Budget Breakdown: Episode 3 - Guest D.M.

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D.M.'s Budget

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Zach Whelchel (00:00)
All right. Welcome everyone to the budget breakdown podcast. This is the podcast where we get to know our guests. Not by them introducing themselves, but we get to know them instead through their financial priorities. So we look at their numbers, we look at their budget, and we get a sense for who they are based on those numbers. So I'm your host, Zach Welchel, founder of My Budget Coach, and our guest today, guest, I won't let you introduce yourself, but you can say hi if you want to, so I'll let you say hi.

Darío Martínez (00:27)
Hello, I'm glad to be here.

Zach Whelchel (00:30)
Okay, cool. So that's all we, that's all our listeners can get for now. but we'll go ahead and dive right into your budget and we'll get to learn about you and maybe try along the way to kind of figure out who you are or maybe where you live or what you do or any of those things. let's go ahead and look at the budget. So I've got your numbers pulled up here in front of you, in front of us. And the first category here you have is credit card payments. And it looks like you have

five different credit cards. One is for quick, one is for APAP and one is for ScotiA. So do you mind diving in and sharing a little bit about like what these credit cards are, why you chose these?

Darío Martínez (01:08)
Yeah, well, there are actually only three cards. The thing is that I don't live in the US. And in the place I live, we have a way to have transactions in dollars and in our local currency. So you see that I have two APAP cards and two Scotiab cards. But they are just the same car with different balances.

Zach Whelchel (01:36)
Okay, awesome. yeah, I was just gonna say right off.

Darío Martínez (01:39)
Why I chose that? Well, I just chose them because their benefits are the APMP card give me a lot of cash back for common purchases like supermarket like Online purchases and the Scotiabank cards give me a lot of Airplane air travel miles, so

The quick one, the first on the top is just my everyday for small purchases. I don't use that that intensively.

Zach Whelchel (02:15)
Okay, cool. Well, a couple of interesting things here right off of that. you know, so far our guests on this show have all lived in the United States. English has been their primary language, but this is awesome that we're getting to interview somebody who sounds like you live outside of the US and most of this budget is in Spanish. So I'm assuming that Spanish is your primary language.

Darío Martínez (02:35)
Yes it is. So if I sound funny, forgive me.

Zach Whelchel (02:41)
No worries, appreciate you speaking English instead of making me learn Spanish. So I appreciate that. And also forgive me because we're going to be looking at your budget categories in Spanish and I'm going to be doing my best to guess what they are. Now I will say I'm grateful that you have emojis by each of these categories because that gives me a little bit of something to go based on. So let's jump into your next category group here, which is, let's see, it's...

Darío Martínez (03:01)
Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (03:09)
I don't know if I'm saying that right, but can you tell me what these...

Darío Martínez (03:12)
Yeah, those are two loans that I actually have. They are small loans. One is from my mother. And that's the second one, the one that reads Mamimba. That's my mother's nickname. So I owe her some money. And I can tell you that it's harder to owe your mom some money than to the bank.

Zach Whelchel (03:39)
Is that is it harder on your side or harder on her side like is she more strict or do you just feel okay?

Darío Martínez (03:44)
Both. No, no, she's too cool with me, but I feel a lot of pressure on... Wow, I had to use this money and she helped me, so I need to pay back her on time.

Zach Whelchel (04:01)
Yeah, for sure. Well, that's cool that she was able to do that and obviously loves her son enough to help out. So that's cool.

Alright, let's dive into the next group. This is where we get kind of into the meat of your budget. It looks like there's a lot of categories here. So I'm assuming these are, are these like flexible categories or these fixed categories? What is this kind of category group that we're looking at here?

Darío Martínez (04:23)
Well, this is my fixed monthly categories. So this will be things that come every month with roughly the same amount and roughly the same date every month.

Zach Whelchel (04:40)
Okay cool, so this first one we've got like an angry face emoji, so I'm assuming this is something you don't like. I'm gonna guess like taxes. I don't know, what else would you be angry about? Is it really taxes? That's great. Okay, so do you pay taxes monthly then?

Darío Martínez (04:47)
Yes.

Texas. Yeah, it is. It is.

