Budget Breakdown: Episode 7 - Guest H.C.

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H.C.'s Budget

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Zach Whelchel (00:01)
All right, welcome everyone to budget breakdown. This is the podcast where we get to know our guests, not by them introducing themselves, but rather through their numbers, through their budget and through their financial priorities. I'm your host, Zach Welchel, founder of My Budget Coach and our guests here with us today, guests, I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself, but not too much. Don't give us too much. We want to kind of keep it a mystery. So I'll let you say hi.

Heath Crist (00:23)
Hello.

Zach Whelchel (00:25)
All right. All right. Well, for those of you who are watching, our guest is wearing a shirt that might be a little bit revealing, a little bit of a clue there on the shirt. but for those of you listening, we'll, keep that a secret as well. So thanks for being on the show today. let's go ahead and look into your budget. So you've got a bunch of different categories here. it looks like you've got maybe four or five main category groups. Your first category group is called flexible necessities. And the first ones we got here are things like groceries, household supplies, eating out, clothing, health and wellness.

I'm curious, is there a reason why you have these at the top of your budget and then do you want to dive in and talk a little bit about each of them?

Heath Crist (00:59)
Sure, so I put a lot of thought into the four big categories that I have all my subcategories in. So for the first one, flexible necessities. These are things we have to spend money on. Groceries, technically eating out, not really, but with busy life, three kids, it will happen. Clothing, gas, stuff like that.

it's not really realistic to not spend money in these categories. We're going to do it each month. So, you know, there are necessities, but also we do have some level of control over how much we spend in these areas. Even stuff like once you get down to like our water bill, electric bill, natural gas bill, there's some level of control. You mean you could choose to change the thermostat or

and it's gonna be flexible up and down. So it really distinguishes between a later category where everything's really fixed, it's exactly the same each month. But all these are gonna change month to month and to either some degree or a big degree, we have control over how much we spend in these areas, but it won't be zero.

Zach Whelchel (02:10)
Got it, yeah that makes sense. I think my wife and I call these something like sweepable categories in the sense that like if we do well in them, we could sweep the extra money somewhere else. But you're right, like it is a necessity, but like you do still have some control over it. So the first one you've got here is groceries and you've got, this was I believe last month was the September's budget.

Heath Crist (02:29)
This was, I went with August because I need to finish categorizing the last couple days in September.

Zach Whelchel (02:38)
Got it, yeah, it's October, it's October 1st at the time we're filming this, so you probably haven't had a chance to sit down and close out September yet, so. All right, so for August, it looks like you've set aside 901.92 for groceries. Is that about like average for you guys, or I think you mentioned you had some children?

Heath Crist (02:54)
Yes, I have three children, four and under. So I guess only two mouths to feed, because the youngest one is not eating solid foods yet. So maybe we'll have to adjust our spending once he's eating food. But yeah, on the screenshot, I sent you, you can't really see our target amount, how much we fund at the beginning of the month. But we we set aside $900 a month

we pre-play for $900 in groceries. So this is like, yeah, about as close as you can get.

Zach Whelchel (03:26)
So you went, this is great, you went over by $1.92. I'm curious, do you do it per month or do you do it per week for those months that have like a five week month?

Heath Crist (03:36)
We do it per month. Yeah, guess because we're big Costco people, randomly we have like a $400 expense for groceries and household supplies. So we don't really track it week to week.

Zach Whelchel (03:56)
Got it. Okay. So you're a big Costco people. what, what is, what is the draw for cost? feel like Costco people are very loyal and they usually have a reason they're loyal. Like what's, what's your thing about Costco?

Heath Crist (04:06)
Our thing about Costco is a lot of the baby stuff, big Kirkland diaper and white people. I don't know, know, TMI, but just feel like they don't blow out like a lot of like other brands we've used. So, but we had just specific foods there we like to buy like huge 20 pound bags of rice and 10 pound bags of like oatmeal.

Zach Whelchel (04:15)
Okay.

Okay.

Heath Crist (04:35)
I think it's good quality and it's actually cheaper than like stuff you're getting at Walmart.

Zach Whelchel (04:39)
Nice. Awesome. cool. Okay. So household supplies is next and you spend about 153 49 in August. is most of your, mentioned like household supplies as Costco too. So do you guys make a habit of like splitting out those transactions when you come home from Costco or what does that look like for you guys?

Heath Crist (04:57)
Yeah, that's my job. That's a little bit tedious, but yeah, it's just keeping receipts, going through, maybe not off by a few dollars, when you get into figuring out how much tax is going to one to the other, but yeah, just separating out. In Costco, we're usually having to split between groceries, household supplies, clothing. I think there's one other category Costco stuff can fall into.

Zach Whelchel (05:26)
So is eating out, do you get the hot dogs?

Heath Crist (05:28)
We do, I'm a pizza guy, I do a big slice of pizza. And I bought like car oil at Costco last weekend while I was there, so that had to go in a different category, as in September though.

Zach Whelchel (05:31)
wow, okay.

get like 30 gallons of car oil.

