Budget Breakdown: Episode 6 - Guest C.B.

Watch The Full Episode

‍

Listen To Full Episode

‍

C.B.'s Budget

‍

Full Transcript

‍
Zach Whelchel (00:00)
All right, welcome everyone to Budget Breakdown. This is the podcast where we get to know our guests, not by them introducing themselves, but instead looking at their numbers. So we get to look at their budget, their line items, their financial priorities, and try to guess kind of who they are based on those things. So we have a guest here with us today. Guest, I'll let you say hi, but don't give us too much information, because we don't want to know too much about you right now.

Guest C.B. (00:22)
All right, hi, happy to be here.

Zach Whelchel (00:25)
All right, so we know that you can say hi and that you're happy to be here. So those are our first clues. All right, so let's go ahead and dive right in. I guess I should introduce myself first. My name is Zach Welchel. I'm the founder of My Budget Coach and we're gonna go ahead and get started here. So I've got your budget pulled up here and this is gonna be a fun one. I'm very excited about your budget. So let's just start by talking about these category groups.

It looks like you've got maybe a dozen or so category groups here. The first one is called Serenity. So off of that, you know, we've got Serenity, Engine Room, Foodstuffs are problematic. So it looks like you have a lot of fun with your budget. So I'm curious, how did you pick these category groups and what do they mean?

Guest C.B. (01:11)
Great question. So they're grouped by kind of type of expense, right? Food or vehicles or kids or things like that. But to get my husband interested in the budget, I named them after our favorite TV show called Firefly, which is, if you know, you know, and if you don't, I'm sorry and go watch it. But it's a space western.

Zach Whelchel (01:31)
Nice.

Guest C.B. (01:41)
Right? They're outlaws, space in the future. And so each of the category groups and some of the categories within the groups are named using inspiration from that show, whether it's a famous quote or a character. Serenity is their spaceship that they live on. And that's the housing category. Right? So that's their home and that's my home. And Serenity sounds like a nice, calm, happy place to live.

Zach Whelchel (02:02)
Okay, awesome.

It really does. It sets a good tone. So I'm curious, are you a fan of just the show or are you a fan of the movie as well?

Guest C.B. (02:16)
All of the above. Also, anything that those actors do after that show. Also good.

Zach Whelchel (02:18)
Okay.

Okay, so this is like your guys' core thing. You guys love this.

Guest C.B. (02:27)
It was a formative, when we were dating, like in college, we watched it together. So yeah, we haven't rewatched in a while, but it was a formative part of our relationship, so.

Zach Whelchel (02:35)
That's cool.

That's awesome. Cool. Well, I love that you've incorporated into your budget. So I guess let's start with the first category group, which is serenity. And you said these are things about your house. So looks like your first line item is your mortgage in here and that's at 17 80 30 per month. So I'm curious. You, I guess you bought a house, you own a house, you have a mortgage.

Guest C.B. (02:57)
Yep.

We own a house, have a mortgage, and it is a big one, and I love the house, don't love the mortgage.

Zach Whelchel (03:11)
Okay, Property taxes. So you set aside property taxes separately, so do you not have them escrowed inside your mortgage then?

Guest C.B. (03:18)
Yeah, they're not escrowed. We did the math years ago and the amount that we have to pay out monthly to pay to the mortgage company when they escrow for us is a lot higher than the amount that we would have to set aside monthly to pay the things on time when they're due. because the mortgage company needs to have a cushion in the account or they do the math wrong or whatever. And so by doing it ourselves, our monthly savings rate.

Zach Whelchel (03:37)
interesting is that just because they're bad at.

Got it, okay, yeah.

Guest C.B. (03:48)
is lower than what we would have to send to them. And I get to earn money on it and my savings count in the meantime.

Zach Whelchel (03:51)
Okay, so you said...

Good for you. So you set aside, it looks like a thousand dollars every month for property taxes. That's yeah, that's a lot.

Guest C.B. (03:58)
It's ridiculous. I live in a state with very high property taxes because we have minimal other taxes.

Zach Whelchel (04:08)
Okay, okay, so that's another clue. You live in a high property tax state, okay. All right, so home insurance, it looks like you set aside $100 per month. So I guess, yeah, since it's not escrowed, you pay your insurance and your taxes separately.

Guest C.B. (04:10)
That is a big clue. High property cost of date.

Right, but we do that, that one's annual. So, because we get a much better deal by paying it annually. But I set aside monthly for it. And that's a rounded up number. Usually when we come to renew, like, I add another, you know, 10, 15 % on what we paid last year, so that when we come to renew, I'm not shocked when they raise our rates.

Zach Whelchel (04:25)
Okay.

Okay.

Got it, got it. That's good to pre -prepare for the disappointment that is insurance. Okay, cool. Next up we've got some bills. So we've got your electric, your heat, your septic, your water, your trash service. The electric is 300, the heat is 150, septic is 1390, water is 15 and trash service is 25. So septic tells me you probably live a little bit outside of a city maybe? I'm curious.

Guest C.B. (04:50)
Exactly. Yes, as always.

Yeah, well, actually, all of those past electric are all self -contained utilities. Our heat is a propane tank in the basement or a natural gas or oil tank in the basement, propane tank outside, because don't put gas in your house. Our septic is septic. Our water is a well. Trash service is trash service. That's always exterior. But I've lived in places before where trash service was part of your property taxes, right? It was a town authorized or town.

Zach Whelchel (05:42)
Wow. So they don't even give you that. They give you really high property taxes and they make you pay for trash separately.

