Kent Miller: Budgeting – S4E1

On this episode, we talk with Kent Miller about budgeting and finances. You're listening to the Dudes and Dads podcast, a show dedicated. And dads by building community through meaningful conversation and storytelling. Here are your host, Joel Dumont and Andy Lieberman. Andrew Joel season four. Here we go. It's on. Oh boy. You know, the threatened to change the locks on the studio several times and they haven't done it. So here we are again. Season four coming back strong. You know what?

And I should say we do want to thank. Always want to thank the people that give us space here that allow us to record. Yeah, it's been good to have a longstanding permanent home. We were just reminiscing about the terror in the set up and tear down that had to occur. That was terrible in the early days of the show. And I can say that that's how long we've been at this. We can now refer to the very early days, the early days, season four or this is what we're here for years now.

Well, three, three, three and a half. three ish, yeah. So math isn't my strong suit. We're were walking out of our toddler phase as a as a podcast so soon. Soon they'll be wanting to drive. Uh, that's the show will soon want to drive, or at least at least have their own phone. And that's where I have to draw the line right there. No phones for the show. No, no fans of the show. Uh, the metaphor is really breaking down, Andy. I'm sorry. Wait, hold on. Let's do this.

But being led by Breeland right there and Andrew, give us an update because your family has just had a splendid time . Oh yes, a way. I love them. I love the pictures, and I felt a little jealous because you were doing well. What for some would be there was an indoor activity, but what often people think of as an outdoor activity, but you were doing it in the dead of winter as the Arctic air was coming and we did so.

We for part of the kids Christmas present, we took them to the Wisconsin Dells and we went to the Wilderness Resort, which is great because it's like three water parks and one, Oh. It was nice and it was like something for everybody, like all there was. Because if you try and like us, if you got kids of a wide range of age, you're trying to keep all of them. There's been little water parks for the little kids. There's big slides for the big kids. Absolutely.

There's a rope, high rope, of course. Arcade there is. This is OK, so this is the best part. So the one of the water parks has a like a pizza place in it. Yeah. And we could have walked up and got our pizza, but we said, No, I'm going to call them, you're getting fancy. They will deliver it to anywhere in the resort. Come on. So even though we were in the same place, they came right to our table and brought it. It was great.

Andy, what a time to be alive when you can be at a water park resort and have fun in the winter, in the winter and have them bring your pizza. It was great. What more could you ask for? I'm so glad you guys had that time. That's awesome. So how was your Christmas? Well, Christmas was fantastic. And I should say last Christmas, we we did go to Southern California, and I'm not complaining about that at all. I should say this has been the story that came out of that past Christmas.

So my sister in law and brother in law who have a home in San Diego, they just really lovely place. They've got a pool in the backyard. And so last Christmas, they're like, Hey, normally they would not be using the pool in the, you know, at that time of year. Sure, right? But they're like, No, we have guests over. We're going to break this like a hotel experience. They ran the pool and the pool heater. Now it's not super cold there, but it's you need the heater, you need the heater, right?

So apparently it was using so much gas at the gas company. Thought there was a gas leak. Oh, no, came and turned their gas off. I won't tell you what their bill was for that week that we were there. It hefty, so it's like they didn't invite you back. No, that's exactly. We didn't get the companies and forget this. We're not doing. We were fortunate from the various corners of the United States.

My wife's family, her sisters, came in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California and we had Christmas at our place. It was wonderful. I really, really enjoyed it. So grateful. And then we were also able. Then my brother and his wife flew in from Colorado the few days after we had our Christmas on my side with them. Really, really good. Really, really enjoyed the time. It's it's like what we've always dreamed Christmas could be. Just hanging out and everyone got along.

Let's just let's that's a win that everyone got along and enjoyed some really delicious food. I I this year, people listen to me because I eat my body weight and shrimp. And, you know, I don't ask for much but get a green bean casserole or a little. Did I get a green mother green bean casserole? I feel like, I don't know, right from Thanksgiving.

