Budget Breakdown: Episode 4 - Guest T.V.

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T.V.'s Budget

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Zach Whelchel (00:00)
All right. Welcome everyone to budget breakdown. This is the podcast where we get to meet our guests, not by them introducing themselves, but rather through introducing their numbers. We look at their budget, we look at their financial priorities and we get to guess kind of who they are and get to figure out who they are through those priorities. So guests, welcome to our show. I'm not going to say your name. I won't let you say your name, but if you want to go ahead and say hi, just so the audience can hear you.

Trevor Vance (00:24)
Good morning, good afternoon, welcome.

Zach Whelchel (00:27)
Yeah. Okay. it is afternoon for me. I don't know if it's afternoon for you or not, but I'm not going to say that because it might give a little, a little bit away about your location there. okay, cool. So we've got your budget here. That's true. Yeah. I guess our listeners could be anywhere. I guess I should probably introduce myself to you. So I'm your host, Zach Wilchel. I'm the founder of my budget coach and we're going to go ahead and dive right in with your budget here. So I've got your numbers pulled up in front of me.

Trevor Vance (00:37)
morning somewhere.

Zach Whelchel (00:53)
And we'll just kind of start with your first category group, which is credit card payments. And it looks like you have one, two, three, like eight different credit cards. Is that right?

Trevor Vance (01:01)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (01:02)
So tell me a little bit about why you chose these cards, why you have eight cards, how you kind of split your spending across these cards, like what was kind of the method behind this?

Trevor Vance (01:13)
Sure, My wife and I, we used to not have any cards. And I likened credit cards to a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic. We just didn't handle them well. And so for a long time, we just didn't have any. And then we needed to rebuild our credit.

Zach Whelchel (01:31)
Okay.

Trevor Vance (01:43)
We started out with a Discover card for each of us and that's just branched out into some other credit cards. And some of them were based off of a bonus that was available. And so I've acquired those because of a opening bonus.

Zach Whelchel (02:01)
Okay.

Trevor Vance (02:08)
So, you know, a $200 gift card or statement credit or what have you for whatever the bank was offering.

Zach Whelchel (02:16)
Okay, cool. And it looks here like your balances aren't or the amount you have set aside for payment doesn't look like it's that much. So it looks like you probably are in a better place now with credit cards. Like you trust yourself more with them now.

Trevor Vance (02:28)
Absolutely, because of the budgeting software I'm using, I'm able to, for the most part, I'm able to budget my expenses for use on the credit cards, for rewards and things like that. recently we've had to reacquire some credit card debt because of life situations.

But at least with our budgeting software, have a plan to get rid of that debt. So I'm not as concerned about it as I was before.

Zach Whelchel (03:08)
cool and it sounds like

Yeah, and it sounds like even the way you're talking about it, it sounds like it's like you made a decision to do that as opposed to just something that's like happening based on your like overspending or whatever. So it sounds like you've got like a good, control over using these to, your advantage, essentially. cool. Okay. Let's go ahead and get.

Trevor Vance (03:26)
Exactly, priorities were made and decisions were made.

Zach Whelchel (03:29)
Nice, nice. Okay, so we know that you have a wife, I think you said, and we know that you maybe didn't trust yourself in the past with credit cards, but now you do. So we're already learning a good amount about you and maybe some of your story here. Let's go check out these next group here. So you've got your fixed expenses. You've got mortgage, life insurance, automobile insurance, electricity, and a few others. So do you want to kind of take us line by line through here and talk about anything that's interesting or stands out?

Trevor Vance (03:34)
I

Yes.

Sure, sure. First and foremost within our budget is that these are set in a particular order, okay? So such that you see that the grouping is one and we'll see that ranking follow through on the additional screens. But then each item within that group is also ranked. Now the ranking isn't as obvious.

to the casual observer, but it's just the way that my wife and I have put them in here. So the most important things are at the top of each group. The most important groups are at the top of the budget. Thus, when we have new money come in, there's that priority and intentionality to give those dollars jobs and to, for our money to make a plan.

Zach Whelchel (04:55)
Got it. You also have this like no wham at the top here, which I guess is like no whack -a -mole. So like don't pull money out of these if you want to be pulling money around. Is that the idea?

Trevor Vance (05:01)
Exactly.

