Hey, Hey, vafam, it's Mandy here and I cannot wait to introduce you to this week's guest. If y'all don't know about my new friends, Julian and Kirsten Saunders, let me tell you a little bit about them. They are the Atlanta based yes my hometown, I love it, Atlanta based co creators of the popular lifestyle blog and brand Rich and Regular. They come with so much experience, y'all.
They paid off two hundred thousand dollars of debt in just five years, and after they did that, they actually walked away from their careers in the hospitality and marketing marketing industries and quit before the age of forty. Since then, they launched their popular web series called Money on the Table, which use guys can check out at Richregular dot com, and they also host their our podcast, Brother and Sister. They host the Rich and Regular podcast, which you can
check out right after you listen to this one. Okay, that's your assignment. Go check out Rich and Regular and Kirsten, thank you so much for joining Brown Ambition.
You so much here.
Yes, I'm excited, so y'all wrote an entire The reason we're talking today, I mean There's been so many reasons to have y'all on, but this is a very special episode because y'all are launching your first book, right Yes, yes, yes, they call cashing out. Call it yet the book Baby, we called cashing out Win the Wealth Game by walking Away. When I saw this title, I was like, yes, yes, like this is my time, this is my favorite. Let's
talk about quidding. Yeah, yes, And I was just saying, like, as a couple, as a married couple, you guys also share a son named Bo. What a beautiful, cute little name. I'm just amazed because my husband and I feel like we cannot do the dishes together, we can't clean the house together without getting into some kind of philosophical debate about how to do it. And y'all wrote an entire book together. What was that like? As husband and wife?
It was challenging. It was a slow start.
Originally, we tried to write it together, like every chapter, kind of sitting together and writing, and that process took entirely too long, and then we.
Broke it up. Like you write a chapter, I write a chapter.
But we have very different voices and we have very different perspectives, and so a lot of the work was trying to find the shared voice and then figure out kind of how to get all the chapters done.
But all in all, it was a good experience.
It was just there's not a lot of co authors out there, so it was just a bunch of trial and error in us trying to figure out.
What works for us.
Well, there's co authors then, but it's not. I can't think of a married couple that i've interview who's written a book together. That's such a different dynamic. It's one thing when you've hired a ghost writer or someone to kind of download your thoughts and then they're going to kind of put it in your voice and whatnot. But I mean, congrats, So what made you, guys for your first book want to write this book in particular?
You know, there are so many reasons why. I'll just give you one of the more recent ones. And this is not that recent, but it was like a couple months ago. I remember sitting in the doctor's office taking my mom to the doctor, and I remember waiting in the waiting room and there was an older gentleman, a
black man. He might've been around sixty five years old, and we were in the thick of writing the book at that process, but I had already kind of thought about it, and he was sitting there reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I was reminded because I hadn't thought about the book in a really long time, but I was reminded that that book was still relevant and that it was a cultural reference point for a lot of people, Like when they think money books is like literally one
of the first ones that they think about. And I was just thinking about that. I was thinking about the moment that we are in, not just in terms of the Great Recession, but also you know what's been coined as a social reckoning or just this great a sense of awareness in terms of representation, and I felt like we deserved something like that. I felt like I could have used something like that leading up to the early stages of our corporate career. I think Churrisen feels the
same way. And so we know the power of telling our stories and people seeing themselves and hearing it in our own voice, and we just knew that that was something that when we enjoyed doing and we're really passionate about, and so we were willing to undertake this process and we're grateful that we were able to do it.
Yeah, so together y'all paid off two hundred thousand dollars of debt. And you did that prior to leaving your jobs, right, so clearly working like having a nine to five was instrumental. And you guys building you know, your wealth and able to pay off that debt. What was your strategy there? Was it just you know, every extra dollar we are going to be putting toward this debt. And like what kinds of debt were they as a couple that y'all were tackling.
Yeah, it was a combination.
The lion's share of the two hundred thousand was our mortgage, but it was also car notes, student loan, tax debt, credit card.
Pretty much, any kind of debt was yeah, I might be forgetting that.
Yeah you said that tax debt.
Yeah, so you include so you paid off your whole house?
Yeah, we did, which sounds crazy given be.
Done in georgiown right, we had a ten thousand and eight priced house.
Yeah, oh okay, it would get the discount post housing market crash, I hope, yeah right, yeah, okay, but I start a bunch of different types.
Paying off our debt as giving ourselves a raise.
We had two choices.