Heath Crist (05:42)
How many like, yeah, probably, I don't know, six, 24 quarts. Whatever, I don't know, quarts to gallons, I have no idea. But, probably like four, four or five car oil changes I got.

Zach Whelchel (05:48)
wow. Okay, wow. Alright.

Cool.

my goodness. Yeah. Wow. So you, you do Costco in bulk. So you do it the right way.

Heath Crist (06:03)
Yes, yeah. Yeah, the car oil was on sale, so it saved like $10 per like two jugs. So get it while it's on sale.

Zach Whelchel (06:10)
That's yeah, that's cool. And with budgeting, like you can kind of account for that, right? Like you can like see that that's been spent out of a category and build back up for it or have built up for it. So that's cool. okay. So with eating out, you've got three 42 87. I feel like that's pretty low. That's pretty good for a family, your size or how do you feel about it?

Heath Crist (06:18)
Right.

We're over. We recently dropped our budget. We're usually assigning like $2.50 to that category. We've had some months. In July, we spent $91 eating out. It was like an all-time low. Yeah. In August and September, we've been traveling a lot back and forth to Illinois to see my wife's family.

Zach Whelchel (06:48)
Wow.

Heath Crist (06:58)
And her father-in-law has some health complications, so we're going up there all the time and so a lot of eating out while we're up there, like gas station food on the way, that kind of stuff. And I consider eating out as all food we buy that's not from a grocery store. So if you stop at a gas station and get snacks, that's going under eating out.

Zach Whelchel (07:10)
You got it, yeah.

Okay, cool. Clothing, you've got $186.90 here.

Heath Crist (07:26)
Yes, that was, let me see, that was, a lot of that was Costco and some stuff on Tmoo. My son is starting, yeah, my son's starting preschool, and so they have certain stuff he needs, because they go outside every day. They do these big weather suits, all weather suits. They go out in the snow and the rain, so you have to get boots and this big waterproof suit and stuff.

Zach Whelchel (07:37)
Kimu, huh?

Heath Crist (07:55)
really cool but yeah so that's kind of we got all this stuff for the year so yeah we're we're over in that month generally don't spend near that much

Zach Whelchel (08:06)
Okay, you gotta give me the quick team review, because I feel like some people are huge fans and some people are really skeptical of it.

Heath Crist (08:12)
It seems really sketchy. I don't shop there personally. It's my wife does all the shopping on Tmoo. But I mean, the stuff that came was seemed fine, I guess.

Zach Whelchel (08:19)
Okay, okay, we'll have to get-

You bought it and it came and it works. Okay. okay. Next we got health and wellness and you've got it this at 64 45. So I'm assuming this isn't like in like health insurance or anything. This is just like things in the health and wellness category. Do you guys like to a gym membership or what? What is that?

Heath Crist (08:26)
Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, this is, this can be not strictly medical, you know, like cough syrup, know, Theraflu, like whatever, stuff like that. You might get like Walgreens. We put like, so it's kind of like a hazy category, but you know, like my wife's like haircuts, like she buys like makeup.

We don't have gym memberships because we have a garage gym, but if I buy something for the gym, it goes in this category too. I'm into working out, so vitamins, supplements, whey protein powder, all that stuff would go here. I don't think that stuff should count as groceries because it's a little bit in excess of what I need to actually live month to month, but I value it for my health, so that's what that category is for.

Zach Whelchel (09:20)
Okay.

Heath Crist (09:41)
Ahem.

Zach Whelchel (09:41)
That's cool. Yeah. It does sound like a, like, it's also kind of like hygiene as well, a little bit for you guys, like with like haircuts and stuff, but, that is cool that you've like enumerate something that you value, carve out a space for it and make sure that like, can set aside the money for the things that you value, even though you feel like they're, they're above like normal groceries. So that's cool. tell me about your home gym a little bit.

Heath Crist (10:03)
yeah, out in the garage. just, I love it. I don't like to talk to people when I work out. I like want to be like by myself. so it's like, that's part of how I like, I guess like get rejuvenated. It's just like, you know, for like a loan time, I guess that's like a classic introvert thing. But so part of that for me, it's like when I work out, I want to be by myself.

So if people don't bother me in the gym, taking my equipment and that kind of stuff. I haven't worked out in a commercial gym in years now, so yeah. I wouldn't do it any other way.

Zach Whelchel (10:36)
Sure.

Wow, okay. So was this like a significant investment? Did you have to save up for a while? Or like, I don't know too much about home gyms, like is it expensive to settle that stuff up?

Heath Crist (10:49)
Yes, we were old, I kind of, when we moved into the house three years ago, like I had never had a garage or a place I could do this. Finally we have a big two car garage, I can do this. So we, when we moved into the house, kind of like put in, you know, we had like, in that couple months had like a few big like, I guess like house warming expenses. And so that was one, you know, I decided like a few thousand dollars to make the garage gym.

And I tried to see my break even on paying for a gym versus building the gym. So at this point, I've saved money by building the gym.