That's the idea. Wacom being a mnemonic for rule three within the budgeting software, YNAB. You need a budget.

Zach Whelchel (05:17)
Got it, okay cool. So your first one is your mortgage. So obviously this is like the most important and you've got this fully funded, fully spent. Then you've got your life insurance and it looks like you have life insurance is $4 .45 .36 a month it looks like. So tell me a little bit about that. Do you guys do like term or whole? Is this for both of you or one?

Trevor Vance (05:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely for both of us and term insurance only. I am a big proponent of term insurance. And because my wife and I are on the older side of things, things are a little bit more expensive for us like life insurance. But we've had together we've had some.

life experiences, shall we say, where we know the importance of life insurance. And so, you know, some of the policies I've had for many years, and there's multiple policies within that.

Zach Whelchel (06:17)
Nice, okay. And then the next one is something probably that's a little bit less expensive if you're a little on the older side, which is automobile insurance. So it looks like you set aside $184 .73 per month, is that right? Do you pay this like every six months, every year?

Trevor Vance (06:26)
You'd hope.

Yeah, right now it's set up on a six month policy. so we pay it every six months and we use a credit card to pay it because what we do is we set aside the dollar amount each month to make that six month payment. So it turns out to be just a little cheaper that way. And plus that's the way the insurance is billed to us.

I know that in times past, it was going to be very challenging for me to even think about paying a six month bill. It was hard for me to imagine, so I always did monthly.

Zach Whelchel (06:57)
Alright, next up we've got a look.

Yeah, which is awesome. Like that you set aside for it and that you can, because you set aside for it, use your credit card knowing you can pay it off and get the advantage of all those points.

That's awesome. Okay, so next you've got electricity, gas. Yeah, go ahead and dive into those. They all look like utilities.

Trevor Vance (07:19)
So the next three or four.

Yeah, they're basically all utilities, know, electricity, natural gas, water, sewer and solid waste. The water, sewer, solid waste, that category is, our municipality bills us every other month. And so, you know, we just kind of figure out an average and, you know, that's what the $150 per month that we set aside for it is. And sometimes there's extra, sometimes there isn't. And...

You know, we've got right now the utilities are fairly well funded. So if we have a higher electricity bill or a water bill, we're going to be okay. Our telephone, our cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. Our cell phone service is dirt cheap right now. And I'm looking at making it even dirt cheaper by switching to a different provider.

Zach Whelchel (08:06)
Yeah, these all look like they're overfunded.

Yeah, I noticed, I noticed that it's only 5605 per month. So you must be on like, I don't know, some one of those like discount carriers.

Trevor Vance (08:29)
No, actually we're on Verizon. So we've got a Verizon plan. And this is two lines with Verizon, but it's a prepaid month ahead plan. So it's not a contract, which I enjoy not being on a contract with anybody, but that's not always the case. So.

Zach Whelchel (08:31)
Wow, okay, and this is for the both of you.

Trevor Vance (08:52)
Yeah, right now we're paying only $56 a month and I love it, but we're looking, I'm looking at a different option that's going to save us even more money.

Zach Whelchel (09:02)
Cool. Okay, so next up you've got internet, television, and monthly streaming. It looks like it's about $148 .19 a month. Is that because it's overfunded or what's the actual total there?

Trevor Vance (09:12)
Yeah.

The actual total is probably, I'd have to look at the exact number, but it's around 150, 170. It varies just a little bit based on things like for August, it's going to be a little bit higher than it was for July because our contract with our internet and TV service got updated.

Much to my chagrin, our contract with them ended and our discount with them ended. So the rates went up. But I renegotiated with them and got a lower rate and will probably move my cell phone service to them in the very near future. you know, we, so inside of this category though is also the monthly streaming services that we use.

Zach Whelchel (10:01)
awesome.

Trevor Vance (10:11)
Things like Hulu, Netflix, things of that nature. We do enjoy our TV.

Zach Whelchel (10:18)
Nice. Okay, next up you've got monthly subscriptions and it looks like those are about $180 a month. I'm impressed with all these categories that you have overfunded. It's like you're ready for anything that comes, guess. Are you the type of person that funds into the next month as well or do you just keep all the overfunding inside the current month?