You could either kind of go hard at work and try to make more money and get all the extra responsibility that comes with that, which we did, but we also spent just as much energy time strategic thinking and conversation around the idea that if we paid off our debt, if we could just get rid of a couple of these expenses, you're talking about a couple extra thousand dollars every single month, And in order to make that leap in the job market, you would have either had to
pivot out of your career choice, out of our career choice and into another company, or take on an extraordinary amount of responsibility. And so we looked at paying off debt as a lifestyle choice for us, and that's how we tackled it. As soon as the money would come in through our every bi weeekly paychecks, we would shave off the top and we did a little bit of
everything in terms of methodology. Did the envelope system, we did the avalanche method, we did the snowball method, we did zero based budgeting, and we tried everything, and they worked in different periods of our lives, and we just kept trying until eventually it was it was gone.
And you were raising because your son is about as old as it took you to pay off that debt.
Well, he was born.
He was born in the last quarter, so he was born in twenty seventeen, and then we finished paying off the debt the same in.
The year after.
Yeah.
Yeah, so when you were so, were you guys making big career moves to increase your income to help you paid on that debt? Was that one of the strategies that you used for.
More sopha Kissen And it was interesting because we tackled that as a team as well, and so as we were looking at upward mobility, we both had a shot. But she had a much better shot at getting that big raise. I was much more interested in learning and developing skills that I knew I could use outside of
the workforce. And so while we were tagged teaming debt, even after we paid off the debt, it was like, all right, how do we still continue to squeeze as much juice as we can out of this job, but also recognize that there's an endpoint and we need to make sure that we're setting ourselves up to pivot out of that successfully. And so at that point. With respect to my job, I was handling it, but I wasn't
going as hard as I was in prior years. I wasn't necessarily gunning for a promotion, which felt really good because at that point we'd already you know, paid off our debt, and when you start thinking about, like, what's the real value in getting a job, it kind of felt like that added responsibility was going to take away from my at home life, It was going to take away from my ability to build something outside of that
nine to five. And so at that point I was much more interested in our real estate portfolio in this new, greater world of content creation, which for us was very new at the time.
Yeah. So, Kirsten, what did that look like for you? Going for promotion or did you quit for a new opportunity that paid you a lot more?
It was going for promotions. I did quit right before I went from Eternity.
Leave, but I ultimately did not because they gave me a raise to keep me.
But yeah, it was a series of promotions.
I had found a section of the company that had very specific skill sets and required a lot of institutional and experiential knowledge, and so I just kind of dedicated myself to an area of the business and gradually moved up the more that it grew.
But it was good.
It was good until it wasn't, which is typically how these things go. I was promoted quite a bit and then a reorg hit, which is pretty common in corporate America. We talk about this in the book, that the average tenure of a CEO these days is about five years.
And so when you think about, and I'm sure some of the listeners have experienced this, how disruptive reorganizations can be, especially if you're in a place where you like your boss, you like your team, you like your workload, and then all of a sudden, everything changes.
And that's what happened with me.
I liked where I was, and then all of a sudden we got shifted and the priorities changed and I needed to be and places, and I needed to support China and Europe, and so I was taking four am calls and seven pm calls and it just wasn't sustainable for me. I felt like I had learned everything that I needed to learn from the job and it was time to cash out.
All right, So you both, but you're was your plan eventually to walk away the same way, Julian, Like you kind of knew, okay, I'm going to be, you know, heading on this entrepreneurial path. Were you kind of just waiting for the right moment, Kirsten.
Yeah.
The plan was to hit a number in our bank account or in our investment portfolio before we walked away, and we were on track to hit that probably mid twenty twenty one. This was, of course, before we knew there was a global pandemic coming, but we were on track to hit it mid last year, and I.
Had started to feel the pressure to.
Leave, or the decision to leave, by the end of twenty nineteen, so about two years ahead of schedule. But we already had our business going, and so the question was did I think I could make up for lost time or at least get back a sense of quality of life if I focused on this through twenty you know, for the next couple of years. And so that's that was kind of the catalyst of leaving.
So you were definitely part of the great reshuffling, the Great resignation. I quit of twenty twenty.
Three weeks before the pandemic started, and it was.
The whole trendsetter.
The start of the start of what they're calling the Great resignation. I'm wondering is if like the initial round of furloughs where everybody was just kind of laid off versus actually leaving on their own. I think I was ahead of that curve of people just being like, you know, f this, I'm going to figure it out on my own.
