You probably shouldn’t be buying nacho fries every day.” And you’re right. So, that helps me, am I making you sound terrible?

Carl:
No, I don’t think so at all.

Mindy:
Because I’m not trying to.

Carl:
Yeah, no. I think you’re saying you have to be accountable to the spreadsheet, which transitively, I don’t know what word, by and that makes you accountable to me too. It makes-

Mindy:
It wasn’t the same thing. Like if I see, “How did we spend so much money on this, this month?” And you will say, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. I bought a new watchingmabob for the car.” “Well, we didn’t talk about that. What is the watchingmabob for the car and why do you need it?” And you’ll explain it and, “Oh, okay. That’s great.” Or, “Hey, maybe we should talk about that kind of thing before you buy it, because we really didn’t need it.”

Carl:
Yeah. I think we have a good money relationship and a good relationship, but money-wise, we don’t really put restrictions on what each other can purchase, but just out of respect, if I want to buy something that I might think is a little bit ridiculous, if we’re sitting next to some fancy stereo equipment I bought, I’ll run it past you and I know you’re probably not going to say no, but I still feel like it’s our money and I still need to let you know about it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We have combined finances.

Mindy:
You said the R word, it’s respect. It isn’t that I am hoarding the money or lording it over you or not allowing you to spend just like you aren’t hoarding it or lording it over me or not allowing me to spend it. It is a mutual respect, because it’s our money.
“Hey, I’m going to spend our money on this item that isn’t necessary.” I don’t call you up to ask, “Oh, is it okay if I spend $150 on groceries?” I’m going to spend $150 on groceries and you know that that’s fine because we needed groceries or whatever. But it’s the little things that are the non-essentials that I feel a need to check in with you about, out of respect for us and our money, and our relationship. And we do have a good financial relationship, because we talk about it all the time.

Carl:
Yeah. Including right now.

Mindy:
Including right now. And our kids are like, “I don’t care.”

Carl:
We had a past acquaintance, who we knew they would volunteer that they would hide purchases from their spouse. And if you’re doing stuff like that, then there’s some kind of issue. Either the spouse is… There’s something toxic going on there and it might not even be that person’s problem. It might be the other person’s problem. But if you’re not completely honest about stuff like that. Yeah, that’s not good.

Mindy:
And why can’t you be? Look into yourself. Why do you feel like you can’t be honest with your partner about the money that is being spent?

Carl:
Yeah.

Mindy:
But that goes outside the scope of this episode.

Carl:
One last thing, I’m probably the bigger spender, just because most of my clothes are pretty crappy. I did buy this fine sweatshirt from Etsy and it didn’t show up at time. It was for a talk and it showed up the day after I left to give the talk. But yeah, you’ve encouraged me, “Hey, if you want an electric vehicle, go buy one. And that alone will be far more than your thrift shop spending for years.” But you’re okay with it.

Mindy:
I’m okay with it. If you would buy it, then you could maybe stop talking about it or maybe it would go the way of solar panels and you would talk about it all the time.

Carl:
Yeah. You better watch out what you ask for.

Mindy:
He has gone on record saying that when Tesla hits $1,500 per share and that’s now shares not if they split, right?

Carl:
Well, if they do a five for one split, then it’ll be split adjusted, that it would be $300 per share at that point.

Mindy:
Okay. Okay. When Tesla hits $1,500 a share, he will buy a Tesla.

Carl:
The backstory on this is, I got very lucky. I’m no stocks savant, I thought Elon Musk was cool. I thought the car was looking nice. So, in 2012, we bought a bunch of shares for like $5 each. Now, they’re like $1,000. So, pure luck. Don’t do as I say. How does that go?

Mindy:
Yeah. Do as I say, not as I do, invest in index funds.

Carl:
Yeah. Index funds are the way to go. I just got very lucky with that and yeah.

Mindy:
Contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice.

Carl:
So, does that mean Scott’s going to change his last name to Tesla?

Mindy:
Probably not.

Carl:
Scott Tesla.

Mindy:
Scott Tesla. I don’t see that happening.

Carl:
He could just have one word like Madonna, [Scottesla 00:29:36], it’s one flowing thing.

Mindy:
Yeah. I don’t see that happening either.

Carl:
I think it’d be awesome. Let’s get him on. Can we get him on right now?