Zach Whelchel (11:30)
awesome. And it sounds like you just prefer it too, right? So like even money aside, like you prefer like, like the ownership of it and the solitude of it and stuff like that. So that's cool.

Heath Crist (11:39)
Yeah, yeah, my garage door is always open for anybody who wants to come get a workout. Close personal friends. Yeah, not strangers, I don't know.

Zach Whelchel (11:44)
Just not well, just just not. Yeah, and not while you're there, because you like to work out alone, right? So yeah, yeah, OK.

Heath Crist (11:50)
A good buddy, a good workout buddy, I don't mind that at all.

Zach Whelchel (11:56)
Okay, okay. Sounds good. Okay. Next up we've got gas at five hundred and seven nine nine. So I'm assuming this is that driving back and forth to Illinois you mentioned.

Heath Crist (12:04)
Yep, yep, it is a typical month where, you know, actually like, you know, over in the category where can like, or the part of my budgeting tool where you can like, kind of go back and reflect and look at all your past numbers and see averages over months. I have been looking at that recently and our average cost is usually like 350, 320.

to $3.50-ish. That's probably more typical month. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (12:36)
Okay. Okay. Do you commute for work then?

Heath Crist (12:40)
Yeah, I do. I'm driving like 25 minutes up to work, 25 minutes back.

Zach Whelchel (12:47)
Okay. Okay. So that's a hint. You have to commute to work somewhere. Okay. Gives us a little bit of a hint. You like health stuff. You like working out, you commute to work. Okay. all right, let's look at these last three here. They're just, utilities. So we got water, natural gas, and electric. they're at $86, $38 and $269. Anything to mention there on those.

Heath Crist (13:09)
No, that's pretty typical. What was that? Are we in August for our electrics? That's probably one of our higher months. Our natural gas will go up in the winter because we like to do the gas fireplaces. In our house we had two, so that will offset our electric sound. But yeah, think everything is pretty standard there.

The small town I lived in just increased their, I guess water is technically sewage and trash too, and our trash just went up. So that had been like mid 60s for a long time, and now it's mid 80s.

Zach Whelchel (13:46)
Okay, Cool, all right, well let's move on to this next category group. So we have this next group we have is called non-essential and it looks like you've got maybe a dozen or so things in here. The first one is childcare. It looks like you spent $0 on childcare in the month of August.

Heath Crist (14:03)
Yeah, and that's not to say we just abandon our children without childcare. That's not what non-esense means. This is something I did recently. trying to remember what I called this category before, and maybe they were divvied up a little bit differently, but these are all things that in a given month can be zero. And we're really have been trying to tighten up on the budget. And so these are things

Zach Whelchel (14:07)
Sure, sure, got it.

Heath Crist (14:33)
that coffee shops, I don't drink coffee, my wife drinks coffee, it's something she really likes, but if we had a big expense somewhere else, this could absolutely be zero. She could choose not to go to Starbucks and get coffee for one month. So all these things, inevitably we enjoy spending money in, but they can be zero. And while we're really trying to tighten down over last few months, I call it non-essential.

and you can track the total, like 165 for all these categories combined for the month is pretty low when you look at what's in it, all these things that are included. So these are ones that we can really just drive down our total monthly spending by just saying these categories, we're just gonna really do bare bones or just not spend in these categories in given months.

Zach Whelchel (15:32)
Yeah, for sure. This looks like a tremendous amount of discipline on your guys's part. Cause there are a lot of things in here that usually people spend a lot of money on. Like you've got childcare, coffee shops, entertainment, gifts and generosity, home improvements, lawn and garden, personal spending money for you and your wife. It looks like, toys and kids activities, professional PT. I wonder, wonder what that is. That might be a little clue there. travel and vacation and then reimbursements.

And just for those who might have been concerned about your zero dollars for childcare, I do want to commend you that your top spending in all of these is for toys and kids activities. So you must love your children then.

Heath Crist (16:14)
Yes, yes, we do allow our children. And my wife is stay home, so that cuts our prior childcare costs a lot. We're not doing nannies or anything during the day. Or no daycares or anything like that. Well, I guess we're doing preschool. My son just started preschool, but that's a fixed category we'll get to later, I guess.

Zach Whelchel (16:39)
Okay. talk to me a little bit about personal spending money. So how do you, how do you and your wife kind of treat that category? Cause I know some people who love the idea of like splitting up some money for, for personal categories. Some people who like enumerating that money and other categories. How did you guys kind of come to that decision? And what does that look like for you guys?