Well that's the thing, Like they talk about the great resignation, but if you were approaching your career, I feel like the correct way we you should be looking to leave or move up and move around, you know, through your career. So people act like, oh, it's a great resignation of trend. I'm like, no, people are always going to be quitting, which means we have job security. Kristen Julian and I like, okay, people are always going to need some guidance when it
comes to their career. So I don't feel at all like even my business as a career coach, like there's going to come a time when it's going to dry up. People are not going to be making career transitions, you know, and getting to that place of being stalled. Nah, y'all talk about something that's really interesting, the fifteen year career and sort of how people can or should prioritize their goals through each stage of their career so that they
can quit an under fifteen years. Is that right? Can y'all talk about that?
Yeah?
So the fifteen year career was really just trying to disrupt the construct that a lot of us have that careers are this lifelong pursuit that you just continue to work on it and it's a huge part of your identity, like.
You lead with your career, which you do who you are, and.
So the fifteen year career is actually encouraging people to look at careers as a phase in your life the same way we look at K through twelve education or a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree if you if you're a doctor or a lawyer, where in a stated period of time, you're there to accomplish a goal and then you're there to move on and that could be to another career, or it could be to early retirement or entrepreneurship. But we bring it up into three phases.
The first five years, if you have debt, it's really about continuing to live frugally and treat that debt as an emergency and pay it down. The second five years is really about skill acquisition, like Julian was saying, acquiring skills that are valuable in a market outside of just
your employer. And then the last five years is really trying to figure out how to monetize those skills and move on and actually translate them into capital, into actual dollars, and then ramp up your investments while you're doing that. And so the idea is that after fifteen years, you know, you should be able to check the box and say I'm good here, and you might continue. You could decide that you want to stay in the latter phase because you are enjoying making great money and having a skill
that's in demand. Or again you can decide to cash out and just kind of do what you want to do.
With your time.
Yeah, and this is also assuming that you're investing along the way right correct.
In addition important part YEA.
And doing all all those things, you're building an investment portfolio or or whatever it is right. It could be sitting in a brokerage account. It could be that you're focusing on funding your retirement account up front, but you're ideally putting yourself in a position so that at the end of this period, you have an option to Heresin's point. You don't have to walk away and go sit pinicolatas.
You may have the option to do that, but you could decide to transition and focus on being you know, the president of the HOA or someone that does something in your county or whatever it is, any number of things that you could do to fill your time outside of just.
Please don't Why is that the dream?
Say that?
Because imagine a world where more of us are actually able to do that job effectively.
So you know, maybe I just can't think of the more scum of the earth than like HOA presidents. Why are they so problematic? Sorry, you distracted me.
You distracted me back getting back to your point, Juliet, It's funny because that when you talk about the fifteen year stage, I think I'm in like year eleven of my career post college and wait, how old am I?
I'm trying it's more than eleven years. It's like twelve or thirteen. But anyway, and it has sort of lined up in that I didn't approach it, you know, systematically that but I'm kind of like, oh, I'm in that I was in the past five years acquiring all these skills and then now I'm on my own, like you guys are monetizing them and creating this entrepreneur you know, entrepreneurship journey for myself. So yeah, I definitely, I mean and would endorse that. And Julian and I want to
talk to you. So what were some I know you mentioned blogging, YouTube, video editing, you know, I'm sure those types of skills, but what other skills were you leaning on or looking to build that? And you said real estate too, So can you talk about some of those skills that you were acquiring so that set yourself up so that rich and regular could be, you know, y'all's primary source of income.
Sure.
So the primary skill that I was focused on building was around marketing and branding. Part of that was because that's what I studied in college. But I learned very quickly how to make ideas grow, how to curate ideas, how to communicate them. And so I spent that last three maybe four years of my career sort of a part of that organization focusing more so on learning, Right, It wasn't about trying to get the skill set or the job that I knew was going to help me
get a promotion. It was about what are the skills that I can learn dealing with agencies, learning the fundamentals of building a brand from people who've done it with world class brands, Understanding the data, all of those things, creative storytelling to your point about videos and photography, like all of that kind of stuff, and even influencer marketing.
And it's actually a tiny part of our book, and it was one of the things that really made me say, actually, I think I could do this was because at that earlier stage, it was like year seven for me, seven out of the ten. Was the company that I was working for decided to test out this little thing call influencer marketing. And I was like, I don't know, but I remember cutting a really check to cover this thing.
And long story short, we paid a guy like ten thousand dollars to take a vacation with his kids, eat at a restaurant, and basically just go have a good time because it was a hospitality company. And every now and then, just for motivation, I go to his website because it's like a really old school website and it still has a ticker on it, and it's like one hundred and sixty seven page views, and so for me it was like motivation. It's like, oh wow, this guy
was able to do something incredible. He's not a celebrity, but it was just very intriguing for me. And so all of those skills and points in that particular story was enough for me to say, Okay, as I'm thinking about my own quality of life, do I believe that if I stepped outside of this world that is very comfortable and familiar, that I'd be able to figure it out? And the answer was yes, because I'd acquired enough of those skills that I knew that I could do some of these things on my own.