No, the thing is that different from the states, when we work, I have a normal job, when we work, our employer takes the taxes portion from our income from our paycheck. So that way I can keep track of how I'm doing my taxes. I mean, my employer pays my taxes for me.

but I want to still have a record of how much I'm paying for my work. So I keep that in. And also we have a lot of other minor taxes that I also put in that category.

Zach Whelchel (05:46)
Okay, this is really interesting because I've often thought about this because I love using my budget. I love using the report to see how I spend money throughout the year. But the problem is when your employer takes out things before it hits your budget, because when you get the money, it's already paid for stuff that gets lost in your report, right? You don't really know how much you pay towards taxes because it's been pulled out, but it looks like you're doing that somehow. So I'm curious when they do a direct deposit to your bank, do you inflate that number to make it higher than it is so that you can divert some of it to taxes?

Darío Martínez (06:15)
Exactly. mean, we also receive a receipt with the items that were taken out from our paycheck. So I have my gross income and then the deductions. So I know how much income tax, how much of my pension, what will be my 401k.

Zach Whelchel (06:31)
Yeah, okay.

Darío Martínez (06:43)
We don't have that here, but we have something similar in a way. So our medical insurance and pension and our taxes all are deducted from our paycheck every month or every quarter, every paycheck.

Zach Whelchel (07:04)
Okay, yeah, this is awesome. You're the first person I've ever seen that's actually put in the work to do this so that they can keep track of those things in the budget. So I love how you've got that set up. let's look at a couple of these other categories here. The next one I'm guessing is medical maybe.

Darío Martínez (07:20)
Yes, well, the insurance like Medicare or something. I don't know if it's the same, but it's what I pay for medical assistance if I get sick.

Zach Whelchel (07:24)
Okay. Okay. And then

Okay, cool. And then the next one looks like the pension plan. Is that correct?

Darío Martínez (07:38)
Yeah, that's the pension plan.

Zach Whelchel (07:42)
Okay, and you've got goals or targets on these, even though your employer covers those targets, right? Because it comes out of your paycheck.

Darío Martínez (07:50)
Yeah, it's maybe overkill, but I do it anyway because sometimes they mess up with my money in a way that it has happened that I have paid more taxes than I had to. And by having Target, I always remind me what is the income tax or the pension money that I need to be paying every month.

If something is off, that's a way I have to remind me, something happened here. It's rare, but it has happened.

Zach Whelchel (08:28)
yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome that you, you take that responsibility on yourself, right? A lot of people will just kind of, you know, let the responsibility live on the, you know, the employer or the best of that. But the truth is when you look at your money and you keep track of all of your finances, like you often see things in there that are wrong, right? Either transactions that shouldn't have been charged or subscriptions that you canceled or something that your employer messed up. So it's awesome that you've taken on that responsibility and like, you kind of have control over that. So.

Cool, okay, the next two categories we have here are look like loans to people or payments to people.

Darío Martínez (09:05)
Not exactly payments, the first one is Mamimba, also my mother. She's an elderly woman and she's widow.

Zach Whelchel (09:07)
Okay.

Darío Martínez (09:16)
My father died. So I help her with some money every month. My brother also does that in his way. So we both support our mother with money every month. And that's something I'm doing for her. The other one is for my first daughter, Vielka.

Zach Whelchel (09:17)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Darío Martínez (09:45)
She is already 22 years old, she's starting her working life and she just really doesn't make much money, so I help her with some money every month.

Zach Whelchel (10:03)
Awesome, cool, that's exciting. 22's just kind of getting out there, getting into the work world. I'm curious, does she live near you still, or did she end up moving somewhere for work?

Darío Martínez (10:13)
Well, I'm divorced. well, I'm remarried, but she's first child from my first marriage. She doesn't live with me, but we are very close and, you know, we keep in contact every week.

Zach Whelchel (10:30)
Awesome. Great. Cool. Okay. So these next ones, we've got like a protractor emoji, a like a dress up shirt emoji and like an office emoji. So I'm curious what these next ones are.

Darío Martínez (10:41)
Yeah, the next one is Colegiatura Isabella. That's the school fee, how do say, the scholarship for my youngest daughter Isabella with my current wife that she's, you know, she does her her budget on her own.

Zach Whelchel (11:05)
Okay.

Darío Martínez (11:06)
So she has some responsibilities, and I have some other responsibilities. And I pay for the scholarship of my Isabella.