Guest C.B. (05:46)
And they use them. And wait till they get to the bottom, we also pay for our snow plowing. yeah, all of those. So heat and septic and water are not monthly bills. Those are places where I'm saving up for when we need them. the heat. Go ahead.

Zach Whelchel (05:57)
Okay.

So what do you? go ahead.

Guest C.B. (06:04)
No, the heat comes, there's a tank in the basement and they refill it whenever they think it's getting low based on what the weather's been like and things like that. So in the winter, it gets refilled every month, month and a half. And then the rest of the year, probably from like March to November, it gets filled once over that time period. And then it's a couple hundred each time they fill it.

Zach Whelchel (06:31)
Interesting. Okay, and then the water, I'm curious if it's a well, like what is the cost there?

Guest C.B. (06:35)
Why am I paying anything for my water? There's a water filtration system in our basement. So the well brings it up, but then the previous homeowners put it in. So not all well people have that. But we have to put salt in this bin for like softening the water. And there's like a UV light that has to get replaced once a year. It's like a hundred bucks.

Zach Whelchel (06:38)
Yeah.

Got it, okay.

got it and I guess that just kind of kills any germs or whatever.

Guest C.B. (07:00)
So the $15 or whatever in there covers both those things when they come up. the salt is every few months, the light is once a year. Like, it's not lot lower than a water bill for actual water.

Zach Whelchel (07:13)
Yeah, okay, cool. Well, the last two categories you've got here are Cargo and Matters to People on the Rim. So Cargo is $50 and Matters to People on the Rim is $20 and I'm very curious what these are. These must be on theme.

Guest C.B. (07:27)
These are on theme. These are both my household goods categories, essentially. Cargo is like durable goods, right? If we buy, you know, a lamp or pots for the kitchen or whatever. And then matters to people in the rim. So in the show, the rim is like the outer planets, farther away from the central part of the galaxy.

And so it's harder for them to get basic supplies. And so this is things like toilet paper and batteries and shampoo that I imagine the people in the room would have a hard time getting. we need all of the time.

Zach Whelchel (07:58)
Okay.

That's awesome. I imagine you like buying something very obscure and then you and your husband having an argument over whether that's something that would be actually hard for people in the room to procure or not.

Guest C.B. (08:21)
Exactly. It's very important to categorize things carefully based on future hypothetical worlds.

Zach Whelchel (08:26)
Yes. Yes, yes. Awesome. Okay, cool. So let's hear Serenity category groups. So let's move on down. We've got the engine room category group next and that's internet, cell service and streaming services. So internet, you've got it 59 .99, cell service you got 45 and streaming services at 39 .74. So I'm trying to think if I could guess what streaming services you have based on that rate, but I'm probably not gonna try.

Guest C.B. (08:52)
At least on the price. Yeah, well, it varies sometimes. But it's a Netflix, Disney, and then assorted like the other kind of five dollars or so kind of fluctuates between whichever one we're watching at the moment.

Zach Whelchel (09:12)
Yeah, there are so many streaming services. We tried to watch Anne of Green Gables with the children this past week and there's like an exclusive like gazebo .tv or something. It was like an exclusive streaming service for like period old films like that or something. So.

Guest C.B. (09:17)
Yes!

That's hilarious. Yeah, so every once in we'll do a new one for a month or two and then switch it off and get a different one. But always know Disney.

Zach Whelchel (09:36)
Nice. Okay, okay, cool. And then internet, do you have anything like special, if you're kind of outside of the city or is it just normal?

Guest C.B. (09:43)
no, I'm actually, we just recently, we switched internet and we got fiber, which was amazing to me living where we do. was like, how is this an option? It's a brand new company that does not like not widely broadly available. but so we finally have choices in our internet provider, which worked out perfectly because my previous provider, you know, we ran out of promo rate and

Zach Whelchel (09:54)
Wow.

Guest C.B. (10:11)
we had to shop around and there was actually shopping around to do. So that was great. We have cyber internet out in the boonies.

Zach Whelchel (10:16)
That's great.

Are you one of those people that like, takes advantage of promos and then switches services once that's out? It seems like you're pretty savvy at those things.

Guest C.B. (10:26)
yeah. I mean, usually I just call them up and complain and then they just give me the promo rate again. So I don't have to switch, but I'm, I'm open to switching. Although the cell service was a pain to switch this last time. Cause that, yeah.

Zach Whelchel (10:34)
Nice.

Okay. Are you on like a family plan or like what do you guys do there to try to save?

Guest C.B. (10:46)
Also, we had our cell phone with our internet company that then jacked up our rates. So we had to switch our cell phones away. We switched them to the new internet company, who is not good at cell service yet. So then we had to switch them again, all within this last summer. And it was not fun. And then they wouldn't release my husband's phone number and it was a whole thing. So I am now not going to switch ever again.

Zach Whelchel (11:04)
Yeah that doesn't sound fun.

Yeah, that's not fun.

Okay

Guest C.B. (11:15)
But we do try to do because we don't use very many gigs we try not to get Drawn in by the unlimited data nonsense because both of us are on Wi -Fi most of the time and so we

Zach Whelchel (11:26)
Okay.

Okay, so that's another hint. guys are close to Wi -Fi. That's a hint, perhaps.

Guest C.B. (11:34)
Yeah. Yeah, we are. And, and so, yeah, we try to do like buy the gig and just to get like three or five gigs a month each and, and pay it that way. And that keeps the cost down.

