BA Q&A: Have You Heard Of House Hacking?

season and if we use the AC or not. Okay, conet is crazy. We take turns getting groceries for the house, although I shop a bit more since I'm working in the office and don't always pack a lunch. We make just about the same amount of money and have kept our finances separate. I'm planning to do pre mariital counseling with my fiance and wonder if financials will be brought up in those convos. We both have trauma around a

parent abusing household finances. I know I prefer to keep all household bills in one bucket and the rest separate. How do you all start to share finances with partners? Were there any strategies you employed to start saving for a wedding? Do you have recommendations on the best or easiest joint accounts? Ally keeps popping up? Thanks for any insights you can provide. Y'all are the bomb.

had a good place like I was coming from. You know, I wanted to help, but I hadn't yet learned how to wait for them to ask me for help. But I remember our early before moving in together, which we moved in together less than a year after dating. I think just because like Lisa's New York kind of rush you into decisions sooner than you may otherwise rush. But we had dinner and I broached the subject of like our finance is at that dinner and it was fine.

Like we talked about splitting rent fifty to fifty. We talked about how much do you earn? Here's what I earn and also moving in together, Like we talked about is this a long term do you see a future with me? You know, I didn't want to live with him if he didn't think he'd one day marry me, bless his heart. And then I would say around that time, I just got more feisty. I was like, show me your credits core. I want to see your credits core.

Why don't you show me your credits cor? And I think it was more my o. I think he might have just shown me or told me if I hadn't been so much like we must find if you don't show me, you don't trust me, you don't let me. I was just a little extra. So yeah, I had my ups and downs early in our relationship, kind of talking about finances. We did do pre mariital counseling, but

finances didn't come up. I think you're gonna have to like bring that up yourselves as a topic that you want to work on, like set the intention of in therapy. This will be one of the things we talk about. We more talked about like I don't even remember. God, honestly, I think it was premarital counseling is fine, but I almost feel like don't forget about that when you get like year five, you know, six seven, like you need more counseling. So we started counseling again just earlier this year.

But yeah, that was that was our early early arguments about it. We're around me just being a little too intense.

in full. Do you have the money? It was maybe like four or five hundred dollars. He said, yeah, he paid it off. Credit score jumped over one hundred points because he didn't have much credit history. So when you don't have a ton of credit history, one really great decision can make a huge impact because your credit history is an average of your choices. So if you only have two grades, one A will make a B and

A you know. And so so what we started to do, though, is so I had to learn because my aggressive ways we're not working. I remember he used to call me budget East to bully. He said, everybody, Oh, we knew you are Budget Easter bully.

I thought it was frivolous. I'm like, oh, that's fine, but we all still put money aside for Alyssa, right, and he would because there's never a time that he would ever say I'd rather the sneakers than put something aside for a listle. So he'd be like, oh, ooh,

you're right. And so that's in the beginning to kind of loosen him up to make the financial choices that, quite honestly, I thought was the right one that you want to yes, that I would like, you know, I would like the comment when it was like, there's never any pushback when it comes to Alyssa. And then I added a new one because I was traveling and he'd be like, oh, I want to, you know, travel with you.

And I be like, okay, well, I'm going to open up this online only savings account and you can open up a separate one, which she did, and when I put the money away for savings, you should too, so that way the next trip we go on, we can go together, so there's never pushback on vacation. And so I did that, quite honestly for a long time before I was able to brouch other things like I think your car noticed too high, maybe we should surrender the car. I think we should start saving for a wedding. I

think we should start saving for a house. By the time we bought this house that I live in now, we were able to pay for a cash because it was like fifty percent off because it was a foreclosure.