Heath Crist (16:57)
It ends up being like a really, like a pretty small amount because I personally, I like to have like more smaller categories to like understand where all the money's actually going to versus like, I mean, the coffee shops is my wife, like that could go in her personal spending. You know, like the gym stuff could go in my personal spending. You know, or even like clothing, right? You could just lump all that in to be like, if I buy clothes for myself, like I'm just gonna like.

do this big, big personal spending, you know, budget line and just like all the stuff that's for me goes in there. But we, think a lot of that stuff that like, like I am doing it, getting it for me or doing it for me, it's like put into these other categories. And I think that like, I think it helps to save money because like in the clothing, it's like, okay, well, you know, like we're trying to spend like, you know, we have to spend all this money on my son this month for new stuff for daycare.

or sorry, for preschool, so we're not gonna buy anything new for us this month. Or I need new, I have dress pants for work, and so we kinda like, I guess there's more of a sharing attitude of the money, because we're all working in on one category for stuff we both might need. So the personal spending ends up being like, could be something really small, like in September this past month I bought a board game, right? It's purely for fun, it's something I enjoy.

And I'm like, I'm on a board game. Like, it's something I don't have to have, yeah, it would be something that comes out of my personal spending.

Zach Whelchel (18:34)
Yeah, that's great. Was that board game the 1087 here or was that a different month?

Heath Crist (18:38)
That was... this is August. That was September. I can probably see what my 10.87 was. Although the board game I did buy was only $14.

Zach Whelchel (18:43)
Okay. I was like 1087 for a board game.

Well, it's pretty good for a board game.

Heath Crist (18:52)
Yeah, of that $10 was fantasy football style betting on the Olympics where we picked certain people to see how many would, you picked your athlete and they got gold, silver, or bronze, you got points for that. So that was probably fun.

Zach Whelchel (19:09)
Okay, how did you, I'm curious, who did you pick and how'd you do in that?

Heath Crist (19:14)
I fared very poorly because I picked athletes I like from track and field, which is my favorite sport. And turns out that's not a good pick. It's an okay pick, but a lot of those are like maybe max can get one or two gold medals. And we found out you gotta go for swimmers. You have to go, there's a couple other sports where you can get a bunch of gold medals, like gymnastics. So you go for the high volume sports, not the stars necessarily.

Zach Whelchel (19:41)
Got it, got it. Yeah, I feel like swimmers are always the ones that like, mean, Phelps has like what, 26 or something medals and nobody ever comes close to that. Cool, okay. Is anything else in these categories that you wanna highlight here? Let's see, entertainment at $18, lawn and garden at zero, professional PT. What is the professional PT?

Heath Crist (19:48)
Yeah, something incredible.

I'm trying to think of some examples that August at $8 I bought a device that helps you measure range of motion for the jaw. Yeah, so I

Zach Whelchel (20:18)
Okay, range of motion for the jaw. I'm assuming we're getting a little bit into your work here. PT, PT stands for physical therapy? Okay.

Heath Crist (20:22)
Yes, am I allowed to say? Physical therapy, yeah. So I treat some TMJ, not at my full-time job, but on the side I do some cash-pay PT. And so when I see TMJ patients, which is your jaw joint, that's a more specific way to measure any limitations in your jaw range of motion.

Zach Whelchel (20:47)
Got it. Okay. So it sounds like you have like a full-time PT job, but you also do stuff on the side. So I'm curious, like, what does that look like income wise? Do you have like targets for that income or is this just something you're doing on the side for kind of fun or like, does, how do those two kind of fit into the picture for you?

Heath Crist (21:03)
Yeah, not the side. I would like to hustle more at it and maybe do some marketing and try to build a client base. But right now it's just some word of mouth. I'm a Google business profile, so people would just randomly find me. I saw two different patients in the past week, just randomly.

Well, one of them is, one of them just randomly saw my business profile, called and asked, and I could see her the same day, on like a Saturday. So that's like a big appeal for some people. And the other was, just through somebody who knew me, called me and said, hey, can you see my wife? Can you get her in? said, So just.

Zach Whelchel (21:49)
Okay. The fact that you just put out a Google listing and you get calls, like that's actually great. Like if you, if you don't have a budget for marketing, you're already getting like calls just from people finding you that way. I feel like that's, that's pretty impressive.

Heath Crist (22:02)
Yeah, so I'm spending zero dollars on marketing. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (22:07)
But if you were to start spending like this, this line item is where it would go, right? The professional PT.

Heath Crist (22:12)
Yeah, the marketing, I'm trying to think what else has gone in there in the past. There seems, and we have a couple other categories for PT type stuff, it's, yeah, this is just, yeah, kind of random, I guess business expenses or stuff like that. Like there's some equipment I use, but it's not much, it's pretty minimal.

Zach Whelchel (22:33)
Okay, cool. Well, before we move on to this next category group, is there anything else you want to talk about in any of these categories?

Heath Crist (22:39)
Sure, our non-essentials, I would like to point out that over the last 12, maybe 18, see, at least 12 months we've averaged zero dollars and zero cents a month on vacation. Yes.

Zach Whelchel (22:59)
Wow. Okay. So you have a category, but you just never use it. So what is

Heath Crist (23:04)
We'd like to again, I guess technically, maybe the extra gas going up to Illinois to visit family could go under travel and vacation. I think it's kind of hard to separate that out when you're looking at your expenses, like, that gas station, were we traveling up to Illinois then? was gas already full when we left? I think it's too cumbersome, so I just put it all under gas. But this is specifically like, hey, let's load up and go somewhere on vacation.