I love that, and that's such a good message for anyone working nine to five and feeling like even if you feel like you don't have tons of career progress there, you still have access to other people and like free education if you're willing to chat with people and find
out about them. And that's what I call it being entrepreneurial, you know, kind of moving within your within your zone at work, and what can you take advantage of There's there's intellectual property there that people have that they can share with you, and you can really learn and leverage that and I think that was so I mean, so smart of you and so wise, and not enough people working day to day think to actually like check in with such and such, even if you're in product you know,
or check in with the marketing team or advertising or whatever you know, or if you're in vice versa, you're in your marketing to check in with the product team how to build a product, a physical or digital product, and how all that works while you've got the free access.
Sorry, I was just gonna say it was a huge aha moment for me because I'd had to get over the hump that you can't learn about something just because you aren't in that role.
Right.
I had to give myself permission to say, actually, you can learn about whatever you want now. It's quite honestly a little difficult to do in certain roles and in certain companies. Some companies are better than others. But I was able to navigate that and extract as much value from that experience. Even though some of the things that I was doing, like wasn't being well received. Didn't mean that it wasn't good work. Didn't mean that that presentation
or that idea wasn't feasible. It's just because it wasn't accepted at work. And so once I flipped that switch, and I realized I can take these same skill sets and storytelling and managing campaigns and just apply it to things outside of my job. And really at that point, it's just about trying to find a willing a customer that's willing to pay you.
Yeah, can we pivot and talk a little bit about y'all's investment strategy because you mentioned investing. Y'all sound like y'all are in real estate a little bit, maybe a lot of bit? You can you were okay, talk to me about your investing strategy because I know that's also a key part of the book. It's not just about using your career lever but in wealth building, but it's also like how do we accelerate that through anting.
Yeah, So we used to be real estate investors. We had a very small portfolio of two rental properties. Yeah, two rental properties in our primary residents, so three houses all together, and we liquidated those in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty to focus more so on digital entrepreneurship in other types of investing.
And so today because.
It was just a lot of work, like bandwidth wise.
Not really we had a management company that managed those things for us in terms of the day to day, but quite honestly, we had something to compare the work too, right, And again I kind of felt as if, at the time, or leading up to that point, we were really subscribing to what I now consider a very traditional path to
building wealth. You've got stock markets in real estate. But once we became introduced to digital entrepreneurship and we had something to compare it to, and it was like the money that we were making in you know, let's say a month just based off of brand campaigns by far eclipse the value that we were earning on our rental property.
And that's not to say that rental properties are bad, but the particular properties that we have, while they were good, it just wasn't necessarily worth the squeeze, I mean, and there was still a lot of work to do, even though we had a middleman, a management company, and they earned their ten percent because they certainly made my life easier. But even still, when we combine the work, the paperwork, the follow up, the back and forth, and just the sense of tension that you have when you own a
physical property and know that somebody is in it. After a while, once we had that compared to all of the other things that we've done, we realized, actually, we just don't really want to do this anymore, and so we made the decision to say, you know what, let's invest in digital entrepreneurship. And that's kind of where we are now, like focusing on the creator economy. We have a new education and tech platform that we're in the process of building out. We have this book, we have
all these other things. We just enjoy it and it just you know, there's there's something too, like the value in it aside from its profitability, but like we enjoy it a lot more than we do being a landlord.
Which gotcha. I love that perspective. I think that's so smart too. I mean, for people who maybe don't have a digital brand to focus on it, it can make sense to have that extra However, much you know on top that you're getting from your renters. So what so, now that you've you've liquidated your real estate properties, are y'all are you about to tell me that you're into like crypto and NFT? Are you a boring investor like me with your index funds? What's what's inside your accounts.
Let's talk about We do dabble a little bit in crypto, but it's just a dabble. It ain't it ain't a substantial amount of our portfolio.
But we're die.
Hard index fund investors. We're DIY investors, and we love index funds. We get the simplest path to wealth shout out to Jail Collins, and we invest heavily in index funds. We also front loaded our traditional retirement so we no longer put a substantial amount of money in our traditional retirement accounts, our four one k's, and we just invest through taxable accounts like brokerage is.
We do have some tax advantage accounts.