I there was there was there was a green bean casserole in there somewhere, and I'm not remembering where it good, where it came from, but thank you. You can thank me later. I ship this. And he made some phone calls, made sure I got the green bean casserole. Yeah, so absolutely great holiday season. And we are we're looking forward to 2022 as a family. We are also looking forward to it because Andy and I got on the stick and our families are actually going to get together sometime soon.

Sue and Mary, we've been working. It's like a it's really it. It's it's a logistics thing. I mean, we really have to work at it now. We do. But we're we're looking forward to that as well. So that's that's what's going on, my friend. Awesome. Well, it's good to be back with you behind the microphone here to do season four. So I'm excited. Yes. Yes, yes.

Well, hey, before we go any further, Andy, we want to remind everybody that our support comes from our good friends at everyone's financial. Helping members invest in what last through financial services will impact more at evidence. Dot com slash machina securities offered through Concourse Financial Group Securities Inc. member FINRA as a PC and also support comes from Concrete Barber.

Head over to Concrete Barber dot com to see all of the great styles and hair products that you can get for yourself to keep your beard and your hair looking dapper with dapper dapper. We did have a recent guest to. I'm waiting to find out how it went because you always like D.J. does a fantastic job, but the deal is every person you send over to him. It's like people are particular about their hair, right?

So we do have a recent guest that did did a haircut beard combo, and so I'm waiting to see. I haven't seen any. We've seen any public photos yet, so I'm I'm crossing the fingers. But oh yeah. Yeah, thank you, T.J..

All right. Tonight we have Kent Miller from evidence with us on the phone or on the phone. He's actually here in the studio in person. I can get on the phone if you're a no, no, no, no, it's it's great. Would you just leave and we'll call you back on this one because you stand outside and call and please be some more like a like a radio show than if we call in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And he's used to we're used to a remote a lot of removed on remote stuff.

But but it's always a pleasure to have people in the studio anyways. Well, welcome to the show and we wanted to talk with you a little bit about finances. Again, you're an evidence employee, so we are in evidence being sponsored. We thought this would be a great idea to bring some of its employees on and talk about finances this year in the 2022. And so we're going to be talking about budgeting this year this episode, but welcome to the show.

first, though, tell me a little bit about your dad's dads, who you are as a dad, husband, a grandpa or whatever else makes you that dad. What makes what makes Ken Miller tick? That's why that could be a long episode, so we'll try to keep it condensed. Thank you. All right. So, Mary, now? Oh my goodness. 37 years and to my wife, Jill, we have two daughters that are with us. We lost a son who was just nine hours old when he passed. That was a rough time.

But my oldest daughter and married, she has three kids and so I have grandchildren Sophia, Ryan and Brooklyn. And then my younger daughter, Dani, and we all live in the same house together. Yeah, this is this is intriguing. Tell us a little bit more about that. You were talking to us before the show here, and it was a really interesting story. So can you tell me how that transpired? Yeah, it started as a joke.

Like, I, you know, I love looking on Zillow at stuff, and I'm kind of hanging out one day and I see this really cool house and it's got eight bedrooms. And so I just send a link as a joke to my daughters and my wife, and I'm like, Hey, we could all live together, ha ha ha. And I don't know. About three minutes later, I get several emails back. It says, Hey, I think you should schedule something. This looks kind of cool. So we looked at it. We went through the house.

The grandkids claimed the rooms are way nice, but we got done and my my daughters both came up to me and said, Dad, we need a family meeting. And so, yeah, then it was just a matter of kind of working out the details and making it happen. I I just I want to believe that I love my family enough to do that, that I could be all in the same in the same house with them. So here's the deal.

What we're going to do is periodically follow up with Kat and I want to see how this experiment is really is really playing out. Yeah, because if it can happen, maybe you know, there's something to and I shouldn't say what Kent is doing is really kind of an ancient thing, right? He's actually right, bringing the family back together under one roof. Uh, so I'm intrigued. Yeah, you have to come back and tell us really intrigued.

That's also a little over two years in. OK. And you're still surviving or thriving after surviving, he says yes. So there we go. OK. I love it, right? So again, we want to talk a little bit about budgeting and cash flow tonight. So tell us a little bit about your background and we'll start from there and then we'll talk about budgeting. So my background is pretty varied. I spent probably 30 some years in youth ministry and different aspects of it.