We had gotten to a really great space where we were on the same page financially because we had started with those common denominators and then learned to discuss what are our other goals and what do we need to do to reach it, you know, And so I learned to change my tone, you know, not to be such a budgetist to bully, and he learned to like be open to say, oh, this is for the betterment of both of us. So I don't know what Mandy, you know,

does now. But when Darrell was here, we I had like a We had an RS and we had each other's. So I had my own checking, I had my own savings, He had his own checking, He had his own savings, and then we jointly had joint checking joint savings. The checking account was like the bills account for the house,

so like we both contributed. He largely contributed to the bills account, and then I largely more contributed to our joint savings account, you know, because he had this thing where he was like, I want to pay the bills, and I said, okay, So there wasn't a ton left over for savings, but that's where I contributed the most, you know, And so like, you know, those are some of the choices. So I'll give you an example too,

like I made significantly more than Jirell. To be candid, he never made over sixty thousand dollars a year, and you know I can bring home seven figures, and so there's a big discrepancy, you know, And we talked about how do we navigate that because sometimes you know, for many men, and I understand it can be a hard thing for the ego to swallow. His biggest thing was I don't want to live off of what you bring in, Tippany. I want to be able to maintain our lifestyle with what I bring in.

did my most contributing. I had the one hundred and eighty thousand dollars there. We used it to buy the house. So now there's no mortgage, but his income could cover taxes, insurance, utilities, you see what I mean. So it's like he still got to pay the bills, but in a way that preserved what I wanted, which is this beautiful home in this nice neighborhood. But it preserved I pay the bills

and I can maintain our lifestyle, you know. And so like those are the types of conversations you want to start to have, like where do you want to live? We each got our own allowance, and we could have spended however we wanted because I know we were both contributing to the household, which I had our own savings. You could do what you wanted because as long as them the bills were paid, and then the joint savings was saved. That excess money is yours to do what

you want with. So I learned to leave him alone when it came to that. So those are some of the things that we did, and you know, hopefully that'll be helpful. It's going to be just a constant conversation. You guys should be talking about money always. Something that

Mandy actually introduced me to. Mandy when you started working with Helen, you know, I didn't have a financial advisor at the time, and you said that Helen helped you kind of like be a tie breaker like you and husband, you know, And so I suggest that too, finding a financial advisor that your meeting with, especially in the beginning regularly, because they will help to walk through your goals and

how do you reach them together. And that way he feels he's heard and you feel like you're heard too.

I do as a financial planner. But yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at too with premorital counseling, Like they're not going to be able to give you the financial advice, but they can help you learn how to approach it if it becomes like this, really, you mentioned both having trauma financial trauma in the past, so like, if it's really tough to even get the conversation started, maybe it's good to start in a premarital counseling and then work your way up to like getting a financial

planner and then but I would just say, like, you'll find the system that works for you. For us, it's it is one joint like household expense account and one joint savings and then we have our separate accounts where we, you know, have money for whatever we want to buy. Oh, she asked, any strategies you employed to start saving for a wedding. Yeah. We moved in with his parents and cut our I had never been earning more in my career.

I think I was about to take a job making like forty K more than what I was earning at the time, and for some reason I snapped and I'm like, we have to save all this extra money, Like I don't want to, you know, just get a nicer apartment. We moved him with his parents into a tiny apartment and way in Wood Upper Manhattan and gave up our lovely two bedroom apartment in Queen's and basically lived off of You know, we were able to save the majority of our income, which helped. You don't have to go

that drastic. But I was hell bent on not having debt for my wedding, and I was also hell bent on having a gorgeous wedding. So if you both want that, it's easier to make that decision together. We both really wanted a nice wedding, so I think it was easier for him to say yes to my crazy idea that we lasted. We lasted like six or eight months there. I think saved like twelve thousand dollars. It was nice.

want like a big old wedding. And so we decided, do we want to spend this money on the wedding or do we want to set aside to purchase a home together, And so we said, let's have a simple wedding. So we did justice at the piece. A friend of mine has this really nice restaurant that she closed down Bonda for us, and Mandy was there and so we just like, that's what we did. My mom was distraught, of course, because I'm Nigeria and how dare I not have an extravagant, ignorant wedding.

did our video for free. Honestly, it was like the I don't think I spent two thousand dollars, like including Alyssa's dress, Jurrell's close from like Banana Republic, you know, all everything photos and but it was beautiful because after it was said and done, we purchased I wouldn't have had the money to purchase the home cash. I didn't know at the time that this house was going to

come up. But not only did we purchase the home cash, we paid off my student loan debt fifty thousand dollars and we were able to pay off my parents' house one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And so for us it was like and for all partnered people, you have to decide what's your design outcome jointly as well as individually, and make the decision from there. So to Mandy's point, like you know, if you can reduce how you're living,

however that looks and set aside. Right now, Citizens Bank, we don't I don't work with them or anything, but they because all I think is like three point three. So I moved my money from ally to Citizens Bank is three point seven, So like.

auto transfers, that has worked for us. It took a while, but I was like, dude, automatically transfer money into Ally each month so that I know we'll have enough to like get daycare covered and stuff like that. But yeah, for your savings, for sure, I would just choose the bank with the highest interest rate because you want that to be easy to get to but not too easy to get to. But yeah, good luck on this journey, and congratulations Taylor on your engagement's.