Trevor Vance (10:39)
So two questions within there. So monthly subscriptions are things like gym membership, some other subscriptions that aren't annual subscriptions, which we'll see later. So there's not that many in this. Most of it's gym related and there's a couple of finance related subscriptions.

Zach Whelchel (10:42)
cut.

Trevor Vance (11:08)
As to the other question, do I fund ahead in other months? I tried that and it didn't work for me. It just didn't connect in my brain. I understand the concept. Fine. It's just, you know, for me in this time of my life, that's what I need to see is I need to see it in a current month and know that it's just going to roll over into the next month.

Zach Whelchel (11:20)
Got it.

Got it, okay, yeah, that's cool. So for some people, what they would do is they'd fund these for this month, then they'd go to the next month and fund those. But what you do is you just put a bunch of extra in this month and you can visually see that you have it overfunded and that's just a different way of looking at that buffer. So, cool, okay, next up we've got tithing, which we don't have the amount for here, but it's fully spent, so I'm assuming you set aside money and you give it every month or so.

Trevor Vance (11:40)
Yeah.

Exactly, exactly right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And our past, we had a guest pastor at our church recently who made an interesting suggestion about changing the order of things in your monthly budget such that tithing goes first and then your mortgage and then your other bills. So I'm working towards that.

Not there yet, because he just spoke on that two weeks ago.

Zach Whelchel (12:28)
But for you, like you have a way of actually like when your priorities change, you have a way of actually reflecting that right? Like you would eventually slowly move this tithing up your priority list since you have everything like ranked by priority.

Trevor Vance (12:37)
Exactly. Exactly right. I would move that tied category above mortgage.

Zach Whelchel (12:45)
Cool. All right, next we've got HOA dues and an escrow account.

Trevor Vance (12:50)
Yeah, so HOA dues, we just bought into a new house just over a year ago, a new development. And HOA dues are incredibly inexpensive right now and at $42 a month. you know, as you said, this is well overfunded because I know that the dues are going to go up in the future. I don't know when, but.

That's the nature of HOA dues. They have a tendency to go up over time.

Zach Whelchel (13:23)
Sure. So I'm curious, I feel like most people when they talk about HOAs would say something like, it's so expensive, I don't really get that much for it, but for you it sounds like you're like, this is a good deal. I'm curious, like, do you feel like you get a good deal for what you pay into the HOA? Like, what types of services do you get from that?

Trevor Vance (13:24)
And then the and then

We don't have a lot of services in our HOA. We have a playground for young kids. We have a sport court and park that gets maintained. And the street lights and the watering for the landscaping, those are the things that have to be kept up as well. So there's some benefits there.

But right now it's relatively inexpensive. So I'm OK with it.

And then the escrow account, earlier this year we had a escrow overage check arrive from our mortgage. so we just created an escrow account category and plopped it in there and we're done. Because I also know that at some point in time property taxes are going to go up.

Our house insurance has already gone up. Homeowner's insurance already went up. And so I know that when our mortgage company does the calculations again next year, that there's likely to be an under amount. And so we'll have to pay back in. So that's just sitting there looking pretty until it needs to be used.

Zach Whelchel (15:00)
Nice, yeah, some people would take that check and would instantly throw it somewhere else or do whatever with it. But you said like, hey, I'm gonna set this aside, I'm gonna keep it right here, and when it comes time that they raise it on me, I'm gonna be prepared for it.

Trevor Vance (15:06)
Exactly.

Yeah, hopefully, you know, hopefully it's not more than that dollar amount. But, you know, I also know that, you know, there's going to be a period of time where I can, if it is more than that amount, I can fund it slowly, you know, over a couple of months. So I'm not going to get too excited about it right now. Like I said, it's just sitting there looking pretty.

Zach Whelchel (15:35)
That's awesome.

It does look pretty 1841 12 to sit in there just ready to ready to help you out when your mortgage goes up a little. That's great. All right, let's move on to your next category group. So this is your number two category group and it's called variable expensive with some of whack -a -mole here you've got. So I'll let you just kind of go through these one by one. We'll start with groceries. It looks like you set aside about 600 each month for groceries or 700.

Trevor Vance (15:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, about six to seven hundred dollars and dining out as well. Groceries is a category where if we're buying the food at the store, like whether it be Walmart, Safeway, Albertsons, Aldi, whatever it might be and bring it home to prepare, then that's going to be groceries.