Zach Whelchel (23:23)
Sure.

Heath Crist (23:34)
And for several reasons that we'll probably get to in the next big category, we decided not going on vacation for like a year, maybe a couple years, few years. It's like one of the absolute easiest ways to save money for us. Because you literally just, you don't have to do anything. You just choose not to go on vacation. And I mean, that could be like $3,000 you save that year, or $5,000, $8,000 if you go on a few vacations. And I was like, that's...

Zach Whelchel (23:54)
Yeah.

Heath Crist (24:02)
way more money saved than like pinching pennies at the grocery store for a whole year. Just like don't go don't go on one vacation. You save the same amount of money. So it's also just three young kids I think we've kind of dialed back on some of our bigger trips that we used to do.

Zach Whelchel (24:08)
for sure.

Cool. Well, that's cool that you've, you've like, you made those priority decisions, right? You've looked at vacations and said like, yeah, vacations can be fun, but like that versus like pinching pennies and groceries and everything for like a whole year, like we'd much rather enjoy not doing the vacations and having a little bit more flexibility in those other areas. So it's cool that you've, you know, kind of laid out your priorities. You know, as you prioritize and you act accordingly.

Cool. Yeah. Again, I'm seeing a lot of discipline in here. Like the fact that you've kind of, you know, saved in areas have been really intentional in areas. It's a lot of discipline. So well done.

All right, so let's move down to emergency necessities. So down here we've got fees and expenses, we've got medical, we've got car maintenance and repairs, home services and repairs and investments. yeah, fees and expenses has $0 in it. Medical, you've got $645.40. So I'm curious, does that include like insurance or is that on top of insurance? Like what does medical look like?

Heath Crist (25:21)
Yeah, my insurance is taken out before it drops in my bank account. So I don't really account for that in the budget because you just never see that money. So these are specifically copays, procedures, and stuff like that.

Zach Whelchel (25:35)
Got it. Okay. and then car maintenance and repairs. looks like you spent one 35 46. so what's, what's the car situation besides buying all of your oil and bulk at Costco.

Heath Crist (25:48)
Yeah, that was, yeah, let's see what in September. I did some like random maintenance stuff. I bought new wiper blades. I bought like a brake light for one car and a headlight for another car. and I changed my oil, so I had to, I had to go buy just like the oil filters. and it turns out whoever changed my oil last time, cause they took it somewhere, they broke something in my oil filter cap. So had to buy new oil.

oil filter cap.

Zach Whelchel (26:21)
Wow. So are you, are you at this point like I'm just doing this myself for the rest of my life?

Heath Crist (26:25)
Yes, so then I doubled down, I'm gonna change my own oil, go buy a bunch of oil at Costco. Now I feel obligated to change my oil to get my money's worth out of that oil. yeah. Yeah, so I was changing my oil when I realized that something was broken in the oil cap filter.

Zach Whelchel (26:37)
Have you done it yet?

All right, and how hard is it? Is it worth the work?

Heath Crist (26:47)
yes, I think it's I mean, I think if you're doing it regularly, yes And like I rotate my tires too. So I just like do it all at once so I did it took me like once I got through like you know, the the new new part like the Tires and the oil takes me like just over an hour And I think honestly it takes like just as much time out of my day to like go somewhere wait

Or like drop off my car and then I have to go back later. I'd rather just do it out in my driveway. Yeah.

Zach Whelchel (27:24)
Yeah, that's a great point. Also, your kids can probably run around and like have fun kind of watching you and learning from you.

Heath Crist (27:30)
Yeah, show them. My son would be interested. My four year old, he would really get an interest in that with like the branch and all that stuff. He loves that type of stuff.

Zach Whelchel (27:40)
Nice, nice. He gets a hold of wrench or something and that's his big contribution. Nice. Okay. So next we got home services and repairs. got 453.90.

Heath Crist (27:45)
Yeah.

Ugh, ugh, that one hurt. This is like almost, vast majority of months is zero. And again, I guess I didn't like totally say, you know, like it's exactly what it sounds like, emergency necessities. These are things like when they come up, like you have to spend money, right? You know, with a car, I guess I'm like working hard to try to do some things myself to like lower the cost.

But like, you know, I like it. I guess the wiper blades, I have to have them? No. But like, you know, I like to do some like regular maintenance on the car, like upkeep things. So it goes there. But you know, we haven't really had a lot of big things for the house. Yeah, our home repairs, I think, you know, we didn't, from January through July, we didn't have any expenses.

No big house thing happens.

Zach Whelchel (28:51)
and then August.

So was this like an appliance that went out or was this something?

Heath Crist (28:59)
yes. We had too much voltage come through our heat pump and knocked our air out. And it was kind of like, it was kind of weird. were like, I'm not really happy with how it turned out, but they were like, this part's under warranty, but we're still going to charge you for the labor. Okay. Seems kind of weird.

