Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. For one split second in 2020. My wife and I.
I'm 54. She's 62. We make decent, decent money. She makes about 170.
I'm about 115. We have three children, one of them in college, two in high school. And for one split second around this time in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, we were on baby step seven. We had everything.
We had paid off the house. We did everything. But now we're kind of like, okay, we're obviously, we have step one, we have step four. We invested probably 25 of our entire income three times.
Hold on. Did you go back after you paid off everything, did you go back and borrow some more money? Oh, yes. Oh, no, Carlos.
Backwards. We're supposed to go forwards. Like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. You won't.
You know, I'm back to the straight line. So again, meet every dollar budgeters. Christy and Steve, they used to fight about money. I'm the spender.
I'm definitely the saver. Now that they budget with every dollar, they're on the same page. Money is definitely one thing we do not ever fight about. Having a budget gave me the permission to spend.
Knowing that the money's in each category, it just allowed us to work together better. Now that's what we call a win win. Now I just have to pick paint colors. We can't help you with that.
Every dollar, create your free account today. What happened? Well, like I said, we were ready to start step seven, and, you know, things started opening up after Covid, and we're like, we like to go here, we like to go there, and we like to get this Mercedes, and next thing you know, Carlos, oh, no. You a full Miami, full southeast.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So how about how much you owe right now, brother? Look, we have about $29,000 in zero interest credit card debt we're trying to pay off.
And then we have. We have one lease of a vehicle, and the other vehicle is. All the other vehicles are paid off. So we decided to buy a car for each one of our kids are paid off.
So our daughter's car is paid off. Our second son's car is. But we only have 20 car. We have about 17 grand.
We're gonna pay it up in exactly one year because we're spending three times of payments on a very low interest loan. My car is paid off. So 29,000 in credit card debt and 17,000 in car loan. You said your wife makes what, 170, and you make what?
115. 115. Oh, 15. Okay, so you guys make about 300K.
You said the beginning of the call. You'll do pretty well. Y' all do incredibly well. Okay, so, Carlos.
Okay, is that it? The credit cards, the lease car, and the car payment. Is that it? That's it.
Did you take out a second mortgage after the house was paid off? Oh. Oh, hell no. Okay.
All right, good, good. The same thing. Okay, I just need everyone to hear this, because this doesn't always happen. We get car.
We get people like Carlos every now and then, but they do the baby steps and they go backwards. I just want to know from you, Carlos, did you have more peace in 2020 financially or today? Yes, in 2020. But then the whole world opened up again.
I was Cruz. You could kept on going into the whole world open up. You've got to take ownership of, like, it's like mom and dad went out of town. You're in high school, and you didn't have to throw a huge kegger, and you're like, I'm going to.
We had to do it. There was five kids we had to go get to fill them all up. Yeah, take ownership. You did.
But here's the thing, dude. 300 grand a year, you can't just pay off, like, three months. If you'll just suck it up. Yes.
Yes. Why you wait a year to pay off the. Carlos, if you guys lived, you don't have a house payment. Okay?
So I know you have. I know you have some car payments, but if you just lived on 100,000, God forbid, you'll have $200,000 extra. And you put. You put a quarter of your.
Of your money away every month. Stop. Have to be able to say no to yourself. Y behaviors got completely out of control.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we like to travel. That's our.
That's our. So do I. I can't go to Italy right now. Like, I can't.
Like, you know what I mean? No, I know they look pretty on Google image, like, but I. No, see, you're blaming. You're blaming Miami.
You're blaming. Number one international port of the. Of the world, the brand new Royal Korean ship is docking next month. And I'm like, oh, we gotta check that out.
Oh, my gosh, dude. All right, I think you're. I think you are fine with your life. That's fine.
What do you do for a living? Go. Well, that's the other thing. I'm not getting paid Right now, I was on a federal employee, but my wife is not.
But at least we have her check. But here's the thing. We notice that we can't live off her check. No way.
You mean y' all barely scratching claw on $170,000? Just tell me more, Carlos. Yeah, we have a live studio audience out here, and they're all just sobbing for you. They're devastating for you.
I told my wife last night ago, you know, I'm gonna call the show because we've proven one thing with the government. Shut that. With me not getting paid for a month, we can live off your check and then use my check to pay all this stuff. If y' all can scratch my.
Hold on. You've missed two humongous lessons, though. You missed the two bigger lessons, which is y' all make a bunch of money right now, and Covid happened, and then y' all made a whole bunch more money. And then the leaders of our government decided to sit in a sandbox and throw crayons at each other.
And so what the thing you're missing here is there's always another. There's always a day after the party, right? And in between those days after the party, you live like, this is the last party that's going to happen, right? And if you go back to 2020, if you had not have just gone bananas, if you had lived just a regular ridiculous life, you would have taken a whole bunch of vacations and gotten some nice cars.
You would have bought your kids brand new ones that depreciated 20% the day they drove them off a lot. But you would. Your kids be fine, you all be fine. And you'd have 200 grand in cash in the bank.
Oh, are you kidding me? Okay, I know this is you innocent. This government shutdown is going to happen, and then you're going to go. You're going to be like two weeks live off my check, and you're going to pay us off in three months, which is also going to take her maybe two months for you guys.
And then you're going to be like, that boat's in the harbor, and you're going to go down there and you're going to start holding over again. And then one of y' all is going to get laid off, or one of you is going to get the call that, hey, go to the hospital. Because when you're kid, like, you're going to get those calls. And so let this be the final time.
Yes, 100%. I think it's a lot easier to talk to my wife. If we can say we can live up one of our checks and take the other one. No, no, no.
There's a layer beneath that. You don't hear me. The greatest thing you can give to your wife is to say, hey, for the first time in our marriage, I want to act like grown ups. That's a hard thing for Carson.
We're joking around, having fun. Listen, I love a great trip. Like, it's fine. Like the things you're saying and I grown, they're not bad things.
They're awesome things. But you're doing it out of order. You're doing it in a level of impulse and a little bit of just kind of immaturity. And so there's, you know, Dave always says that children do what feels good of adults, devise a plan and follow it.
Like there's a level of growing up. And to say, this year, girls, do you have two kids? Are your kids still in the house? All three kids are still in the house.
That's fine. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, what are you setting for them? The example.
I'd rather set an example of, hey, we have a level of limits and boundaries because that's what money. We have to with money like that is part of the name of the game. We can always make more and all of it. That's great.
It's not a scarcity mindset. Mindset. But we have to live within our means because that creates a level of peace and stability. So when I get, you know, for a night, I don't get paycheck.
We're totally fine. And guess we can still go on real quick because we have no debt and we're able to save up and like, we have a great income, but we're living with a level of reality. And there's a little bit that you guys are just like, oh, that goes right. Let's just go, go, go.
And what scares me is you both sound like that, you and your wife. Usually there's like one boring person in the marriage that doesn't want to spend or do anything. And you have the party, but both of you, I mean, that's what's going to take Carlos, for you guys to buckle down, just say, hey, we are going to live on this. We make significantly clean up this lease, clean up the car and the credit cards, cut up the credit cards and we're going to live like differently.
I don't know if Carlos, I don't know. I want peace for you. I can't want it more than you want for yourself. Create your free every dollar budget today.
The simplest way to budget for your life.