Dining out is where we pay somebody to prepare the food for us. So if it's Starbucks or the local pizza place or burger joint or whatever, then that's going to fall under dining out. And some Whac -A -Mole, sometimes it turns out to be a lot of Whac -A -Mole between these two categories in particular.

Zach Whelchel (16:37)
Got it,

Yeah, I know for a lot of people that groceries and dining out are kind of like a yin and a yang, right? It's like when you do more of one, you pull more from the other, but it looks like you guys try to spend more on groceries. You try to limit your dining out.

Trevor Vance (16:59)
So the next.

Right.

Exactly.

Zach Whelchel (17:10)
Don't we all try to do that?

Trevor Vance (17:10)
Try is a good word.

Exactly, exactly. So the next category here is health, fitness and grooming. So my wife likes to look good. She likes me to look good. know, vitamins for our health. If we're doing anything related towards fitness, you know, that all falls in there. And this can be something as simple as shampoo and hair conditioner, right?

And then it could be something else. But basically it's not groceries and it's something that is further down household supplies. It's not paper towels or toilet paper. That goes down to household supplies.

Zach Whelchel (17:42)
Yeah.

got it. So it looks like you, you like when you go to the grocery store or whatever, you probably split that, that total out between these different categories.

Trevor Vance (18:10)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've got a spreadsheet. Yes, I'm a nerd. And if I go shopping at a store and buy a variety of things, I will sit down with the spreadsheet and the receipt and split it out. Much to my wife's chagrin sometimes. She'll go, what are you doing? I'm just taking care of our budget. Thank you. and so it figures out, it figures out the tax.

Zach Whelchel (18:35)
Yeah, yeah, we try to do that as well. Sometimes.

Yeah, sometimes we got to the point where when we're at the grocery store, we'll just split things up right there and do multiple transactions just so we don't have to later go back and do the math and figure it out. either way, it's good to be able to split that out so that, yeah, especially like if our kids are buying stuff, we'll have them buy it on a separate thing, make them, you know, hand over the money for it. And that way it's easier to keep track for it.

Trevor Vance (18:49)
I do that too.

Well, and plus that gives the kids some something to learn from in the budgeting process and handling money and knowing where their money goes and how it's spent.

Zach Whelchel (19:16)
correct.

All right, cool. Well, next up we've got transportation at 250 or 500 a month, it looks like.

Trevor Vance (19:22)
more or less. Yeah. mean, you know, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less and it depends on the price of gas. Is there parking involved? Is there, you know, bus fare, an Uber ride, those, anything like that, that gets us from point A to point B that's transportation.

Zach Whelchel (19:43)
Cool. And then I'll let you kind of go through these next ones as you want to. looks like we've got eight more or so in this category. So if you just want to talk about the ones that you're interested in.

Trevor Vance (19:49)
Sure.

Yeah. Okay. So yeah, career support. That's just for either of us. My wife in her career, she has a desire to spend some money on a regular basis to enhance her workplace. So that's, and that's fine. I just had to.

learn very early on in our budgeting process, which I came to very late in life, but learned that, she's going to spend this money and I really don't have a lot of say in it. So she gets to spend it and it's in the some when category group because sometimes I have to move money from somewhere else to cover her spending.

And there's stuff in my career too that I spend on. there's yin and yang here. Pet, we've got a little furry cat that has a tendency to want to eat every day, twice a day. She lets us know. Hair and nail salons, again, my wife likes to visit these places and I'm okay with that. And it was just recently

Zach Whelchel (20:41)
Okay.

Sure, sure.

Trevor Vance (21:11)
like in the last couple months, where it's like, why don't I just create a category for this and fund it appropriately? That way I don't have to stress about, she's going to the hair salon this month. So I finally just figured that piece out. I've been doing zero -based budgeting for about five, six years now, and I just now figured that out. Hmm. Yes, I'm a slow learner.

Zach Whelchel (21:35)
Yeah, what do they call that? Embracing your true expenses, right? Like acknowledging that this is an expense that you have, setting aside money for it so that you don't have to like, you know, deal with it when it comes in. You've already pre -planned for it. So that's great.

Trevor Vance (21:40)
Exactly.

already pre -planned for it. exactly right. Obviously the hair salon I don't visit very often. I don't go to a barber much anymore.