We have an HSA and we have a ur SEP four one k which is for entrepreneurs. But for the most part, we are done investing for our traditional retirement life after sixty five. We're just gonna let the money that's there sit and we're just focused on kind of building that bridge fund in between now and then.
So do y'all mind if I asked that question how much what was your goal? You said you mentioned a number goal that you had for you know, walking away from nine to five life. What was that goal?
I think at the time it was like one point two million something like that. This was before so this is the challenge with creating a five number or north star, and before you've had a chance to like fully live your life. At that time, it was before we had had our son when we created that number, and it was before we started to financially support or at least assist Julian's mom, who is financially insecure and needs a subsidy every month essentially to afford to live. She lives
off of Social Security. That amount is well below the poverty line, and so in order to give her the quality of life that we think she deserves, we have to help. And so when we created that number, it didn't include any of that stuff. It just kind of took our expenses as to dinks, double income, no kids, and expanded at times twenty five years or whatever the
formula is. And so when we started realizing that it was very difficult to stick to a number because life is still evolving and changing and we had decisions around childcare and education that we still need to make, we just then started focusing on an overall income strategy, with investments obviously propping up the total value of our portfolio.
But yeah, that I think our number was somewhere around the million dollar ballpark.
Well, so you guys't. It wasn't a we're going to go live on a beach number and never make another cent. Obviously you are. You remind me a lot. I'm thinking of our rich journey, your counterparts in Portugal. I feel like you guys are their power couple in the finance space. But like obviously they were able to retire by forty, but they ain't sitting on their hands. They're running a huge multimedia brand just like you guys are. So that's
a source of income. So you may not need to hit that million because you know you've got that money coming in and you guys are your own.
Yeah, and that's the part movement that I don't that I think gets a little cloudy, but I understand why because when people are first introduced to it, they're introduced to it in their very traditional sense. But back to your point, income is the secret there, and especially when you are comfortable and you have a pretty good sustainable source of income and you know what it takes to
create that income. When you have that as an option, you have so many other options in terms of what you're willing to do in exchange for money and certainly what you're willing to do in exchange all your time. And I think for us, that's really what we want for most people, we want to just give us more options. And I would say specifically people of color who work in traditional corporate environments, because we find that they're very focused on that one way of getting a job is
really getting the next promotion. And it was like, that is one way, and it's a popular way, and there are certainly tons of tools and things that you can do to get that, but we just want to make sure that they're aware of some of these other things that I think might be able to one give them an opportunity to earn more income, but to just have a better quality of life in the process. Not always, but at least we want to make sure that they're aware of that.
It's about creating professional and financial resiliency, having additional income streams beyond just year nine to five. I mean, like I've been laid off before. We just had these huge layoffs from better dot com. Three thousand people lost their jobs just a couple of weeks ago. I mean all sorts of plate peloton. You hear these like headline making layoffs. No job is secure, Like it's just bs. No job
is secure. And what I love about it is when you have other skills Like I always had brown ambition, for example, and it wasn't necessarily able to replace my income, but it was something like when I went independent last summer, it gave me a sense of structure, like at least every week, I'm going to do BA and I'm going to figure out mandy money, you know, as I go along.
And I love also and maybe you guys talk about this as well, helping people figure out what kind of skills they can leverage as a consultant, you know, to actually work independently and getting work outside of your nine to five? Was that important for you too, Kirsten? I mean, I know, Julian, you know you were building these skill sets. What sort of skills have you taken from your previous work through your nine to five and sort of applied to y'all's business.
Yeah.
So my previous work was on the product side of the business, and it was kind of connecting our call centers with our technology department, and so I got a ton of experience in B to B relationships and partnerships, as well as real time conversations, customer service and incentives, and so I think what I've learned from that is just how to position a offer or an idea as something that people actually want and get them to take action,
and that's what we've applied to our business. I can understand that saving money is not the sexiest idea in the world. Index funds certainly are not the sexiest investment. If you look on anybody for yourself, I love, you got to learn how to make a problem sexy, and you got to learn how to get people excited about
something that is fairly simple and understand to understand. I think a lot of times we assume that it has to be difficult to understand in order to be valuable, or it has to be expensive in order to be valuable.
And in the case of investing and becoming a millionaire, the solutions are actually pretty straightforward, and what it requires is just a discipline and a commitment and maybe a different social path, a different type of community to encourage you to do the thing that you already know how to do.