Zach Whelchel (11:19)
Okay, cool, cool. So you and your wife budget separately, but you both use those categories towards the different needs that all add up together to kind of everything that your kids need and stuff.

Darío Martínez (11:30)
Yeah, yeah, doesn't, mean, she has, for example, she pays most of the groceries. I still have some budget for groceries, but it's minor compared to hers. And she also pays some other things, some other utilities and stuff. I take care of another portion. We have that discussion like before we got married. And we tried to do the joint.

Zach Whelchel (11:42)
Okay.

Darío Martínez (11:59)
budgeting thing but it wasn't working at the time and we are happy with it. We don't have any money secrets anyway.

Zach Whelchel (12:10)
Cool. Yeah. Every couple is different. Everybody works differently, right? Like my wife and I, both love to -do managers. And so we thought naturally, like when we got married, let's have a shared to -do manager. We hated it, right? We liked having our own separate to -do managers so that we could really like own it and keep track of it. yeah, totally, totally understand that.

Darío Martínez (12:28)
Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (12:32)
Okay, cool. moving on here, we've got, let's see, some different, I'm not sure what these emojis are. It looks like we get down to electrical maybe, is that like utilities?

Darío Martínez (12:45)
The one that... Okay, I didn't talk about a few others. The one that's named Cuidado Personal is just for my haircut and that kind of stuff. It's kind of variable, but it's mostly the same amount every month. We don't do many crazy things. men, women are more free to do many things to their hair.

Zach Whelchel (12:51)
yeah.

Sure, yeah, same for us.

Darío Martínez (13:14)
So Cumbre de las Praderas is the place we live. We own our place, but we still have some, the equivalent like the HOA, we don't have that here, but we still have a community, a small community here, and we pay some money for, you know, common repairs in common areas. Next one.

Zach Whelchel (13:29)
Okay.

Okay, so this is like an H -O -A fee. And a few of these have numbers on them, and the numbers look like they're probably not US dollars, so it looks like this one is 8 ,000, whatever the currency is of where you live.

Darío Martínez (13:50)
Yeah, I

Yeah, yeah, it's our local currency.

Zach Whelchel (13:59)
Okay, cool. Cool. I don't know if we want to give that away quite yet because I might give it a little too much away, but we'll probably get there eventually. So far, we're learning a bunch about you. We know that you have a family, you have a wife, you have children, you have a mom, you have a brother, you live outside the US, and your currency looks like it's probably worth less than the dollar because it's probably not $8 ,000 for the HOA.

Darío Martínez (14:06)
we will get there.

Yeah, roughly one dollar, we can buy one dollar with 60 of our currency. it's kind of, it doesn't, it's, well, anyway.

Zach Whelchel (14:34)
Okay, okay, cool.

Yeah, well that's a clue for our listeners. If anybody's really keen on the conversion of currencies, they might have a good indication there. But, all right, cool. Let's get on to the next category. What have we got next?

Darío Martínez (14:52)
Cargos bancarios, that will be like bank fees. It's normally the money that banks

charges for maintaining their accounts and that kind of stuff. I wanted to track that because also they have a lot of, sometimes they have like crazy things going on and I wanted to be clear on what I was paying for.

Zach Whelchel (15:21)
for sure. Are bank fees for you something that only happen like if something kind of goes wrong or do you have consistent bank fees? Like for me, it's like if my balance gets too low, there might be a fee or if I overdraft, there might be a fee. I'm curious if the banking system is similar in your country.

Darío Martínez (15:38)
Well, we can spend a lot of time talking about crazy bank fees that we have here in my country. But yeah, we have that. If you go below some amount, you will pay for that. It's nonsense.

Zach Whelchel (15:56)
Okay, okay. Does your country work? I know some countries around the world work where your checking account also serves as a line of credit. Is that how your country works?

Darío Martínez (16:06)
I have seen that but that's not my case. Maybe for a small business owner that will work but not for individuals.

Zach Whelchel (16:11)
Okay, cool.

Okay, cool. All right, what do we have next? have what looks like utilities, the E -D -E -S -U -R.

Darío Martínez (16:25)
Yeah. Yeah, the next two are my electricity company and my phone company, my mobile phone company. For example, the internet and the home telephone, that's something that my wife pays.