So I worked with local outreach organization and it's a national one. But youth for Christ. A lot of people campuslife that kind of stuff did that for a decade, went to work at a church here locally and was a youth pastor. Young adult pastor did that for a long time. I worked for a local mission board and did some work for them and then got called up to a camp out of that.

And so I was a camp in southern Michigan up here, and that's where I really got kind of my teeth into finances and budgeting a lot more. I was the director and so you have to deal with, you know, a limited amount of income and. And how's that going to work? And before it was just dealing with youth budgets and trip budgets and stuff like that.

Outside of family budgets, of course. And so out of that, I had a great experience but discovered about, I don't know, maybe four and a half years in that I was allergic to everything at camp, so I couldn't breathe up there and basically had had to leave and spend some time with the denomination here locally and then eventually ended up pastoring again in a church.

And so those experiences all had different things that involve finances that involved working with people and their finances, everything from charitable giving. When we were at the camp to obviously in the congregations people give and you have budgets, you have to deal with there. So all of that kind of led to this opportunity.

And I just got tapped one day by one of our colleagues, and she was out of my office in the church and said, Man, I think you'd make a great financial consultant. You should, you know, look into this. And yeah, and you've been with evidence for how long now? Almost four years. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You know, I I think so oftentimes we we joke about trying to destigmatize financial consulting and all this and who we think these people are.

But one of the reasons we've partnered with evidence is is really our experience has been it has been that there is just well-rounded people with with real life experience who have been out in the real world, who have gifts and abilities in this area, but are able to walk alongside of people and to meet them, you know , in in the circumstance of everyday life, people's financial situations are as varied as the people themselves.

And so it does take a particular kind of, I think, mindset and gifts that to be able to to step into those situations. And then as we've said before, when we had Brant on the show, it's like people just aren't always super excited to talk about where they where they are financially or if they feel lost. It can be a real thing. Know just a point of either contention in their family. Or they could say it can be relational issues and.

And I know from the from the pastoring side, I'm sure you're able to pick up on those, those sort of those sort of tensions pretty quickly when when they're when people are coming together on the on the budgeting side. So I want to I'm going to play devil's advocate advocate for budgeting because Jack and I just had this had our budgeting discussion. I happen to know that the household annual budgeting meeting is occurring on Tuesday night, so we're we're coming up on it.

Kent, why why budgeting? Because because like so many people, I have felt in the past that budgeting is a way to keep me from having fun with my money. It is, it is. It can feel like what I hear, the word budget it is, you know, it's just, Hey, I work hard for my money. The budget is trying to take that money and take it away from me so that I can't enjoy life. And so why in the world?

Why in the world as I play devil's advocate here, why would why would I enter into that practice that that framework? And then once I do enter into it? Or if I dare enter into it, what are the initial baby steps that they can take so that maybe I don't just feel completely overwhelmed in the process? Yeah, great question.

Even if it's a devil's devil's advocate one now, one of the things that I think is so true is that that is, I would say, almost everybody who's not gotten into working with the budget or cash flow kind of dynamic is they feel that's the intent is to say, here's what I can't do with my money.

And the reality is when you have a budget in place that you have worked through and figured out what are the goals and the things that are important to me, what are the things I want to try to achieve, whether that's financially, whether that's giving to organizations you care about, whatever it is that you have kind of passion about.

Once you have something that helps you track your money, know how you're spending it and look where everything's at that, you're actually going to be able to achieve those goals much more quickly and you're going to able to get to a point where there's going to be and they throw around the word financial freedom a lot. I mean, I hear that all the time and I get that that concept. But the idea is you actually get to a point where you can tell your money where to go.

And I mean that in a good way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. So I guess if I'm let's just say you, I'm starting getting budgeting, where do I start? Like, that's going to be a really daunting task. If you if you're looking at going, Hey, I don't really have a whole lot of money to begin with because it seems to be going places. I don't know where it's at. But things like that. So sometimes that's a really hard place. Where do we start?