So house hacking is when you live in a house ideally ideally like a multi family house, let someone else pay the rent, you know, and then save from that place, so like you know, you're saving on you not having to pay rent, someone else is paying the mortgage for you, and then you use that money or you could even pull out money from that property to purchase the next property, you know, and so.

you don't need to do them. You can literally leverage by you know, putting down giving an fah loan, putting down three and a half percent, so you don't have to put down the full five hundred thousand or two hundred thousand or whatever, maybe three thousand and four thousand and five thousand, which means you do have to save something, you know, and then you use that leverage to purchase

an asset that is much greater than what you initially invested. Patience, you know, maybe you fix it up while you're there, do a little something to it, find yourself some you know, someone who's going to rent, and then you know, after a couple of years you're able to pull out some money from that property as well as hopefully you've saved some of that rent money you're getting to then purchase the next thing. And so that's what I would suggest

for you to start. There's some great resources, so many some I don't know if that all United Ways still do this, but some of them. You might want to look at your local United Way. Oftentimes they have something called an IDA program, an Individual Development Account program. This is a program where can you take like a series of classes, and the United Way has partnered with the bank,

and some banks just do this on their own. So you can look for individual Development Account programs at different banks and then they will pledge if you put a certain amount of money in and you take these courses or classes, they will then grant you money, like in multiple So if you put up five hundred, they might say for every five hundred you put up, we will multiple times for that's what the IDA program that I used to teach, so literally when I was working at

the United Way, people took my course. If they say that up to five hundred dollars, at the end of the course, they got two thousand, which is great and so like, so look for IDA programs. Another thing, there's

Naka Naca love Naka the neighborhood. I forget what stands for, but NAKA, right, it's this on this nonprofit organization that helps new homeowners purchase home so you can get a multi family I think up to four families with NAKA and NAKA will typically help you lock in a much lower interest rate than any place else and they commit for you to have no down payment. They really help with like no down payment, help with closing costs and you get a lower interest rate than what's out there,

and so look at for NAKA programs also too. I would just consider, like, you need to start taking like these free first time home buys courses to understand the home buying process in general. You know, like, you know what is it you know, what is insurance going to look like? What is that going to look like?

in a mortgage? Also too, you're going to want to to connect with realtors in the area that you're considering purchasing, because oftentimes realtors will have their ear to the street, like, oh, you know what M ANDT Bank has a twenty twenty thousand dollars grant, this bank has, you know, there are grants all over And so I would say for the next honestly year to inundate myself with taking these courses, meeting with realtors, you know, reaching out to banks to

see if they have any grant programs, doing your you know, your your research, and if you do that, before I start flipping, I would house hack and maybe consider doing some renting and so I can get some money up to do the thing that you're wanting to do.

that's a really good painter. You're starting to build your team while you're house hacking. So when you finally get the money together, then you know, and you have a team together, then you can consider flipping. I do not suggest flipping right off the that unless you're partnered with an experienced flipper and you're kind of like working side by side, because you can do that too. Oftentimes these

flippers have no admin assistance. They're a mess, So you might want to look for a flipper and offer your services to keep them organized so you can learn on the job. That's something you can consider.

She used to do this in Atlanta, and I would read her blog and she was like very transparent about fixing up homes and living in them and renting them out in that whole process. And I anyway, she has a podcast called afford Anything. Also Bigger Pockets. I feel like it's more real estate investor focus, So maybe add those to rotation with brown ambition as well, and give yourself time because it's not something you want to jump into,

you know. So I like that TIFFs like house hack and make it a slow flip because you're learning and all of that and saving, you know.

a very expensive process. So the more education you can have because you're going to make mistakes and they're going to be pricey, but they can be reduced in price, you know, if you if you take the time for education. So good luck to you.