Zach Whelchel (11:48)
Okay cool, next up we've got foodstuffs are problematic, so that's a category group, and I'm assuming this has got to be something on theme as well, is this a line from the show?

Guest C.B. (11:55)
This is on the... Yeah, there's a scene in the show where one of the characters is eating some sort of food on a stick like it's a like a fishing pole. So it's like, did you ever play that game with the donuts on a string at like a fair when you were a kid and you try to eat the donut off the string? It's like that. And she makes a comment that it's problematic. And food is problematic because it's expensive. So I thought it was a...

Zach Whelchel (12:06)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

It is indeed. Okay, so you've got groceries at $1 a month. You've got Mudders Milk at Work Food, okay, which is $80 a month. And then Bao, B -A -U, which is $200 a month. So I'm curious what this breakdown is.

Guest C.B. (12:28)
Also on team.

Yep.

So groceries are groceries, that's obvious. Mudder's Milk is also from the show, think ancient Egypt, where they would feed them like beer with bread in it, right? So they get all the calories and also a little bit drunk. There's a planet in the show where they feed them fortified alcohol, to keep the workers placid.

Zach Whelchel (12:49)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Guest C.B. (13:05)
So we use that for at work food, because that's what they feed the workers. So that's the vending machine at work and things like that. And then bao is like special treats food. So in futuristic firefly land, Chinese is the other language that kind of survived the future, right? So mostly it's in English, but they they swear in Chinese. And then so there are some phrases.

Zach Whelchel (13:10)
Got it, okay, okay.

okay.

Guest C.B. (13:34)
So bao is like, they mostly eat just like basic like protein bar kind of thing. And then bao is like actual food. And so this is like restaurant. This is takeout. is somebody else's made yummy food and I didn't have to buy groceries.

Zach Whelchel (13:44)
Got it. So this is like eating out essentially.

Nice, nice. Okay, so your eating out is pretty low for the month and you have $200 a month, so you guys are pretty good about that.

Guest C.B. (13:59)
Yes, and actually this is high for us. When our kids were smaller, we were at like $40 a month for eating out. But that was also like pre -pandemic when prices were a little bit lower. But one of the things that helped us is we went through a period of time when we only had one car as a family and my husband was working second shift. So he was gone from like

Zach Whelchel (14:05)
Okay.

Whoa, wow.

Sure.

Okay.

Guest C.B. (14:28)
three to midnight. And I could not go anywhere during that time. And so you cannot go out to eat if you cannot go out. Like pre pandemic like Uber Eats and stuff were not really a huge thing yet. Right at that time period, you could get pizza delivered. And you could sometimes get like Chinese food delivered but like I just didn't. So it made it easy to build

Zach Whelchel (14:34)
Yeah, that would really...

Yeah, that would help.

Guest C.B. (14:56)
a family culture where we don't do a lot of eating out. But food has gotten more expensive. And one of my kids is particularly interested in restaurant foods. we're upping the budget a little bit.

Zach Whelchel (15:00)
Yeah, that's great.

Okay, cool. Okay, so it sounds like you have kids as well. Multiple, I heard a plural in there. okay. All right, so the next category group is find a crew. So I guess your crew might be your children then. We've got classes with all sorts of emojis in here for 200. We've got outings, which currently has zero in it. We have education materials, $50 a month. Digital subscriptions, $10 a month. Kids closing.

Guest C.B. (15:16)
Well, you did. There was a floral in there.

Speaking of kids.

Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (15:42)
clothing $75 a month and kids pets at $25 a month.

Guest C.B. (15:47)
Yep. Yeah, so there's a phrase in the show that's find a crew, find a job, keep flying. So that's the next few category groups is following that kind of tagline from the show. It's like in the intro thing, right? That's what you need to do as a pirate outlaw in space. So the crew, so classes, ninja, not ninja, karate, looks like a ninja to me, the guy doing a flip.

Zach Whelchel (15:57)
Okay.

Guest C.B. (16:18)
And voice lessons and theater are the three that are happening right now in our lives. And this one is interesting because the payment cycles for those things are all very different. so figuring out what I should be putting in there per month to make sure I have what I need when I need it is difficult. Because right now we have three different plays starting over the like

between September and October. So have to pay three semester long theater fees within a month and a half. And then I don't have to pay anything again until like February for any theater, anything. So, and then, but then there's other things that are monthly or weekly and.

Zach Whelchel (17:06)
Have you thought about breaking these out into separate line items so can easier track it or you just like it having it together?

Guest C.B. (17:12)
I have considered it, but it changes often enough that like, then I feel like I have a bunch of categories, you know? If I make a category every time a kid tries a new activity, there would be too many. So if these things persist for like a year, then I might, you know, give them their own.

Zach Whelchel (17:23)
Sure.

Sure.

Okay, your kids, it sounds like they might be in that stage where they're really like exploring and trying different things and trying to figure out what might stick for the long haul.

Guest C.B. (17:43)
Yes, and these ones, the current things have stuck for a little while, but we've definitely, we still have a lot of like, maybe I want to try aerial silks, maybe I want to try piano, maybe I want to try soccer or baseball or, so yeah, we're trying lots of things. The current set of things seems pretty solid, but I think there's still some other testing things out to do.

Zach Whelchel (18:07)
Okay, aerial silks is an option for your children where you live? Wow. Wow, okay.