Zach Whelchel (16:44)
Got it. Okay. So these are two of the util or kind of subscriptions or utilities that you have to pay. What is, what is this? next one is this gifts. It has like a gift emoji.

Darío Martínez (16:53)
Yeah, yeah, I have a work, a job, we do like every month we make a party for the people that have a birthday in that month. It's like a normal contribution, a fixed contribution every month for that pool of birthday parties.

Zach Whelchel (17:16)
And who's on the planning committee who actually plans the parties? Is that you?

Darío Martínez (17:19)
No, I'm very bad at planning words. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (17:23)
Okay, okay, you just bankroll them. Okay, it looks like next we have an emergency fund, is that what that is? Okay.

Darío Martínez (17:33)
Exactly. Yeah, that's my monthly contribution for my own emergency fund. The way we have that, my wife and I, have a common, a household emergency fund that has no particular name on it, but we also have a personal emergency fund for

whatever happens, it's like money that we don't know when we will need.

Zach Whelchel (18:11)
Sure. And it says here that you fully spent it. So I'm curious, is this something that you transfer out to like an investment account or like a savings account somewhere?

Darío Martínez (18:19)
Yeah, exactly. Every money, you will see later that I have another ways to save money, but for my emergency fund, like a fix, it's an obligation for me. after I get, I keep roughly about $1 ,100 in my savings account for

know, emergencies. But after I go over that amount, then I put that in an investment, and a proper investment account. That is not in my budget. This is off record for that.

Zach Whelchel (19:06)
Got it, okay, yeah, because these were only looking at your on budget accounts and once it gets transferred off, then that would be an off budget account. Okay, cool, well, next up, it looks like we're moving to another category group here. So this category group looks like it's maybe variable expenses.

Darío Martínez (19:11)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Zach Whelchel (19:25)
Okay, so we've got four different expenses here. It looks like maybe eating out or celebrations and then groceries and then maybe TV subscriptions if you want to dive into each of those.

Darío Martínez (19:36)
Exactly. The first one is quality outings with my wife and friends. That's different from eating out. The second one is eating out. Like, I have to grab a burger somewhere because I need to eat something. That's what I call utilitarian food in the street. I don't enjoy particularly that kind of food because it's just

Zach Whelchel (19:58)
Sure.

Darío Martínez (20:06)
food. But the first one is for when we go to celebrate something, when we go to, for example, an event or something that is really important for us to share. It's not every month, but we want to keep, we want to increase that. And right now the amount I put in that category,

Zach Whelchel (20:08)
Sure.

Darío Martínez (20:35)
will be increased in the future. We had that discussion that we need to do more fun stuff. Well, will need to spend more on that. Spend more, invest more in that. So next one is the...

Zach Whelchel (20:44)
Okay, cool.

Okay.

Yeah. So it looks like you have 5 ,000 on that and you have 5 ,000 on eating out. And I love how you separate those two, right? One is just like utilitarian eating out and one is like actually enjoyment. And it sounds like you and your wife maybe had that conversation. You're like, we should value that more. And so you're going to make that adjustment accordingly, which is super cool. I'm curious, is that a category that you roll over or do you refund it each month or okay. So it rolls over each month.

Darío Martínez (21:18)
Yeah. It's really if I don't use that money, it's also to the next one, but I still put the same amount in the next one. So there will be months that I have like twice as much as I need for the month. And then we go crazy and do something very, very cool for us.

Zach Whelchel (21:30)
Okay.

Nice. Do you guys have any favorite like restaurants or like experiences that you do with that money?

Darío Martínez (21:46)
Yeah, local restaurants here are kind of fun to go. We have also some international chains like Chili's and Friday's and Outback, that kind of stuff. We also go to those places. So next one is supermarket. That's the groceries category. It's not that big for me. My wife takes care of most of the groceries. She's much better than me doing that.

Zach Whelchel (22:00)
Nice.

Darío Martínez (22:14)
If I go to a supermarket I will go with a lot of snacks and that kind of stuff. The last one of that group is subscription for the common services. That is also a category that my wife pays mostly but I still put some money towards that because maybe sometime I need to do an upgrade to a service and

Zach Whelchel (22:21)
Yes, yes, I'm the same. I am the same.

Darío Martínez (22:44)
I want to do that on my own without affecting her budget.

Zach Whelchel (22:48)
Okay, cool.