Zach Whelchel (29:07)
Wow.

Hmm.

Yeah, what's the point of a warranty if, huh, interesting.

Heath Crist (29:26)
I don't know, but it was actually over the warranty. It was like a month over and they still gave it to me. So I didn't want to like push back too hard. And then I bought a surge protector to like keep this from happening again and like put it on and then smoke detector randomly like would not stop beeping. I almost smashed it into a thousand pieces and then yeah, I had to buy a new one.

Zach Whelchel (29:54)
Okay, so you mentioned that you moved in the house recently or like a couple years ago and you had some of those like Big ticket items like the gym and stuff like that I'm curious like what is was this like your first home ownership or did you own a home before and like? What has it kind of been like what all have you done with it? Like has it been expensive or does it sound like these big costs are more of an outlier for this house?

Heath Crist (30:16)
The house was pretty move-in ready. We had to do like very little when we moved in. The gym was again just like a kind of a personal splurge. Trying to think what anything else would be. My wife has done some like painting, because it's like, you can kind of see our walls are kind of like dark. And so it just kind of feels like.

kind of like a dungeon in certain areas. So we're like slowly, we haven't gotten to this room yet, but we're slowly like going through and like trying to like paint everything like a bright color. So I mean, but other than that, did, our heat pump went out like two years ago. Like it's now the warranty is just kind of running out, but we did upgrade that like two years ago. Yeah. Like after being in the house for about a year. So that was a big expense, but yeah, other than that.

Zach Whelchel (31:14)
Cool. All right, well, we've got one last category in this group and it's investments and looks like you've got $100 there. Is that something you spend that out to like an investment account somewhere?

Heath Crist (31:24)
Yeah, I'm not, and again, it probably doesn't fit great here. I'm just not sure where else to put it. I guess I could probably, yeah, could probably put in non-essentials or something, but yeah, there's just like, need like, when there's a transaction, like hey, I moved money into like a high-yield savings account, into like a brokerage account, or like a Roth IRA, like this is where that transaction goes.

Zach Whelchel (31:46)
All right, well, I think we're down to your last category group, but there's quite a few categories in here. So these are called fixed necessities. And this is where we've got mortgage, the big one there. We've got some student loans, it looks like for you and your wife, daycare, internet. Why don't we just start from the top and kind of work our way down. So mortgage, you've got 2,769.94. So do you, I'm curious, like do you escrow?

What type of rate did you get on this? Like tell me about your mortgage.

Heath Crist (32:19)
yes, the mortgage. So this is where our kind of total monthly money out kind of gets a little askew. And you know, don't want to speak specifically to like my income, but you my wife's at home, stays at home, so we're on one income. And Dave Ramsey would tell me that my mortgage is too expensive for how much I make as far as percent of...

My take home pay, he would say, is much too expensive. But we made a really intentional decision when we moved here three years ago. We bought a family house that my grandfather built, my mom grew up here, it was passed to my uncle, he bought it out of the estate and then he sold it to us. you know, it's just like, we're in the town, we wanna be in, my parents are four minutes down the road, we get this like,

Zach Whelchel (32:48)
Got it.

Heath Crist (33:17)
you know, house that has so much like family history. We have some land, which is like super awesome. Like we wanna be here forever. So we decided, okay, like this is the thing we want to go big on. we we want the house. So that means it's gonna be like outsized in our budget, which means like saying no to other things like vacation, for example. So it was an intentional decision. Like if it was any other house,

I don't think we would have taken on a mortgage this big. It's kind of big for us for what we wanted, especially compared to our last house. you know, like budget, all right, we're gonna be paying the same amount every month for the next 30 years, and then our income will come up, go up, and you know, my wife will go back to work at some point when all the kids are in school, so.

It's just like a season where we're kind of like tightening down on lots of other categories so that we can do this one thing. So, and we got in at two and a half percent interest rate, which is like, yes. So, any other time in history, you probably could not have even afforded to get in the house because it would have been too much if you had like a four percent, five percent interest rate.

Zach Whelchel (34:20)
There it is. There it is. Well done.

super cool. So you've got this like really like like once in a lifetime opportunity, like both in time and the location. And you just, you just went for it. You said like, sure, it's going to be maybe outsized compared to like what some people say you should do percentage wise, but like we're going to make sacrifices in other places because we really, really value this. I love that. I love, I love the intentionality and the, and the willingness to make it work.

Heath Crist (34:58)
Yeah. And yeah, so that's our story with mortgage.

Zach Whelchel (35:04)
All right, so next up we've got student loans. Looks like you and your wife maybe both had student loans, although yours is at $33.63 and hers is at $0, so it doesn't seem like a lot of student loans.

Heath Crist (35:15)
Yes, the government is trying every way they can to make student loans negligible and as small as possible. So we're basically putting it at the lowest amount possible and then we can choose to put more towards it if we want, but by just signing up for the repayment plan that's the lowest possible, increase this cash flow if we need it because we can choose to put the lowest amount.