Guest C.B. (18:10)
Yeah, that is a thing. I know. I know. Very cool. I could not do it. And actually she changed her mind. She does not want to try it now. But it was for a little while we were looking. Outings, outings has zero dollars in it right now because we have been using library passes to go to different museums and things. So a lot of times you can go to your library and they will give you

Zach Whelchel (18:23)
Okay, that's cool.

Guest C.B. (18:38)
a pass that's either free admission for a certain number of people or half off to various local museums and things. And we just did a big aquarium visit that was only half off last month. So now I'm trying to do free things next month because half off the aquarium is still a lot of

Zach Whelchel (18:59)
Sure. Awesome. That's cool.

Guest C.B. (19:00)
Yeah, and yeah, the other stuff is educational.

homeschool, here's a clue. So educational materials is anything from books to paper to printer ink to math manipulatives or science kits or whatever. It's lower right now than I wish it was, but we're trying to make use of our library and other free resources because coming up as they get older...

Zach Whelchel (19:08)
There's a clue, yeah.

Guest C.B. (19:33)
there's gonna be more expensive tools. So I'm trying to keep it low at the moment and then try to build it up. Digital subscriptions is in that same kind of world of like, we'll subscribe to a learning website for a little while and then switch to another one and then use a free one. And so that's a lot of that kind of stuff as well.

Zach Whelchel (19:41)
Cool, I'm curious.

I'm with the homeschooling, you follow like a, like do you have like a set purchased curriculum that you use and so you know the fixed cost of it or are you kind of like, you know, building this kind of yourself with different tools that you put together?

Guest C.B. (20:09)
We build it ourselves with different tools depending on what they're learning at any particular moment. So I don't know the cost, which is challenging. But I'm also have a lot more control over the cost. In seasons like right now where I've just paid a bunch of theater fees, then I buy less extra stuff. And then in the winter, when there's fewer activities, I might buy more, you know, do at home science stuff or whatever.

Zach Whelchel (20:18)
Sure.

Yes, that's true.

Guest C.B. (20:35)
Yeah. Clothing, pets, kids pets. We've gone through a couple of different pets or like not even like getting tadpoles from the pond and raising them into frogs and putting them back, right? But then you need some more, a tank and some food, right? So it's really anything that's not a family pet is in there. Recently we've adopted a pair of cats. And so that's where...

Zach Whelchel (20:50)
Okay.

Got it, okay.

Guest C.B. (21:03)
That's where I'm calling them the kids pets so that they're not because because there they are and then we'll see what happens who who actually bonds with the cat.

Zach Whelchel (21:14)
Yes, classic, All right, cool. Let's move on to the next category group here, which is the find a job. So like you said, there was like the find a crew, find a job, keep flying. So I guess this is the middle part of that. So here we've got reimbursable, we've got allowance holding, and then we've got thing one, thing two, and thing three, and there's little children emojis there. So I'm assuming that's something to do with the children. do they work the fields?

Guest C.B. (21:25)
the middle part of that.

Those are the children. Yes, although you need to update those. I need to update those emojis. One of them's a baby in the emoji and he's not in real life. So reimbursable is really just anything that is coming in and going out and has nothing to with me. My brother gifted us a PlayStation a while ago and sometimes accidentally buys things on his PlayStation, but uses my card that's attached to the PlayStation that he gave us. And then he sends me money, right?

Zach Whelchel (22:04)
Okay. Nice.

Guest C.B. (22:06)
Random things. And it just lives there because I don't know where else that category should live. So there it is. And then allowance holding. So I budget monthly, but I want my children to receive allowance weekly. So I budget at the beginning of the month to the allowance holding category. And then I can distribute from there each week to their individual categories. And I actually have that set up in my budget so it's automated.

There's a repeating transaction that moves the money for me from one category to the other. And so it goes into the thing, one thing, two thing, three. And then later on, you'll find there's a similar thing, one thing, two thing, three giving categories. So when they get their allowance, part of it goes into their category for spending and part of it goes into their giving category. And then when holidays come up, they can buy gifts for me.

Zach Whelchel (22:38)
nice.

Nice, nice.

Guest C.B. (23:03)
I only make them buy gifts for people who live in our house. So, yeah. And we help them buy gifts for outside family and birthday parties and stuff.

Zach Whelchel (23:07)
Okay, okay.

Okay, so I'm curious, it sounds like you include your kids in your budgeting experience. So what does that look like? Do they have access to this in somehow, themselves? Are they always asking you what their numbers are? How do you incorporate kids into your budgeting, essentially?

Guest C.B. (23:30)
They're always asking me because I want them to learn to budget. I want them to have the experience of knowing that money is finite and knowing that if you want to buy something, you have to have money for it and then you buy it, right? But I also don't want to be constantly having cash laying around that they're gonna lose or moving money between accounts or anything like that.

The money stays in my bank account and the budget tracks how much of that money is theirs. And so anyway, and then there's a widget on my phone so I can pull up just their categories. So they come up and ask or they can even, they know the code on my phone. They can open the phone and check themselves. But it's also, the other reason I do it this way is most of their purchases,

Zach Whelchel (24:10)
Nice, okay.

Guest C.B. (24:22)
are digital, right? Whether they're buying a video game or if they're ordering something from Amazon, they don't do a lot of purchasing in person. And so, it's way easier if I'm spending the money digitally, because they can't, they're children, if I can just have it go out of their category in the budget. So it works pretty good. And they even, when they were smaller,

Zach Whelchel (24:39)
Sure.

Nice. Cool.