Darío Martínez (22:49)
But that will be mostly by the internet. example, we don't have HBO in my house. But sometimes I want to watch something. I pay for one month of HBO and then take it off. That kind of stuff.

Zach Whelchel (23:08)
Yes, yeah, we do the same thing. Yeah, we do the same thing. Like if there's a new Game of Thrones, we'll pay for that month and then we're done. Yes. Yes, yes. Did you see the finale yet? Were you disappointed with the lack of action? Okay, sorry, sorry.

Darío Martínez (23:14)
You read my mind. Well, House of the Drywood now.

I haven't. No, I haven't, but I read, no, no, no problem. I don't mind spoilers, but I read that it was like many people disappointed about it. I will see, I will see.

Zach Whelchel (23:36)
Yeah, it felt like it should be the season, or the episode before the episode finale, but I guess we'll have to wait two more years.

All right. So it looks like next up here, you've got, I'm these are transportation items. looks like maybe like petrol or gasoline, and then maybe like insurance and repairs and kind of all of those things. So if you want to dive into each of those.

Darío Martínez (23:58)
Exactly. those are... before, sometime before, they all belong to the upper group, the variable monthly fees. But I decided to put it in a particular group because, I don't know, maybe I'm too granular on this, but I wanted to have them their own thing. But that's...

You know, gas is the first one, then repairs is the second for my car repairs. I don't drive a very modern or up -to -date car, but I'm happy with it. I hope it lasts me like maybe four more years. Next one is the registration fee, the annual registration.

Zach Whelchel (24:46)
Okay, okay.

Okay.

Darío Martínez (24:54)
And the fourth one is the insurance. That's a big one. The insurance one is we pay that one time. It's a yearly expense. Maybe that's the same in the States. So when that bill comes, it's a big one.

Zach Whelchel (25:15)
Okay, cool. And it looks like, I was just gonna say your repair is, looks like it's funded. Is this just like a larger amount that you have sitting there ready for repairs or are you still kind of filling that up? Like it looks like you might even have it overfunded a little bit. Are you just kind of ready in case?

Darío Martínez (25:16)
And final one is... Sorry.

Yeah, that's a sinking fund. I set an amount for that because I wanted to repaint my vehicle, repaint and take out scratches and that kind of stuff. But I haven't done that yet. So the money is there, it's waiting for that and I'm even putting some money over the...

the amount I was expecting to accumulate. But, you know, it's like, I'm happy that the money is there waiting for that job to be taken care of.

Zach Whelchel (26:16)
Yeah, that's great. It's much better to have it sitting there and knowing that you can do it when you need to and instead of the reverse. So you mentioned that you were very granular in categories. And I want to say to our listeners here, you know, if you go and look at the, the show notes for this and look at the blog, you'll be able to see kind of all these categories spelled out. But I think you might have the largest amount of categories that I've ever seen in a budget. What's your total number here?

Darío Martínez (26:40)
Well, to be honest, it's over 120, but there are a bunch of them that are like a specific purpose that maybe we will see later. But really, really, we will be like 75, actual budget.

Zach Whelchel (26:45)
Wow, okay.

Okay, so 75 or so of these categories you actually kind of like live in on a monthly basis, the other that lead up to like the other half essentially are all kind of like one -off things.

Darío Martínez (27:10)
Yeah, yeah, but for anyone listening or watching this, I'm kind of crazy. mean, this is because I want, I'm analyst in my job, so I really want to, you know, for reporting purposes, I want to have a very, very granular budget, but that's...

Zach Whelchel (27:25)
Yeah.

Darío Martínez (27:37)
That's I'm kind of crazy. Anybody doesn't need to be that granular to have a very good working budget. Sorry.

Zach Whelchel (27:41)
Well yeah, I don't think...

Sure, I mean it's

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I love budgeting, right? Because like you love these details. You love the reports and you love having that sense of control. And I'm similar to you. Like I like to know that I can control every aspect of it look at reports and all those things. Some people, they like to have a much smaller category set. And it's really cool that when you budget, you can choose that, right? Like you can find the level that's effective for you, the level that actually allows you to live in it, allows you to use it. And it sounds like for you,

Darío Martínez (28:09)
Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (28:18)
you enjoy this and for others they might as well or they might like something different. moving forward.