Zach Whelchel (35:24)
Okay.

Heath Crist (35:43)
And so for me personally, I work at a non-for-profit. So I'm eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. So after 10 years of qualifying payments, the rest of my debt will be forgiven. So the name of the game is lowest monthly payment possible.

Zach Whelchel (36:01)
Got it, okay, so just low as possible and then get it forgiven eventually.

Heath Crist (36:05)
Right. And then my wife, she does have a low payment, but we will have to pay that off. So at some point when we feel like the time is right, we can put like more money towards it or not, just depending on where we want to put our money.

Zach Whelchel (36:17)
Okay. cool. Okay. Daycare preschool. We've got it $445 a month.

Heath Crist (36:24)
Yeah, there was a startup cost with that, I guess some like start of year fees, but it's $3.25 a month. That'll be going forward, but yeah, there's some extra stuff for first month.

Zach Whelchel (36:32)
Okay.

Okay, and daycare is usually like a pretty good per hour cost, right? Daycare is cheaper than childcare would be.

Heath Crist (36:43)
Yes, so like this daycare, used to be we had our kids in daycare and then my wife stayed home and they were at home for 10 months and now, so I just continued the category, made it slash preschool as well because my son is starting preschool. So it's more like education based I guess than just like babysitting, but they're doing kindergarten prep and all this stuff and it's only four days a week.

8 to 12, so he's home the rest of the day.

Zach Whelchel (37:17)
Cool. All right, insurance, sorry, internet, we've got it $69.74, seems about normal. Life insurance, we've got it $47.52. So do you have a policy like on you or you and your wife or what is the life insurance? Okay.

Heath Crist (37:30)
Yeah, both. Yeah, that's a personal policy and I have a supplemental one at work, I think.

Zach Whelchel (37:37)
Okay. cool. And then we got biblical ministries at a hundred dollars a month.

Heath Crist (37:43)
Yep, yeah, that's a missionary that we support.

Zach Whelchel (37:47)
Okay, cool. And then we got phone at $71.79 per month.

Heath Crist (37:52)
Yep, that's our phone bill plus like, to my icon storage.

Zach Whelchel (37:58)
yes. It's always fun when I do these to see people have like a line-up for iCloud storage and then you know exactly how many photos they take by how much they pay for iCloud. It's also fun when people have subscriptions and I get to guess, know, do they have Netflix? Do they have the Hulu bundle all based on the price? So, okay, speaking of subscriptions, let's move on down here. It looks like the rest of yours are all either memberships or subscriptions or registrations. So if you just...

Heath Crist (38:24)
Yeah, the...

The mortgage through, I guess, phone, that's all fixed monthly. And then once you get starting auto insurance down to the end, that's fixed but less than once a month. So those are ones that we will like, know, like every month, like putting money towards so it's there when that expense, that month comes up.

Zach Whelchel (38:25)
You go ahead.

cool. Okay.

Got it, okay, so auto insurance, you put $130 in, but you probably only pay your auto insurance, like whatever, you six months or so. Okay, and then the Amazon membership, you do that probably yearly. Okay, and that's $12.56. And this is great because like when you budget, you can make sure you're ready for those yearly expenses, but by going yearly, you save money on them, right? Like Amazon's cheaper when you go yearly, right? So that's awesome that you...

Heath Crist (38:55)
Yeah, six months.

Zach Whelchel (39:14)
have that intentionality. Turbo tax is at 1476. Car registration at 2408. Your YNAB subscription at 780 or 875. Malpractice insurance is, it looks like you put $4, but you spent 173.

Heath Crist (39:34)
Yeah, that was, I paid it that month. And I think, I don't know why the, I think I just miscalculated it. I was putting a little bit too much every month. So like when the actual activity came in, like that's how much it was for the year. And so I only had four more dollars I had to put towards it for this to like hit my number. But it'd be 173 divided by 12 is what I'm doing going forward.

Zach Whelchel (39:45)
Okay.

Nice.

Got it. Okay. And then you've got your wife's now practice and then there it is. There's the Costco membership. What, what, what makes dreams come true? and then down at the bottom, we've just got PT memberships and PT license, says, so, I guess the membership is different from the license because the membership is like a national group or something.

Heath Crist (40:06)
Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm part of some professional organizations. So that goes there. And then the license is what it costs for us to maintain our license in the state that we're in, to you the still. Yeah, state of Kentucky. And then I'm also licensed in Ohio because I do some teaching up there.

Zach Whelchel (40:36)
We're almost to the end, so if you want to start slowly revealing.

Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, we've officially made it. Is there anything else you want to say about any of these categories we missed before we let you introduce yourself?

Heath Crist (40:54)
Yeah,

I don't know. I think that's it.

Zach Whelchel (40:57)
Okay. Cool. Well, I want to say it was really fun to get to look through your numbers and like, yeah, it seems like you guys know what you want and you live your life according to it. Like you make a plan according to what you want, like multiple times you said, like, we value this more than we value that. So we've chosen to do this. And I just love that intentionality, right? A lot of people who aren't budgeting yet, they probably just kind of fly by the seat of their pants or just spend as they want to in the moment, but they're not zoomed out and having that more like intentional big.

big picture plan. So it was really cool to see. So well done.