All right, let's take a quick break BA fam I will be right back with more from my conversation with the delightful Julia and Kirsten Saunders from Rich and Regular. All right, da fam, we are back. I am back with my guest today, Julian and Kirsten Saunders, husband and wife and the power couple behind the brand Rich and Regular. There's a real difference between people who get the knowledge
and those who take action on the knowledge. And the more that I do my work, I get I feel like how teachers must feel when you look at a student and you're like, but you got all the information, you still didn't study or you didn't take that. You don't like what's going on and having to release that. But but that is why there will always be, you know, an audience for people like you guys too, I mean, because the people who want to do and take action, like they will rise to the top, you know. And
it's that inertia that is killing so so many people. Yeah, And I feel like as much as we want to, I don't know if you guys have this too, but I just want to like fix people's inertia. Like you can do it and like motivate, but you can't. You can't save or like push everyone. They kind of have to reach whatever rock bottom or whatever you know, moment in time.
As a treative entrepreneur, that is really what what inspires me. It's how to move the people to your point in terms of inertia, It's like, how do I move them? How do I get them to care more today than they did yesterday? And I think one of the things that we try to do is actually to lead less with education. I think there's still not enough, but I think more often than not, people are trying to lead with education under the assumption that they're not doing these
things because they don't know better. And I think the reality is there's significant percentage of people who actually do know better, but they're simply choosing to do otherwise. And so for us, as frustrating as it can be, that is the creative challenge is how do we inspire them? How do we move them? How do we get their attention? How do we break into the spaces where they are paying attention and help them understand why this particular message
or these tactics are applicable to them? And so we do. One of the things that we live by is really aiming for the heart and not the head, and so you're not going to get a lot of stats and data.
While we we have those things that we're ready to shoot them out, but I'm much more interested in helping people think about the fact that their parents may be aging, and whether or not they want to spend a lot of time being with their parents without having to ask someone for some time off, or whether or not they want the opportunity to really nurture a relationship between their aging parents and their children and give them an opportunity
to be grandparents in a way that maybe your grandparents didn't have to be to you, or to recognize what's happening in the larger landscape in terms of gosh, women's rights or you know, wealth and equality, and say, you know, your skill set as a product designer could be so useful for this nonprofit organization, or your public speaking skills you know that you're using right now to motivate the
call center. Imagine if you applied that to you know, I'm not going to say eah your way, but a different a different part of the world of your local community where impact may not necessarily be the find by you know, clicks on a website or dollars that are made and so for us, that's really what drives us is to just help people connect those dots between wealth and like sort of broader social and cultural causes.
Yeah, something earlier that you guys touched on and even just now is that multi generational support, supporting family, supporting aging parents, and for black and brown families, it's just more likely that we are going to be in a position where we need and it takes a village, and
we need to support and uplift some family members. And we got a question to we do a Friday episode be a Q and A, And we got a question from a listener that got lots and lots of comments on IG about just that it was basically a partner who was upset or questioning whether or not she should continue to allow her partner to subsidize his mother's income. And it sounds like you guys are in that situation.
So can you talk a little bit about what helped you guys have that conversation and kind of approach your I mean, you have your family unit, right, but what happens when you have family beyond your little unit who may need support and as a couple, any any advice for couples who were in that situation on how they can approach it and think about it so that you can kind of get to some kind of compromise and it's not so contentious.
You know, it's a work in progress. It's something that you know, started with me because my mom is the one that we're from them, that we're supporting that were financially supporting. I saw it coming. And for me, even as as when I was working my traditional job, that was in part what motivated me to always push for that job because I knew not only did I just want to make more, because I wanted a better quality
of life. I could see, you know, in sense the bank accounts sort of dwindling on her side, and so I knew that at any point I was going to have to step in. And so it really mattered to me when I didn't get a job that I felt that I was qualified for it, because I was like, nah, this is you know, the stakes are a lot higher for me. And so there was that, and even when we met for the first time, it was some then
that came up. We sort of, you know, our first conversation about money actually led to our first argument but that was part of the baggage, you know, looking back, that was part of the baggage that I was carrying, right, part of the reasons why I was so tight with money, because there were all of these these these sources of tension that I was thinking about, not only just growing up in poverty in New York, but also knowing that, like, gosh, you know, if we're going to go out and ball
out tonight, I'm going to feel really bad if I get the phone call from my mom tomorrow knowing that she needed two hundred or three hundred dollars for something. And so all of those little things sort of factored into the way that I managed my career. It bled into how we managed our relationship, and so it really
just started with having conversations. One having sick conversations with myself. Two, finding the courage to talk about money to my mom, who was an elder and also has to overcome, you know, sort of these generational differences, like teaching her that it's okay to be vulner to share these things, to admit that you're struggling, don't wait until the last second. You know that it doesn't matter what happens. We're going to be here to support you. And oh, by the way,
by we, I mean me and my wife. And so you don't just have to tell me. You can tell either one of us if I'm not there. So it took it, honestly, like it took seven years just to get her comfortable with realizing that we're a team and you're going to be taking yes, yes, to get her on board. But yeah, like it was just slowly peeling away. And even after we made progress, we realize that, you know, she goes back into her own world, and so we have to invite her back into this world where we're
a team. You know, she's not really accustomed to a village support and so it's it's it's been interesting, but I'm grateful, you know, Caresten's on board and it's been it's been helpful. But we got to keep talking and try to make talking about it fun or funny because I've that that helps a lot too, and mention it to.