Zach Whelchel (21:56)
Sure. Sure. For our listeners who are watching this on video, our guest doesn't appear to have much need for hair products, as there doesn't appear to be much hair on the top of his head currently.

Trevor Vance (22:02)
right.

No, no, I used all that. And then the next category, well, for some it might be obvious if they were to see the initial CBD. Others might go, what is that? It's cold brew. No, it's not. So we live in a state where cannabis products are legal. And we get some CBD from a

Zach Whelchel (22:29)
Okay.

Trevor Vance (22:42)
store. I'm not sure exactly the name. There's a category kind of name for it. But a local store and it's just another thing that we fund. there's that. Clothing. We've got to buy. We've got to.

Zach Whelchel (22:59)
Alright, this is a... The CBD is probably a pretty big hint as to like your location in the country maybe, because I don't know how many states.

Trevor Vance (23:05)
Yeah, I guess it would be because there's not many states that have it as a legal thing. Oops.

Zach Whelchel (23:08)
But this -

feel like this whittles it down a little bit for us, but we're slowly guessing more and more about you, but yeah, this is great. Keep going.

Trevor Vance (23:15)
Quite a bit.

Yeah, so clothing, know, clothes wear out clothes, you know, fashions change, you know, so we need to buy new clothes. This is probably one of our least funded, in our commonly funded categories. This is probably the one that's least funded simply because, it gets banned from a lot. So sometimes I, it doesn't even get any money.

or the money that gets there isn't there for very long. Household supplies, like I said, yeah, it's on the low side. Yeah, yeah.

Zach Whelchel (23:52)
Sure, in which according to your priorities, this is lower down on your priority list. So it makes sense that you would pull from it when you need to.

Trevor Vance (24:02)
Exactly right household supplies like I mentioned earlier. I mean that could be windex the toilet paper paper towels You know paper plates or you know things like that things that are used around the house by anybody and everything so it's not It's just Almost a catch -all, but it's a it's common enough. I should really move it up In the priority list, but it's it's where it's at. That's fine

And then shipping and postage, you know, we got to ship things occasionally just because. So I always want to have a $15 in that category every month just to cover the incidental shipping. And then the last one is loan interest and bank fees. Occasionally have to pay some interest on those credit cards. And unfortunately, most of them are zero, zero percent. So I'm not paying very much.

Zach Whelchel (25:00)
Great, okay cool. Well let's jump down to your three, your category number three here and these all seem to fit in the medical space. So don't know if we need to go like line by line here but it looks like you've got some out -of -pocket things, some covered items, some deductibles. If you want to just like dive into each of those or...

Trevor Vance (25:17)
Yep.

Yeah, for those who can actually see the budget, but I'll describe as well, is that there's an emoji icon at the end of each of the category names. And those categories are funded by our flexible spending account through my wife's employer at the beginning of the year. And so...

We get a chunk of money put onto a debit card and that just funds those categories straight away at the beginning of the year.

Zach Whelchel (25:56)
So do you even track those categories in here or do you just spend on those on the debit card and leave them off budget?

Trevor Vance (26:02)
No, it's an, that debit card is on budget. It's our, it's our money. So we get to spend it. We get to decide how we want to spend it. within the limits of flexible spending account guidelines. So, it gets a little.

Zach Whelchel (26:06)
Okay, cool.

Yeah, the FSA is one that you have to spend, you have to spend it throughout the year, right? Like you can't roll it over year to year. Is that how the FSA works?

Trevor Vance (26:27)
I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't been able to roll that over. And generally speaking, we, you know, as you can see on this budget line, there's only $15 and change left in those categories. So we've spent nearly all of it. And actually, since I took these screenshots, I spent that $15. So our FSA is spent.

Zach Whelchel (26:30)
Okay.

Okay, and we're we're in We're in August, right? So you'll have to cover a little bit kind of off that car and it sounds like maybe for the next the rest of the year

Trevor Vance (27:02)
Right, and that's where the medical out of pocket, dental out of pocket categories come in to take care of. Because there are things even with our health insurance that we still have to spend money on. Whether it be the deductible or the co -pays or the co -insurance that, know, yes, some of that stuff can be covered under the FSA, but sometimes it's not. And so we need to save money.

each month to cover that medical and dental out -of -pocket costs. And, you know, I've got some dental work that needs to be done, but there's no money in there. So the dental work isn't going to get done yet. So the medical out -of -pocket, you know, the target, yeah, priorities, exactly. The medical and dental out -of -pocket, those numbers are based off of

Zach Whelchel (27:48)
priorities.