Darío Martínez (28:22)
It could be overhearing. This will be very overhearing for most people. I know that.

Zach Whelchel (28:27)
Yeah. So moving forward, I'm going to kind of like look at these category groups and we're just going to stop at the ones that you feel like you have something kind of interesting to share. but we won't go like one by one just because you know, there's 150 of them. So let's jump down to the next, let's jump down to the next category group. let's just talk about this group as a whole and maybe call out anything that's interesting or you have a story about maybe in this one.

Darío Martínez (28:55)
So this group is called Prevencion de Nueva Deuda. That will be like a new debt prevention. They are all thinking funds for things that I don't like. They are not like Wish Farm or something. That's just normal stuff that I want to be prepared for before they hit me. Like home repairs, like mental dental,

care, medical expenses that my insurance doesn't cover, that kind of stuff. It's just money that I try to put every month, even a small portion of it, to avoid going into debt at any time.

Zach Whelchel (29:45)
Yeah, I like how you've categorized these. It's not, it's all about preventing going into, into the future. Right? So like in the future, we don't want to go into debt. So let's make sure that we cover the things that could happen so that we won't have to go into debt in the future. That's really cool.

Alright, so this next category here, looks like might be celebrations or vacations or kind of fun things.

Darío Martínez (30:06)
Yeah, exactly. That's the name. Categorias divertidas would be funny categories. That would be our plans for vacation, for just fun. That's different from the quality outings that we saw later because these are one time of the year events like.

Zach Whelchel (30:13)
Okay.

Darío Martínez (30:33)
sometimes that we go to the beach. That's something, that kind of stuff. Personal growth, like professional courses and certification that I need to do. It's nothing there right now because I'm taking a break of that. The last one is...

Zach Whelchel (30:58)
Okay.

Darío Martínez (31:00)
The last one is for birthdays and anniversaries and parties for my family. The amount of money that I want to save for Christmas, for birthday and that kind of stuff. I fund that and spend for it if I need every every now and then.

Zach Whelchel (31:07)
Okay.

Awesome, cool. Yeah, those are the fun ones for sure. Next up, looks like we've got, are these just like one -off events or occasions? I see there the eclipse, which is super exciting. Actually, you have eclipse and you have, it looks like Spain in 26 and Egypt in 27. Do you have future eclipses already planned for?

Darío Martínez (31:41)
I am crazy about eclipses. Let's see, that's my witch farm category group. So the three things that are here are like, you see that I have glasses, I want to do that surgery. It's kind of costly here, so I'm trying to do that. By December this year,

Zach Whelchel (31:45)
Okay, wow.

Okay.

Darío Martínez (32:11)
with a bonus that we get at the end of the year. So that's why it doesn't have any money funded, it doesn't have any much money there. The third one is Fincon. We are planning to go to Fincon as kind of a wish farm. Maybe there will be in another category group, but I left that there. Now, Eclipses. Man, we can talk about Eclipses like for two hours.

Zach Whelchel (32:21)
sure.

Ha

Darío Martínez (32:41)
and I won't stop. I have seen three total solar eclipses already, 2017 in Tennessee. We traveled with our daughters, our sons and daughters to Chile in 2019. And that was a blast. It was my first time in Chile. And we also go to Arkansas.

Zach Whelchel (32:47)
Okay.

Okay.

Darío Martínez (33:10)
in April this year and saw our our third eclipse. It's an amazing experience. I highly recommend that you make that wish farm category. So we are already planning for Spain in 2026. 2026 and Egypt that will be a big one in Egypt and 2027. Then maybe

Zach Whelchel (33:13)
Wow.

Yeah.

Darío Martínez (33:39)
Australia in 2008.

Zach Whelchel (33:43)
But do the the eclipses ever do they ever come to you or do you always have to go to them?

Darío Martínez (33:45)
You know something?

No, haven't. In my country, there hasn't been a total solar eclipse in like 120 years. it was, I wasn't there. But we will have one, a big one, in 2045. I hope to be alive by then. That will be in my country and also in other places.

Zach Whelchel (34:02)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay, so I'm guessing you might be closer to the equator then, because I think the equator is where they don't get as many eclipses based on that. So maybe that's a hint for our listeners as well there.

Darío Martínez (34:18)
So

Well, maybe. So you know something, Zach?