You you'll amount, Oh, sorry.
No, I was just going to say, mention it to your friends, like it is something that I think according to the data, forty eight percent of Americans over forty are dealing with and so You're likely not alone if you are feeling the pressure or your spouse is feeling the pressure and you're not aligned on what the approach should be. It's something that we're all going through. And this is the consequence of companies not thinking about retirement.
They kind of pass that responsibility onto the employee after they got rid of pensions, and so messages like saving and all of it, Like, you're going to experience a generation that didn't necessarily do what they were supposed to do because their parents were taking care of in their retirements. And so it's something that we're all collectively as a
society going to deal with. In some circles has already been called a crisis, and others it's just kind of like this weird social dynamic that we're managing as individual families. But I'd encourage people to talk about it.
Yeah, And I think it's you said you saw it coming, Julian, and I think some of us out you know, you may see it coming in your own quiet way. And maybe you're the spouse, and I feel like if you're the if you're the actual daughter or son or you know, child, it may be harder for you to see your parents in that vulnerable position. Sometimes it's like the out the other spouse, who can kind of who maybe sees it coming? And how do you even broach that subject? Like are
we going to talk about this? You know, Grandpa seems a little unhealthy. What's going to happen if grandma's alone? And what are we going to do? Like my husband and I, I know I'm stuck in New York. I want to go back to Georgia for Stacy Abrams and other reasons. But you know his parents are here, and you know they are They are similar to your mom, Julian, just on a fixed income right now, and it is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It's crazy, right, work really hard and you got nothing
and we're just starting to have that conversation. So did y'all kind of create here's how much she needs her so much more comfortable as a stipend each month or as a you know, contribution on a monthly.
Yeah, it was. It was a pretty all hands on deck situation, just getting all the documents in order, creating a formal budget for her for the very first time, putting her basically on a spending plan, helping her even as you.
Went all the way everything, giving her a general timeline in terms of this is how many years you have reevaluating her investment strategy because she had a financial advisor that you know, again she had pennies in there, so he wasn't really looking.
At, you know, her account with any sense of real care, and so looking at that stuff and say, you're seventy years old, there's no real reason for you to be
invested in these kinds of things. You should be drawing down and so, you know, just helping her get to that point was really really helpful, and even taking the step further, which was the big one, and helping her realize that a significant percentage of the world that she had amass was all in her home, which she really couldn't necessarily access and so and really afford right, and so getting her to a point where she felt like selling the home was actually the best thing for her,
so that she could downsize have more cash that she could actually use to do other things travel see her friends cover for her medicine. Like it was the first time anyone I think it ever really intervened on that level. Because she's also single and all of these other reasons. She was not a college graduate, and so it was it was I felt more than anything proud that we were able to actually help and even now like proud that we're able to give her a quality of life.
We wound her, you know, less than half a mile away from where we are now, so she can see.
She's down in atl you're from. She was she in New York before.
No, she was in she was another suburb, suburb of Atlanta, but she was living in senior housing, which was subsidized by the government, which is how she was able to afford it. But when COVID hit, they obviously canceled all of the interactions between seniors, so a lot of the she had moved there for weren't available. And then seeing you know, ambulances every week was just doing a number on her mental health.
And so we realized, yeah, we realized it.
Probably it's either not the right senior community for her, she needs something a little more active, she's you know, a little spicy, or she wasn't ready for senior housing yet.
And so we started.
We moved her to a standard apartment, which is obviously not subsidized by the government, and in the neighborhood that we live in expensive it's a luxury apartment that has the amenities she needed, like an elevator and covered parking and access to a grocery store within walking distance. And so yeah, that decision. Going back to your point about a monthly stipend, our stipend has increased over time. We now spend about fifteen hundred dollars a month on just
making sure that she's comfortable. And I don't know that it won't increase again. Her rent just went up again like everybody else's this year, and so we'll see how it progresses and what decisions we need to make. But we treated the same way we would if we had had a second child and needed childcare. Where it's just it's a responsibility. You figure out how to cover it.