Trevor Vance (27:58)
what our insurance values are. you know, at the open enrollment time, you know, we sign up and the medical out of pocket numbers are there and, you know, just set the targets appropriately.

Zach Whelchel (28:13)
Cool, okay, well, I wanna tell our listeners that you are up there in the amount of total budget categories you have. I think the max we've seen on the show so far is something like 145. The lower limit is maybe in the 30s or 40s. I think you come in somewhere around the 20, 130 -ish mark. Does that sound about right?

Trevor Vance (28:36)
Yeah, 120ish. I think I had a count earlier this week of 124.

Zach Whelchel (28:39)
Okay, so.

Awesome. Okay. I love that you break it all out that much. He had that much control over it, but for the next few category groups, we're going to kind of do like an overview just so that can make sure we can review all of these. So the next one is investing. There's not too much to say here. You've got a category for Roth IRA and you've got a category for non non retirement investing and those numbers on their redacted. So there's not too much to talk about there. The next category group is the just for fun. So here you've got cat.

Trevor Vance (28:58)
Not too much.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Zach Whelchel (29:12)
cash, entertainment, recreation, event registration fees. The one that I want to call out here is the Seahawks home game, because I feel like that is a very big clue. I feel like that might be a very big clue as to where you live. I don't think there are too many states that have Seahawks and cannabis legal, so I think I might have it narrowed down here. But it looks like that's priority for you and you.

Trevor Vance (29:20)
Go Hawks!

Yeah, I think so.

Hang on here, Zach. Hang on. Hang on, Zach. There are Seahawks fans all over the world, okay? There are.

Zach Whelchel (29:40)
Set aside it looks like 50 bucks a month? Okay.

Forgive me, Sure, yes. All over the world, okay.

Trevor Vance (29:53)
Even in Tennessee and Kentucky.

Zach Whelchel (29:57)
Okay, yeah.

Alright, so you set aside about 50 bucks a month for the Seahawks game.

Trevor Vance (30:00)
So yeah, that's our goal. Again, our budget is lined up in a priority basis. So number five, it's the group. And we can see here that really didn't fund anything that much in here.

The last one that got some funding was gifts received and that was some birthday money that my wife and I received so that gets plopped in there and then if we spend from it, which we did, then that gets categorized that way.

Zach Whelchel (30:32)
Got it.

Got it. Okay. So that three 43 that you have sitting gifts received, are you going to move that to one of these fun items or do you just spend from that line and just don't categorize it beyond that?

Trevor Vance (30:51)
Yeah, I'm not too hung up on, you know, do I move it or do I spend directly from it? It's whichever way the wind blows for me on that particular time when I'm spending. Maybe I move it, maybe I don't. You know, what do I want to do?

Many times I'll think of it as what YNAB reflects reality and thus many times I'll just do the moving of the money to the appropriate category. And then I'll make a note in the memo field for that transaction that, okay, this was gift money.

Zach Whelchel (31:28)
Nice. Cool. Okay. Let's jump down to your category six or category group six. And you call this one future debt prevention, which I like this idea because basically what you're saying is like, these are all the things that I want to have money set aside for so that I don't go into debt in the future if any of these things happen. So you've got, you know, your generic emergency fund.

Trevor Vance (31:35)
Yeah.

Exactly right.

Zach Whelchel (31:50)
And then you've enumerated a ton of things that like feel like they could come from the emergency fund, but they're more specific. So if you want to just go through and maybe hit a few of these that are important to you, that would be good.

Trevor Vance (31:51)
huh.

Yep, yeah, I mean the emergency fund is the first category in that group. so along with it, and we'll see this in a moment, there's a note for that category that says there's restrictions on how to spend this money.