Heath Crist (41:31)
Yeah, and this is probably a really good month. So we have some that aren't quite as good. But yeah, showing off a good month here. I think I'm the natural saver. My wife's the natural spender.

Zach Whelchel (41:47)
What does, what does that like kind of working together on the budget then? Like, what is that? Cause I know oftentimes like, you know, it's, very common for like when couples are budgeting together for like one person to take kind of ownership or, know, for them to have like a unique way of working together on it, like how have you and your wife kind of like done this like success essentially.

Heath Crist (42:05)
Yeah, she doesn't like sitting down, like nitty gritty, going through all the numbers. She doesn't really like that. She's just like, I do all the categorizing stuff and she's like, me the highlights and tell me what I need to change. And then she's pretty good about doing it, once I tell her. So it's good motivation for me to stay on top of keeping things organized, because then I can see, okay, we're spending too much. I can tell her, hey, like.

Don't eat out, we got like 40 more bucks or something this month, so use it wisely. And she's pretty good about just following my lead since she knows I'm looking at the numbers pretty closely. And even she likes kind of the old school cash method, for the kids' toys and activities, a lot of times we'll do that as cash and she'll keep her receipts, because then she's like, okay, this money's in my pocket, and when it's out, it's like, okay, we're done doing stuff in this category.

Zach Whelchel (42:45)
Cool.

Cool, yeah, that's awesome. Sounds like you guys have found a way that works well for you guys. Okay, cool, so we've made it through all your categories. So this is the part of your show where you can finally actually introduce yourself. So if you wanna give us like your name, where you live, I guess what you do for work, all those things.

Heath Crist (43:18)
All right, my name is Heath Chris. I live in Willmore, Kentucky, which is a really small town outside of Lexington. Willmore is a place that is near and dear to our host heart, I would hope still. Zach and I grew up in Willmore together. So I'm a physical therapist and yeah. What else, what do you wanna know?

Zach Whelchel (43:44)
I mean, that's pretty good. We usually at the end of the show, we give you a chance to kind of share a piece of advice, maybe to those people who are listening who maybe are just starting budgeting or maybe they're considering budgeting. What has budgeting kind of done for you? What does it meant to you? And what advice would you give to somebody who's just getting into it?

Heath Crist (44:03)
Find somebody that's good at it and ask them lots of questions. This isn't even a plug for you, but Zach, you've personally helped me a lot with my budget. Making the categories, any troubleshooting, how many times have I called you asking for advice on how to get the numbers to work or...

like how to run certain things. mean...

Zach Whelchel (44:35)
Yeah, yeah, quite a few. mean, it's gone down over time, but at the beginning, yeah, like there's this learning curve and I feel like, yeah, we were able to get over it together, which was fun.

Heath Crist (44:44)
Yeah, so I mean, think having help at the beginning with your budget is good. Also just having friends who budget, it's not like it doesn't have to be a good hierarchy, just big financial decisions, I was like, dude Zach, I'm thinking about buying this house in Wilmore. It's a big step for us. Dude, can we sit down and run numbers together? Sure. And we've done that vice versa just for things that you're doing, which is like.

It's nice to have somebody who can bounce ideas off each other with big financial moves or where you're put your money. And I don't know. It's like with, I think, your physical health, right? If the people around you are talking about nutrition and eating right and what they did for their workouts and their exercises, I think you're much more likely to be interested in pursuing those things if the people around you are doing it.

I think it's the same thing with finances, but oddly we don't talk about it a lot. Certainly this is a very unique situation where just like, sharing, these are my monthly expenses, this is how I do things, these are real numbers for our costs. People just don't talk about finance, instead they just look at other people who seem to have nice things in big houses and like, well, I should probably go spend a lot of money to have what they have to.

Zach Whelchel (46:11)
Yeah, that's great. oftentimes that's deceiving, right? Cause the people who maybe appear like they have a lot of money or maybe really stretching themselves. Right. And so, yeah, I think like there's that concept of like, you'll become the average of the five people you hang out with most or whatever. Right. I think that idea of like, you know, if you have a culture in your friend group that you talk about physical health, you talk about your financial health, you talk about all these things, like, yeah, it just kind of helps, helps everybody get on the right track. So.

Thank you again for coming on. Thanks for sharing that. I will put in a plug here for my budget coach. If you are listening to this and thinking about creating a budget, my budget coach is kind of the best place to get started because not only do you get the app to work on and to build your budget, but you also get a coach to work with. And we think that that guidance and encouragement is something that really people are lacking. And once you have that, really is a game changer and kind of creating a budget, sticking with it and living intentionally with your money. So.

Thanks for coming on the show Heath and to everybody else, we'll see you all next time.

Heath Crist (47:12)
Thanks for having me.