You get creative, and you find community that offers resources and solutions that you might not have thought of because they've already been through it.
I mean, I look to you guys with such respect and also as like goals because to be able to support our parents and we have a young son too, and just feel like everyone's good. That seems like a beautiful place to be in. And I mean it's pressure, right, it's pressure, and you got to keep those gears going and keep the business going and all that. So I just I see you acknowledge that pressure, but I also am just I applaud you for that. It's thank you to be really proud of.
I appreciate the realistic applause.
I know y'all tired, because, like you know, I don't.
Know that that tension ever really goes away. But at the end of the day, you know, they're getting older. And so as I think about how I would want to spend this last chapter, like knowing that she's nearby, knowing that we can on any day be able to be there for her, and knowing that you know, our son, who you know will be five next month, has the type of relationship with his grandparents that we just never had.
Is really powerful. And so you know, I remember having a conversation with someone about what to do with the money, because I'll be I'll be completely honest. At first, I was hesitant. Kirsten was the one that was really much more willing to take this approach. I was much more mindful of what else we could do with that money, right I was looking at it from an investing standpoint, But looking back, I think it is one of the
best decisions we've ever made. And so you know, and again it's part of the tension, right you don't you don't you know, you pay attention to what that money could do, but at the end of the day, there's some things you just can't put a price on. And you know, we've got a lot of memories, a lot of memories, and that's that's that's awesome.
She got you in the heart, just like you said, got it you to think about your heart. It's why they call it personal finance, right, you're right. Yeah, people obsessed too much about try and do things the right way. On paper, you know, giving fifteen hundred dollars away sounds like not the best strategy, but when you see what you get in return, yeah, absolutely, it makes perfect sense.
That's why I think it's so important for people like y'all and even myself to be doing this work because we come with that perspective of understanding, yeah, that it's not just about dollars and cents and like what's on a calculator at the end of the day, exactly.
Yeah, I mean people that is not forever, like unless she lives to be seven hundred like a sea turtle like there.
Will be terrible to think that, but it's true, Like you know, like this is oh, she's not listening right.
Knock on wood, obviously wishing her along prosperous life, but again, thinking of you, of your life and seasons, thinking about your financial situation in seasons has been more beneficial for me than creating this plan that I apply pressure to stick to. And I don't pivot ever, you know, I don't consider the variables to change course not ideal, particularly for people of color and women of color.
Can I ask y'all really quickly? I know we are approaching the end, but we get this question all the time, and I know everyone's approach is a little bit different. But when it comes to your son and investing and saving for him, what's do you have a strategy there or kind of a path that you're on right now for this season as a five year old? For him, I.
Look forward to employing him this year. I think he deserves it. We certainly post enough pictures and reels of him on Instagram for him to be a really key model at this point. And so there's that we have our five to two nine account. But yeah, I think
more than anything. I'm genuinely looking forward to, you know, opening a custodial ira this year and paying him off of you know, the payroll of the business and being able to help him build wealth because again, you know, I didn't start earning money until I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and I was like fifty dollars a week or something like that. And so to be able to give him a head start, I think is is
really powerful. And again, like that combined with the type of perspective that he will have on family or even just parents, like having active parents that are able to bring him on business chips with him. Like, I think his upbringing and his perspective on the world will be so different, and it won't just be because he has a pot of money that's been working or growing in the background. It'll be all of those things combined so that.
You seem a different way to be successful than like our traditional dad goes to work from nine to five, I see him before bedtime kind of thing.
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, Well.
Thank y'all so much. Wait, Kristen, were you going to se Kristen, were you going to say something.
On the point, But I think we landed it.
So stuck the landing. I love it. Thank y'all so so much for joining Broad Ambition. It's been such a delightful conversation. I can't say enough. Congratulations again. In on the new book, y'all go out and buy it. Is it out yet? Is it when? It publishing?
June fourteenth?
June fourteenth, Okay, y'all got some time, but you can probably pre order it right.
We'll put order audiobooka hardcover, kindle ebook, any types of forms you can pre order.
Buy copies for your friends, your friends, friends, your mama, your daddy, whatever. Cashing out Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away by Julian and Kirsten Saunders, the founders of Rich and Regular and go check out their podcast, Go check out their YouTube series and their ig at the It's called at the Table, Money on the Table, Money on the Table, something by the Table. I got it all right. Can't thank y'all enough for joining brown Envision.
Thank y'all, take take care, Thank you, thank you so much,