Guest C.B. (24:47)
Still, but when they were smaller it was really nice because we would practice the idea of like, okay, the game I want is $30. How many weeks do I have to wait to buy that game? And we get to build in some math.

Zach Whelchel (25:00)
Love it.

Love it. That's awesome. Yeah. My four year old is, is very curious about math. And I think it's all because we've been trying to teach them out of budget. so like adding numbers becomes very crucial when you want to buy that $10 thing at Walmart and you've got to save up for it. So that's great.

Guest C.B. (25:16)
Well, and even when they were super small, we started budgeting when my oldest two were five and three, and with this kind of a tool. And so at that three year old age, it was really just like at target, what number is bigger, right? I have $5 in my budget. This thing says six on it. Which number is bigger? that bigger or smaller? Like it's very basic math things. And then now like my oldest

Zach Whelchel (25:32)
Yeah.

Is that bigger or?

Guest C.B. (25:46)
both of them can calculate tips, right? So like all the math when you're budgeting, they don't do a lot of tipping, but I'm I'm calculating my tips.

Zach Whelchel (25:50)
Great.

That's great.

Nice. Okay, let's move on to the keep flying. Okay, so here we've got the New York time games at $3 and 33 cents per month. We've got MLB TV at 1250, adult clothing at $50, spending money at $40, sanity at $20, Kickstarter is $50, coaching expenses is $5, generosity at $10, and Domino, a cat at $30. a dog.

Guest C.B. (26:22)
That's a dog. That's a dog emoji. It's just very small. Emojis are tricky. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (26:26)
Sorry. Yeah, the emojis are tricky. Okay. So some of these are kind of self -explanatory, but I'll let you kind of pick a few that you want to dive in and share anything about.

Guest C.B. (26:35)
Yeah, so keep flying is the end of that phrase, right? And this is all of our like adult joy kind of items, right? New York Times Games, we do the crossword together daily on the iPad app. We are at a streak now of 400 something days in a row.

Zach Whelchel (26:48)
Nice.

Wow, well done.

Guest C.B. (26:57)
I So we pay the annual fee to have the games at so that we can do the crossword. And yeah, anyway, my husband watches baseball, so we subscribe to MLB TV, but we that's another one we pay annually because it's cheaper. We save up each month and then because there's there's there's still baseball now. But soon there won't be, I think. I don't know. It's hard to remember when all the Fistboards.

Zach Whelchel (27:03)
Sure.

Guest C.B. (27:26)
all is.

Zach Whelchel (27:27)
I know that the football sports ball has started, so I'm assuming that means the baseball sports ball will end soon.

Guest C.B. (27:30)
Yes.

Probably. I think it's a thing. Anyway, so spending money in Kickstarter are basically this it like spending money is me and then Kickstarter is my husband because that's really all he spends money on is board games and Kickstarter He enjoys he enjoys board games quite a bit. There are many many shelves full of board games in my home So but he only gets $50 a month so takes a while in order to buy a board game

Zach Whelchel (27:48)
Love it.

Guest C.B. (28:02)
Domino is the dog. Domino's the dog. 15 and a half, this dog. She is very old. And she has been the most inexpensive pet in the world. And I suspect that that is not going to continue for too much longer. That as she gets older, she's going to have more expenses. So I'm trying to build that category up for her so we can help her out in her old age.

Zach Whelchel (28:07)
Wow, okay.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Kickstarter. That's awesome. I'm a big board game fan as well, but I don't really do the Kickstarter board games too often. I've got a friend who does, he always brings a new Kickstarter game and we play it. So that's cool here.

Guest C.B. (28:36)
Yes, well, we already own all of the not Kickstarter games is the vibe that I get from. We already have all the mainstream. I mean, we don't really have a lot of mainstream stuff, but yeah. And he wants board games for gifts. So if there are games that are readily available out in the world, he will ask for those for gifts and then spend his money on the Kickstarter one.

Zach Whelchel (28:41)
Got it. So you've like burned through all the mainstream. you, you've, you've gotten.

Sure, sure. So you've got nowhere else to go.

Nice, nice.

Guest C.B. (29:02)
which kind of makes sense, I guess.

Zach Whelchel (29:03)
All right, our next category group here is shuttles. And this is things like fuel at $200 a month, parking and tolls at 80 a month, Cooper registration at 1167, Odyssey registration at 1792, and car insurance at 8248. So looks to be all of your transportation costs.

Guest C.B. (29:23)
Yep, pretty much. are shuttle in the show. They have shuttles on their ship that they fly around to go do things. Our fuel costs have gone crazy. My husband got a new job that is further away. His commute got longer. And even though he drives the Mini Cooper, which is very small, it's still a lot of gas. So, and, and, the parking and tolls. that $80 a month is also due to his commute.

Zach Whelchel (29:42)
Yeah.

Guest C.B. (29:51)
We used to be spending less than $20 a month, even though there is one toll road that's like 50 cents on our, like, not daily, but go through it with some regularity, my route. But we learned a couple of months into his new job that tolls are reimbursable from his employer. I know. So I budget the $80 a month, but then we get it back.

Zach Whelchel (30:13)
Hey -o.

Guest C.B. (30:18)
from the employer, I budget it ahead of time and then, because who knows how long that's going to take to submit.

Zach Whelchel (30:26)
Alright, so you live in one of those states that charges you to drive on their roads. So that's a clue as well. My state doesn't do that very much, so.

Guest C.B. (30:29)
I do.