And then vet care, again, we've got a cat and so she needs veterinary care occasionally. So we want to save some money up for that. We recently lost a cat due to a disease and so we had to spend a lot of money for her for that. you know, not just, you know, the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, but also end of life care.

car maintenance. Hey, we all know that cars need maintenance. You know, whether it be new tires, whether it be oil changes, wiper blades, new battery, whatever it might be. So that gets funded for both our vehicles in this one category. And it's based on age of the vehicle and the model and

make and you know what the industry standards say as to how much you can expect to have to pay for those cars. Car replacement fund, well cars got to be replaced. I've been very blessed, fortunate that since budgeting I've been able to buy I want to say two cars for cash. Yeah, two cars for cash.

Zach Whelchel (33:38)
Wow, that's great.

Trevor Vance (33:40)
Yeah, amazingly. When I think about it say it out loud, it just blows my mind. Our electronics, they need to be replaced occasionally. Either they break or we just want something new. That's this category, or they need to be repaired. So just throw a few dollars a month into that.

whether it be a cell phone, laptop, TV, screen for the monitor, Roku box, whatever it might be. Household furnishings, decorations, maintenance, and appliances. Furnishings and decorations are kind of the same thing, but I think of the furnishings as a bigger item, like couches, tables.

Decorations are more the knick -knack type stuff. Place mats as an example. Furnishings might also be something like silverware, plates, things like that. Household maintenance, that's relatively obvious. Things that need to be fixed around the house.

And all three of these categories need to be funded much better, but circumstances are such that I can't fund those as fully as I want to right now. Household appliances, we've got a brand new house, so all the appliances are brand new. So not much to fund there.

Bicycling maintenance bicycle maintenance. We have a couple of bikes we enjoy Going on bike rides as part of our fitness and so They need to be maintained too. And so when we take bike to the bike shop, we need to have money to spend there

Our gifts category is for when we spend money for giving to others. Whether it be our grandkids, oops there's a clue, our grandkids or friends or know parents or siblings or whatever. You know if it's if we're spending money and gifting something to somebody that's what that is. School supplies.

Zach Whelchel (35:45)
You

Trevor Vance (36:00)
know grandkids need school supplies sometimes so we'll fund that. Obviously it's not funded right now so that might mean grandkids go without school supplies from us this year. Tax prep, gotta pay for filling out the forms for our taxes. And then of course federal taxes, gotta pay the taxes.

know the tax prep tells us how much we need to pay and hopefully our withholding amount was accurate enough to take care of that. In times past it wasn't so this category exists for a reason. And then we've got vehicle license tabs and

We live in a place where license tabs for our vehicles can be on the expensive side depending on where exactly you live within the state. Fortunately, we moved from a more expensive area to a less expensive area. And so this is a much easier dollar number to fund each month. Looks like I need to fund some money in there, but.

that'll be taken care of. Legal documents, we all need to have legal documents for one reason or another and we need to update those documents from time to time so that's what this is. And of course, driver's license renewals. Granted, those are every six years or so so we only need to put a couple dollars a month in there.

Zach Whelchel (37:39)
It looks like you two bucks towards it every month, so you're ready for it. That's great.

Trevor Vance (37:45)
Yeah, and this year was both of our renewals. So, and we had the money sitting there ready to roll. No stress. Granted, it wasn't that much, but it was still a no stress thing because, hey, the money's here.

Zach Whelchel (37:54)
Thanks.

Yeah, that's awesome. All right. For the next couple of screenshots of your budget here, I'm just going to kind of gloss over it just because I want to make sure we get down to the fun stuff, which is the probably the wish farm. I want to make sure we spend some time on that. So let me just talk about a couple of these and then we'll get down to the wish farm. You've got money set aside for passport renewals, earthquake insurance, evacuation, lodging, insurance, deductibles, moving. have a stuff I forgot to budget for and family needs.

Trevor Vance (38:22)
Yep.

Zach Whelchel (38:30)
The next category group you have is annual subscriptions for Dee's career. So I'm assuming this might be your wife's career. So these are some subscriptions that she uses. Next up, you've got annual subscriptions for Tee's career. So I'm gonna guess that's yours. And it looks like you've got LinkedIn premium and Zoom video conferencing. And then you've got annual subscriptions that are joint.

Trevor Vance (38:31)
Yep.

That's right.

That would be mine.