Zach Whelchel (34:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, I will say, yes.

Darío Martínez (34:38)
Okay, planning for eclipses was one of the main reasons that I got very good at budgeting because planning for eclipse is really a very complicated task and you really need a budget for making it right. So when 2017 eclipse was approaching I was like I need some tools to make this happen.

And thanks to my budget, I really... Actually, I don't think that I will be able to go there without a very good budget. That's the way I...

Zach Whelchel (35:20)
That's awesome. Yeah. I for a lot of people in order to really kind of put the effort in and actually start budgeting, you have to have something that you care about, right? Whether that's something that you really want to do or some debt you really want to get out of or something, some lifestyle change you want to make, right? If there's something that you care about so deeply that says, you know what? I want to make this happen. Let me finally get control of my finances to do that. So it sounds like for you, like eclipses were that, that thing that kind of got you started on this journey.

Darío Martínez (35:49)
Yeah, and also that I have a lot of debt. I needed to get out of that.

Zach Whelchel (35:52)
sure, sure.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. did want to say I saw my first total solar eclipse, this past April as well, or whenever this past one was, and I had seen eclipses at like 99 % before or like 98 % and the difference between 99 and a hundred is just, it's completely different. Like it was a truly magical experience to see it at a hundred. So would recommend as well.

Darío Martínez (36:22)
Yeah, yeah, Having a 99 eclipse, total solar eclipse at 99 is like hitting all the mega millions numbers but one. That's the whole difference.

Zach Whelchel (36:34)
Yep, agreed, agreed.

Okay, cool. Well, the rest of your categories, probably we're going to just kind of gloss over these because they look to be mostly just subscriptions that you pay for. You have all your subscriptions like enumerated out and it has like the amount that they cost, the time that they cost, and you just basically fund up to those. So it looks like you've got some subscriptions maybe for yourself and maybe some for your business. Is that what we're looking at here?

Darío Martínez (37:00)
Yeah, the first group is for my own subscription for things that I pay for myself. Office 365, Amazon Prime, that's my stuff. And I pay that mostly, those are annual subscriptions. Then the next one is...

costos operativos sal de la olla that's my business my coach business coaching business so those are also subscription most of them that I pay annually and I want to fund them in my own personal budget I don't I used to have a separate budget for my business but I really didn't like jumping around and I ended up

making all in one single big budget.

Zach Whelchel (38:00)
Yes, yes, definitely big. Yeah, especially if you're like a solo, like a individual business or whatever for tax purposes, it's kind of all the same, right? So yeah, that can make sense. All right, cool. Let's see what else we got here. What are, we've got two more category groups left and then we'll finally let you introduce yourself. We're almost there. I feel like we've learned a lot about you. I feel like I could probably guess a lot about you at this point, but we're almost there. So it looks like you've got.

This category, I'm not sure what this is for.

Darío Martínez (38:30)
This is one of the category groups for my savings habits. This is like saving an amount that increases every week. I don't know how to call that. It's like a ladder.

Zach Whelchel (38:49)
Okay, interesting.

Okay.

Darío Martínez (38:53)
like a dollar, like a lot of. So when I told you that I'm kind of crazy, picture this, I made one category for every week in the year. That's something that I'm afraid that people will run away from budgeting, looking at the crazy things that I'm doing, but I'm not normal. This is overkill. I know I totally get it. It's overkill, but.

Zach Whelchel (38:59)
This is it, okay.

Sure, sure, okay, so.

Darío Martínez (39:23)
I wanted to do it that way.

Zach Whelchel (39:25)
Okay, yeah, because a budgeting app usually will let you set up like a weekly goal and it's all in a single category. So you don't have to do this, but for you, I guess this is just really motivating to see these all spelled out this way, to be able to track them this way and to work on that way. So if it works for you and it's motivating and it's helping you save, then more power to you.

Darío Martínez (39:30)
Mm

Perfect.

Yeah, and the thing is that I didn't... I couldn't do a single category for savings in this theme, but every week is different. So that's why I make 52 categories of this crazy stuff.

Zach Whelchel (40:07)
Nice. Yeah. I can see that these, these amounts are all different. I'm curious. Why are they different each month? it's because you want to make them a little bit more each month or each week. Got it.

Darío Martínez (40:11)
Yeah.