Yes, we like to charge people to drive on the roads. And in particular, the road that he drives to go to work is one of the high toll. Yeah, well, it's, there's a reason for that. There's a reason that that one is a high toll. But I well, it's, you can drive through our state quite quickly by driving along this road.

Zach Whelchel (30:41)
Yeah, they just like picked that one.

Now I'm curious.

Okay. Okay.

Guest C.B. (31:00)
So we would like to collect tolls from the people that passing through.

Zach Whelchel (31:03)
Got it.

Guest C.B. (31:03)
And so there's a toll boot and he happens to have to drive that same road to get to his work.

Zach Whelchel (31:08)
Okay, so your state is very narrow at some point I'm gathering as well.

Guest C.B. (31:10)
Yes, it is very narrow at some point.

Zach Whelchel (31:14)
I feel like we might be at the point where discerning listeners might be able to put all this all together, but we'll see.

Guest C.B. (31:18)
There's some, our location has some distinctive features that impact our budget for sure.

Zach Whelchel (31:25)
Okay, okay. Yeah. The aerial silks might be, you know, that's pretty strong too. Aerial silks. Yeah. Okay. So, anything else on here that's worth talking about, or do you want to go ahead and

Guest C.B. (31:31)
Yeah, Yeah.

No, I mean, here's another clue for the discerning listener. Both of the car registrations we just paid last month, because in our state, they are paid in your birthday month. And we both have August birthdays. So for the discerning listener, car registration was just due annually last month on our birthday. Thank you. Good month.

Zach Whelchel (31:46)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay, well happy birthday to you both then. Okay, cool. So the next category group here is the, it's called Earth That Was, you know, says seasonal there as well. So you've got things like the Pool Punch Pass for 25 a month, the Fort Foster Pass for $10 a month, Snow Plowing for $50 a month, HOA.

which is due in November and February at 139 .67 and lawn and garden at $20 a month. So I'm guessing Earth It Was is celebrating the Earth. Is the Earth dead in this show or is it still alive?

Guest C.B. (32:40)
The Earth is not still alive in this show. But they luckily learned how to terraform the other planets before it went. They don't explain too much about what happened to the Earth, but they talk about Earth that was in historical references. And I figure Earth has seasons, and so I'll my seasonal stuff in there. Yep.

Zach Whelchel (32:53)
Okay.

Nice, love it.

So, pull punch pass, I guess you guys go swimming. What is Fort Foster? Is that a beach?

Guest C.B. (33:10)
We do.

It's a beach. beach and like, park grass, whatever. They only charge you to go in in the summertime. So you it's like a free park most of the year. And then in the summer, you have to pay to get in. And then you can swim, which is fun.

Zach Whelchel (33:21)
Huh, okay.

Alright, snow plowing, 50 bucks, tell me about that one.

Guest C.B. (33:32)
So that and the HOA right below it are related. We happen to live on one of the few roads in our town that is not a town -owned road. The people who built our small neighborhood apparently made them private roads, which I think was a poor choice on their part, but I was not in charge of that. I just bought the house. So we have an HOA and the HOA, the only reason we have an HOA is

from road maintenance. And it's any road repairs that happen, and then it's also paying for plowing in the wintertime because our roads do not get plowed by the town. We have to hire a plow company. So go ahead.

Zach Whelchel (34:04)
Okay.

So what are the, I'm curious, what are the perks of that? Cause like the downside is like the city doesn't do like those services, but what are the perks? Like why would you want to have? Okay.

Guest C.B. (34:20)
There is zero perks. I honestly I have no idea what the perks are and we have been trying lately as an HOA to get the town to just buy our road or something. I don't know. don't know.

Zach Whelchel (34:33)
Huh, do you pay less taxes because of that? Like, because it's not a...

Guest C.B. (34:37)
No, you would think. This is the other thing is there's people at the state level who are fighting to say if you live on a private road, your property taxes should be adjusted accordingly. And that hasn't happened yet either. There are no perks. This is why it was a poor choice. I don't know why they decided to do that. So we pay whatever amount of money to the HOA.

Zach Whelchel (34:55)
Interesting.

Huh, okay.

Guest C.B. (35:05)
annually and the HOA uses that money to pay the snowplow company, but that's just to plow the roads. And then the snow plowing is for our own driveway. We can either pay the same company the HOA hires to plow our driveway or we can hire somebody else. I do not like shoveling snow.

Zach Whelchel (35:16)
Okay.

Don't you have thing one, thing two, and thing three, Aren't they?

Guest C.B. (35:30)
I do, but they are not awake in time to clear the driveway to get to work. See, because we homespool so we can sleep in.

Zach Whelchel (35:34)
You got it. Got it.

Nice, love it.

Guest C.B. (35:41)
They do clear, they do the like the path to the door and stuff like that. They clear the pedestrian areas. But they don't do the driveway. And the last couple of winters, it's not been too bad. The company that HOA uses charges a flat fee for the winter, regardless of how much it snows. And then they'll plow anytime it snows. Other people will charge a per storm fee.

Zach Whelchel (35:48)
Nice, nice.

okay.

Guest C.B. (36:10)
and then they charge you just any time they have to come out. And I've done the math the last two years and I come out ahead on a per storm fee, but it's a risk, right? Because if there's a lot of storms, then you might end up paying more than you did with a flat fee. But the last couple years, it's worked out for me. So.

Zach Whelchel (36:20)
It is a risk, okay.

Interesting.

Could you run like historical data on that and look at like the past 10 or 20 years or whatever with like.