Mindy:
He’s probably busy. He’s the CEO.

Carl:
Oh, okay. Of Tesla? No, that’s Elon Musk. I wish he was. Then he could hook me up.

Mindy:
Then he’d give you a car and then you could stop talking about it.

Carl:
Yeah. Okay. What are our goals for next month?

Mindy:
Come in under budget.

Carl:
I just want this April. So, I’ll be the big spending because you let me go to my fancy Cyber Rodeo. So, I’ll probably be the big spender for… Even though it was free. I took JT out for some nice experiences. So, thanks again, JT.

Mindy:
The grocery budget. I put 750 for next month and I am… For this month, I guess we’re in April now. I am hoping that I will come in way under. We spoke to Beth from Budget Bytes and the episode will release in a few weeks, that’s episode 299. She is fabulous. And the show’s a lot of fun. She suggested a pantry purge. So, I am doing a pantry purge and we are going to go and take stock of everything in the pantry.
I’m going to go to Beth’s website, budgetbytes.com, B-Y-T-E-S. And I’m going to use her ingredient index and search through the things that I have in my pantry and see what recipes she has to create from those ingredients, so I can start to purge some of the things that we have stocked up on, so that we can get rid of some of this stuff. Because why have it in your pantry if you’re not going to eat it, right?

Carl:
Yeah.

Mindy:
Look for a lot of chili next month or this month.

Carl:
Sounds good.

Mindy:
And continue to come in under budget on a lot of things. Gasoline, I think I did leave around 300. I actually don’t have it pulled up right now. I think I did leave it at around 300 just because prices have gone up so much. But I had been spending so much in gas because I was driving clients around, looking at houses and we are now under contract and I don’t have any clients right now that I’m driving to houses, to see houses. So, that probably will go down, but I will keep it a little bit higher just in case.
Our projected budget is $5,400 for this month and I’m hoping we can come in under that. One thing I want to note, again, maybe we’ll just call this the JT show, JT’s asking why do we bother tracking our spending? When we originally thought of or discovered financial independence and the 4% rule, we did our numbers and we thought we would be spending $36,000 a month. We rounded it up to 40,000, because that would be generous.
And then, we extrapolated that our retirement number should be $1 million dollars. You weren’t comfortable with that when we got to our fine number. So, you waited a little bit. The market has continued to increase and we are now past our retirement number, but we are also past our spending. And I think that if you don’t continue to track your spending in retirement, it can be easy to let it kind of go. “Oh, I want to go to this restaurant. I want to try this thing. I want to just buy this. It’s only a dollar.” And then all of a sudden, you’re spending a lot.
So, I just want to keep tracking it and I don’t have to track every penny, I’m trying right now. Because I opened my big mouth and told everybody that I would for a year. But in 2023, I might not track every penny. I am still going to track, because I want to make sure that I am on the same budget, because I have the ability to change my ways with enough notice. But I don’t want to get to the end and be like, “Oh I’ve got a dollar left and 30 more years of life.”

Carl:
That would be bad.

Mindy:
That would be bad. So, I just want to be conscious, be money conscious, conscious of your spending.

Carl:
Yeah. In the spending, we have this calculator, where you’re going to have an episode with Ray, where he’s going to show how to set that up and it doesn’t take any time at all. It puts it into a nice Excel, Google Sheets, and it creates a pivot table. So, it doesn’t take any time. If it took any time or became a pain, I would not want to do it.

Mindy:
Yeah, exactly. And this is easy. It’s on our phones. We take it with us when we go and it’s customizable.

Carl:
Yeah.

Mindy:
Okay. Do you have any last thoughts?

Carl:
I don’t think so… I mean, Mindy. Oh geez, I started calling you it already. Okay.

Mindy:
Shush. Okay. From episode 292 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Carl Jensen from the Mile High FI Podcast, from 1500days.com. What else do you do?

Carl:
I think that’s about it. I work on the house sometimes. I’m underemployed, not unemployed.

Mindy:
And from working on our house. And I am Mindy Jensen saying… What do we-

Carl:
I don’t know.

Mindy:
We need a cute one. Okay. Let’s go out the door, dinosaur. Nothing about Tesla.

Carl:
Okay. A saurus, Mindysaurus?

Mindy:
No, that doesn’t make any sense.

Carl:
Yeah, that was pretty bad. I just made that up. Spur of the moment.