Because it's increasing. Yeah, I started like a hundred of my currency and next week 200, 300, and now I am at 3 ,400. It's going, it's getting difficult. It's getting really difficult. But it helps me to...

Zach Whelchel (40:30)
That's awesome.

Yeah, no, I'd imagine the sentence reminds me of like,

Yeah, this reminds me of some people do this with like fitness, right? Like I'm going to do one push up today and then two tomorrow, three the next day, right? It's just a good way to slowly, slowly get there. Cool. All right. And then we've got one last category group here and it's splurge capsules. And I'm curious what these are.

Darío Martínez (40:46)
the same principle.

Yeah, well, this is like, this is fun money for me with saving that kind of amount. mean, 6 ,000 of that, of my currency will be funded by November this year. And when I get, when I hit that number, can just give myself that money to do whatever I want that.

So I have another one for 2006, 28, and 2030. And it's a of a tricky way to, tricky in a good sense, of finding money that you maybe, you know, when you go to an old jacket and find money in there, that kind of excitement you get, that's the.

Zach Whelchel (41:52)
Sure, Yeah.

Darío Martínez (41:55)
maybe the same idea. It's only that I am doing it myself, so I know it's coming, but you know, it's like fun money I will get for me to do whatever with it.

Zach Whelchel (42:02)
Sure, sure,

That's awesome. Okay. Well, this is all of your category groups. And I want to say like, you might think you're crazy, but like, feel like I see the method to the madness here. And like, I think it's really cool how you've taken your personality, the things that you value, like the fact that you like to like find some money later, like in a jacket and you built that into your budget so that you can, you can do that. Right? Like you've taken all the things that you value and you've made sure that you have a plan for them. And so

I think there's a method to the madness and I've really appreciated this. Like you're the first person I've ever seen to break it out this much, but also to split out their paychecks so that you can track all that and reporting. Like I feel like you just do a lot of really cool things that I've been inspired by. So we're at the end of your budget and we've kind of got to know about you through your priorities. So this is the part where you can actually tell us who you are, where you live. I'm curious what your currency is, like all of these things.

Darío Martínez (42:55)
Okay, so well, my name is Dario Martinez. I am from the Dominican Republic, as maybe you got from the DOP trigger. I have been, you know, I'm a computer science engineer and also a marketing.

marketing professional in my life. I work for a newspaper in the Dominican Republic and well I enjoy a lot of this because a lot of budgeting because I was in a very bad position when 2000 the year 2000 hit I got a lot of debt and the way I got out of it was budgeting.

making a real working, intentional and flexible budget to work with was the main tool I used to get out of that. So now I coach. And the service that I, I named my service, Sal de la Olla, that will translate like, get out of the pot. And maybe you remember when,

those cartoons where Vox Boni was in a big pot being cooked by some... In the Dominican Republic, we use that illustration to imagine how is financial stress. So getting out of that financial stress is the name of my service.

Zach Whelchel (44:21)
Yes.

Darío Martínez (44:45)
you know, a fun way to name something. I think.

Zach Whelchel (44:52)
Awesome. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So Dario is a budget coach himself. He coaches on several different platforms, but one of them is my budget coach as well. So if you, if you are, you know, listening to this and you're thinking, you know, I would love to start a budget myself, like Dario is a great resource, a great coach to work with, and you could work with him on my budget coach. So I'd encourage you to go out there and give that a try.

Darío Martínez (45:03)
in my budget coach. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (45:20)
But yeah, it's been great having you on the show. Zaria, thanks for sharing all these numbers, all these categories, letting us into like kind of what you care about, especially the solar eclipses. That was really cool to hear about. So appreciate having you on the show and yeah, any other final advice you want to give as a coach to our audience?

Darío Martínez (45:32)
Yeah.

No, well, you need... that the viewers need to consider themselves tools like my budget coach to get their finances in order and you will be extremely happy when you get your finances under control. That's a game changer. Money problems are not about money. No.

When you get your finance right, you get better relationships, better work, more creativity. Money is a tool, but it's a very essential tool that we need to master. And budgeting is there to help us. So I'm glad to be here. Thank you for your time and going through my crazy mad budget with me.

Zach Whelchel (46:27)
love that.

Yeah, I love that. Love that advice. All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show and for everybody else. We'll see you all next time.