Guest C.B. (36:31)
We talked, yes, we did. The HOA did that and then for whatever reason did not follow what their own data said. So I used their data and made the other choice.

Zach Whelchel (36:40)
Your HOA is rather puzzling to me. It seems like they consistently make the wrong choices. Are you involved in the HOA, Annie? Are you gonna form a coup and take over and...

Guest C.B. (36:50)
I successfully avoided becoming involved. We recently had HOA, there's only eight houses, it's a very small HOA. And the president moved away. And so we had to elect a new president. And it was a high risk situation because there's not that many of us. And I avoided it because I do not want that responsibility.

Zach Whelchel (36:56)
Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, the politics must be intense.

Guest C.B. (37:19)
Yeah, yeah, it's, Anyway, so yeah, you pay for snow plowing, because I do not like snow plowing. And so far, it's been a good investment. And let's hope that it stays that way.

Zach Whelchel (37:23)
All right.

Nice. All right, well, let's go ahead and move down to the next category group, which is the we're drifting cat or we're drift in with an apostrophe. So we've got technology at 30 bucks, car maintenance and repair at 50, home maintenance at 20, furnace and AC at 50 and appliances and furniture at 50. So I'm guessing the furnace and AC are just like saving up for when you need to replace those eventually or repairs. Okay.

Guest C.B. (37:38)
Drift in.

Or repairs. And actually that's another example of self -contained stuff, right? We don't pay heating. Like the furnace is connected to the oil tank in the basement, right? It's all whatever. I mean, everybody's AC is self -contained. But I put it down here instead of up there because it's even less predictable than those expenses. Like our water, like I said, like it's an annual UV light or whatever.

But both our furnace and our AC have broken in the last six to eight months. And so they both recently had to have repairs. Luckily, we did not have to replace either one of them. But yeah, they had some expensive repairs. And our furnace is also our water heater. So it's a pretty important part of our house.

Zach Whelchel (38:45)
All right, well, we've got three category groups left here and they are all interesting names. So I'm gonna let you kind of pick and choose some of the categories that you wanna talk about in here, but that the category groups are called Simon, Niska and Shindigs. Shindigs, I feel like I can understand that one, but Simon and Niska, I'm curious.

Guest C.B. (39:05)
Yeah.

So Simon is the medic on the spaceship. He's the doctor. And so this is all of the doctory things, therapy and medication and dental and speech therapy and all of the stuff. Which that category group amounts is weird right now because we, my husband has a lovely potpourri of brain differences and

Zach Whelchel (39:12)
Okay, nice.

Guest C.B. (39:35)
that are medicated and I mean, therapy, psychiatrist medication, we've got the whole stuff covered. But because of that, we've hit our deductible this year. So those categories don't need funding right now, but also we have an HSA account that is on budget, because I like to track what we're spending on, whether, because when we shop around for our insurance, I wanna know.

Zach Whelchel (39:46)
Okay.

Guest C.B. (40:01)
do we care, how much do we care about the medication coverage versus the specialist visit coverage versus whatever. So I like it broken down. So those categories are getting funded because the HSA gets funding every month. And so that has to be in a medical category. But other than that, I won't be funding them right now because we've met our deductible for the year. Speech therapy is funded very high right now because...

My son goes to speech therapy at a local university, which doesn't use insurance, and it's way cheaper than private speech therapy. So that is our fee, well -ish. It's on a sliding scale, but 150 -ish, I have to look at it again. I'm about to owe for the semester. So I'll pay for the whole semester, and I did not successfully save up for that ahead of time over the summer.

So I budgeted all right now, but Then we're good for the semester, right? So that's not a monthly and then theoretically I start saving up and pay the the fee. It's also it's only 150 bucks for a semester. So Sometimes I just budget it all at once. It's super cheap Like it's maximum is a sliding scale the high end is 600 Which is like $25 an hour which is crazy to me because

Zach Whelchel (41:10)
Yeah, I feel like that's really.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

Guest C.B. (41:24)
Regular private speech therapy is $100 for 30 minutes.

Zach Whelchel (41:28)
Goodness, wow.

Guest C.B. (41:29)
Yeah, so that one's funded high right now, but it's also like super cheap in the grand scheme of things in my mind. And then Niska is in the show, the kind of loan sharky character. There's an issue where the main characters owe him some money and he's a little bit mean about it. And so that's our student loans.

Zach Whelchel (41:46)
Okay.

Guest C.B. (41:57)
which are both at zero right now. We're both in the kind income -based repayment mess at the moment. His, our, mine aren't, I don't know. Because there's a current legal situation where everybody's student loans on the save plan are on hold, on forbearance temporarily, while they sort out whatever nonsense in the courts.

Zach Whelchel (42:01)
Thanks.

Wow, okay.

Guest C.B. (42:19)
Mine are on zero dollars because on an income -based repayment plan, that's how much the government thinks we can afford. And I'm going to agree with them on that. So I'm paying zero dollars a month and it counts towards forgiveness. So we've got a handful more years. We'll see if that works out. And then one of our credit cards annual fee. Sapphire is the only card we have that has an annual fee.

Zach Whelchel (42:28)
Sure, yeah, sounds great.

That's awesome.

Okay. Yeah. The Sapphire at only a 7 92 per month.

Guest C.B. (42:45)
And I got it for travel points purposes, but we do not travel as much as we would like. And so I might downgrade it to something else before the next annual fee. It's not due again until June. So I'm kind of waiting and deciding. But shindigs is, right, celebrations, parties, holidays, that kind of thing. There is a shindig. There's a whole episode called shindig where there's a big party in Firefly.