Zach Whelchel (38:57)
So in here you've got things like your Amazon Prime, your YNAB, your Brit box, your Costco membership. Okay. And then we get to the fun stuff. So there's a little bit here on vacation. So you've got airfare, lodging, baggage fees, food and fun, and then the wish farm. This is what I really want to give it to you because it's always fun to talk about what people are like hoping for or getting towards. So let's dive into a wish farm, which is category number nine for you, right? So this is lower on the priority list.

Trevor Vance (39:04)
Yeah.

Okay.

Zach Whelchel (39:26)
but it's still something that you probably want to work towards. So let's talk about these.

Trevor Vance (39:26)
Group number nine, yep.

Yeah. Well, mean, Artful Ashes is for taking some loved ones remains and turning them into art. It's a local company that does that. And my wife's father passed away a couple of years ago. And so we set aside some money in order to do that.

Zach Whelchel (39:43)
Okay.

Trevor Vance (39:54)
The next one is a curb ramp specifically for my car because I have a very low to the ground car. Not as low as some but low enough that if I don't go up the curb quite right then I'll hit bottom. We want to hit a Seahawks away game at some point.

Zach Whelchel (40:04)
Okay.

Trevor Vance (40:18)
probably going to be a San Francisco game, but could be in Arizona as well or maybe LA. We'll see. But at some point we want to do that.

Zach Whelchel (40:20)
Thanks.

Do the Seahawks do the London game or the Germany game? Aren't there a couple that are overseas each year?

Trevor Vance (40:36)
Yep, yep. They did Germany last year or the year before. And probably will do London in a couple years.

So if it's funded well enough, yeah, we'll go to one of those. That would be fun. The next two are pretty obvious, and then some vacation ideas and a brokerage account.

Zach Whelchel (40:59)
Cool. All right, well, the only other category group you have here is reimbursements. It looks like you break out your reimbursements five different ways, which is good so you can keep track of where this reimbursement is coming and going. I know reimbursements is kind of a whole thing in budgeting and how you keep track of that. So I like that you have it split up there. But I will sit.

Trevor Vance (41:16)
Yeah, yeah, we don't have that many, so.

Zach Whelchel (41:21)
Cool. Yeah, I will say though that this is category group number 10 and we're finally at the end of all your category groups. So we kind of brushed through some there towards the end, but I just want to say thank you for, you know, sharing your numbers, sharing your budget, talking a little bit. I feel like we've kind of learned a decent bit about you at this point. I'm going to guess that you live in Washington, but I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Maybe give us your name, what you do for work, where you live, like all those things. You can finally kind of introduce yourself here.

Trevor Vance (41:39)
Yeah. Nailed it.

Yep, yep, all true. So yes, my name is Trevor Vance and I live in the great state of Washington. I live north of Seattle by about 40, 45 miles in a suburb called Marysville. let's see, Seahawks fan. I think that was pretty obvious by some of the categories. And the...

As far as work goes, I'm currently unemployed, but my career choice has been as a service delivery manager, service help desk manager in the IT world. And I've also been able to learn some new skills as a budget coach, both for YNAB and for some new company called My Budget Coach. Have you heard of them?

Zach Whelchel (42:40)
I am familiar, yes.

Cool. Okay. Well, yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Like Trevor said, he is a budget coach himself also. So if budgeting is something that you are interested in, if hearing all of these categories and how Trevor and his wife have been like so prepared for everything and you know, when things come up for them, it's something they've already thought of. They have the money setting aside for it. They're ready for it. And that kind of peace of mind is just a game changer. So if you were interested in starting a budget,

Trevor Vance (43:09)
it is.

Zach Whelchel (43:10)
I'd recommend checking out my budget coach. I'd recommend checking out Trevor as a budget coach that you can work with there. And Trevor, I will give you one last chance to just give any kind of words of wisdom or advice to our audience as you are a coach yourself, there's anything you'd like to leave everybody with.

Trevor Vance (43:26)
The only words of advice I really care to give is just be intentional with your money. Give it a job. Tell it what to do. Don't let it tell you what it's doing. You tell it. You're the boss of your money. Tell it what to do. Be intentional.

Zach Whelchel (43:42)
Awesome. Yeah, I love that advice. And I feel like your budget has really exemplified that right? Like you have you haven't even broken down by your priorities and where it's going to go when you have it and all those things. So it was really fun to look at your numbers. Thanks for coming on the show and for everyone else. We'll see you next time.

Trevor Vance (43:57)
See ya.