Zach Whelchel (42:56)
Okay.

Nice.

Guest C.B. (43:13)
so there's each of the kids giving categories that we talked about before. gifts, which is gifts to anyone outside our house for birthdays or special occasions, right? Graduation or whatever. holidays that are not Christmas, the little emojis, right? Things are Halloween and Valentine's day and fourth of July, whatever. So buying costumes and candy and fireworks.

all the kids birthdays and then adult August celebrations like I we both have August birthdays and our anniversary in August so I just do one category and then some years we do three different things and some years we do one bigger thing and we just kind of wait and decide when it happens and then Christmas and then travel which is getting no funding right now because there is none to go around so we are just not traveling at the moment

Zach Whelchel (43:46)
Nice.

Wow, okay.

Life.

Nice. Okay. Well, that's the last category. So we made it all the way through. This was super fun. I've never seen somebody break up their budget by a theme like this. And I think like you said that, you know, this was a way initially to get your like husband like interested in it, but like, it sounds like you guys have really like, I don't know, owned this, made it your own, made it something that's fun. And I love that. So well done on that.

Guest C.B. (44:11)
Is it?

Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, getting getting on the same page with the budget is pretty critical in my experience. And making it not seem scary and bad is an important part of that, especially with my husband's lovely brain cocktail of anxiety and whatever. Making the budget nice and friendly and

Zach Whelchel (44:54)
Sure, yeah, that's awesome.

Guest C.B. (44:58)
humorous helps him not be scared of it.

Zach Whelchel (45:00)
Love it. Okay. Well, this is the part of the show where you can finally tell us like your name and where you live and what you do and all those things. So you've made it to the end. You get to finally introduce yourself. So go for it.

Guest C.B. (45:11)
Hooray! I'm Celia. I homeschool my children in New Hampshire, which has that tiny little bit of seacoast. You can go from Massachusetts to Maine in like 30 minutes if there's no traffic. But New Hampshire feels strongly that we need to keep our our bit of coastline. I teach budgeting with my budget coach as well as other places.

Zach Whelchel (45:19)
I'm sure there it is.

Guest C.B. (45:40)
I do other kind of financial stuff, right? I've done bookkeeping for a homeschool co -op and that kind of thing. And yeah, I ever since I used to be a teacher and so transitioning from teaching to stay at home parent because teachers do not can paid enough money is how I learned to budget.

because I was like, I need to figure out how to make this work because it doesn't work as a teacher. Like two kids in childcare costs more than teachers make. Even more than teachers make gross salary, let alone net. And yeah, so I've been freelancing and wearing 10 different hats at a time for the last 12 years.

Zach Whelchel (46:11)
Yeah, that is crazy.

Guest C.B. (46:25)
So, and so my kids are 14 and 12 and eight. It wasn't until the 12th came along that I had to leave teaching.

Zach Whelchel (46:26)
Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, that's crazy that like you effectively saved money by stopping working.

Guest C.B. (46:36)
Yeah, yeah, the 12 year old is overhearing me. That leaving working was her fault. But yeah, no, it's crazy. mean, we did the math and it shouldn't have worked. My husband was not making enough at the time that we should have been able to handle that. But we didn't really have a choice because me continuing teaching also didn't work. so we we made it work and and budgeting is a huge part of that.

Zach Whelchel (46:37)
Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, well it sounds like you guys have crafted a life that you want, right? Like you've got kind of the lifestyle choices you have and all that besides your terrible HOA. maybe fix that at some point, but besides that, sounds like you've crafted a life that works for you guys, which is awesome. Cool, okay. Well.

Guest C.B. (47:10)
Yeah.

Working. Yeah. Yep. Awesome.

Zach Whelchel (47:25)
I usually give, so, you know, we should mention you are a budget coach yourself, right? So like if anybody is listening to this episode and they're interested in starting a budget, like Celia's or like, you know, anybody else that keeps a budget, maybe that you've listened to some other episodes as well. Celia is a coach on my budget coach. She is an excellent coach. She would love to help you kind of figure out how to make a budget for yourself and your family. Probably make it fun. you know, pick a theme that works for you and make it fun. So it's not something that's scary.

So I'd highly recommend it trying it out. There's a 35 day free trial on my budget coach. So go ahead and check it out. Try Celia as a coach and see how that goes. Celia, I usually give people kind of one last chance to like words of wisdom, advice, anything that you'd want to say specifically because you are a budget coach. Is there any like word of advice that you'd want to leave with people?

Guest C.B. (48:14)
I think the main thing is when you start budgeting, let yourself get obsessed with it. Let yourself get excited about it so that you're using it actively because you're gonna see so many more positive results if you're actively in your budget, right? If it's fun and interesting to you. And then when you start seeing the results, then it becomes fun and interesting. So sometimes you just have to fool yourself for a little while.

Be like, this is so fun, I love it. And then it becomes fun because you can actually see some results from it. So let yourself have that moment of hyper -focus.

Zach Whelchel (48:48)
Awesome.

Cool, yeah, it seems like you guys did that really well and now it's stuck.

Guest C.B. (48:54)
Yep, yeah, we're stuck for life. Cannot not budget.

Zach Whelchel (49:01)
Love it. All right, well thanks for coming on the show and to all our listeners, thanks for listening and we'll see you all next time.

Guest C.B. (49:06)
Bye.