Like, if I'm looking to go like, where do I go? Well, I want to give you a little bit of a backstory on that, because when my wife and I first, you know, we're getting married and we starting to have kids and I worked for, I mean, really poverty wage. And she wasn't working at the time. And you know, we were we would listen to a lot of these Christian radio shows about finances. And here's the approach that I always heard.

It was like, Well, we want to help you learn how to use your money. So first of all, get $1,000,000. Now, once you have $1,000,000, let me tell you what you can do to be faithful stewards of your money here. And I know they weren't saying that. Don't get me wrong. Don't, you know, don't call into these guys and tell them that. But but that's how I understood it. This was such a daunting task and the biggest issues that we need to to.

I think wrap our heads around is is figuring out where's our money even going? Like, that's the place you start. I, when I work with clients and I'll ask, you know, do you have a budget? And there's that awkward silence, which I know right away means, no, we really don't. But we want to say something that sounds intelligent. And what happens is that that I'll say, You know what? Here's what I want you to try.

Take one month and take every receipt of every cent that you spend and gather it and record it. You know, if you buy a candy bar of the machine at work, write that down if you don't have a receipt. Keep track of every penny you spend because most people don't have any clue where all their their discretionary money is. And quite honestly, many of us don't think we have discretionary money because it just gets used up and what we think is normal things right?

And so starting there is kind of the really the groundwork to say, OK, do that for a month, maybe two to see how, you know, maybe there was an exception. Don't do it in December, when you're buying Christmas gifts or trying to choose a normal month, you know? And that's the place to start to figure out where is my money going? Like, am I spending a lot on games on my iPad? Am I spending a lot, you know, at lunch every day?

Like, you know, am I buying that cup of coffee on the way into work? And are there things that I can do to change that? So it's really getting kind of an inventory of what you're currently doing? And then starting to put things into, you know, I love a spreadsheet, so I'm into spreadsheets and we give those out all the time to say here, plug these numbers in. So. Can I think about, you know, in the pastoral world when there are marital issues?

It's one of, you know, I always named the big three sex, drugs and money are the are not rock and roll and they're not rock and roll. But maybe for some, I don't know finances in the marital relationship. Big deal. We often hear from so many wives in particular that financial security is one of their top values and feeling as though they're on the team and on mission with with their spouse, right? We hear that all the time.

When it comes to a couple coming together because I know I know this and I had full disclosure, this is this has been the struggle for the Dumont family is has been just even some competing values with our money or how we how we perceive what we have or what we don't have or are, you know, when a husband or wife team coming together trying to establish a budget?

What are some maybe helpful ground rules or some helpful parameters or things that you would say to try to help, at least on the same page with with each other to begin working in the in the right direction? Yeah, I think one of the key things and it's you're going to recognize us from a lot of pastoral counseling kind of things because I draw on that from my own experience right now. But is to help them understand no answer is a bad answer.

As we start out, as we talk about these things like don't don't apologize for where you're at, if you if you're not into giving money to the church or to charities or not, again, giving as much as my partner is, that's OK. Let's not try to.

Don't cut the other person off and correct them, you know, let them let them share what's going on and that kind of thing and then trying to take and say, OK, so if if one person is here and one person's over here, how do we move both of you to a more central ground ? And what's that going to take the issue with with many of the couples that I meet with? And it's, I would say, probably 80% of the time. It's the men who are taking care of the money.

Primarily, it probably was more than that ten, 15, 20 years ago, but it's usually about 80% of the ones focused on that. And and you're right, the the wife wants to feel like everything's OK. They want to know everything's OK. They want to know that if I want to go and, you know, get this for our kid, I'm going to have the 20 bucks counted. I mean, they want that security.

And so that communication of how do we set up times of reviewing where we're at financially, you know, and I I encourage weekly, if you're not doing it right now, try to do it weekly. And after that, you know, if it can happen other times or just ask one another, you know, make sure that's an open avenue that that neither one is trying to hide the finances or hide what they're spending or that kind of thing.

Yeah, that's a quick, easy way to have your marriage go wrong is to not talk about that because it it's a it's a can be a fight just like that. And I have boy, Oh boy, I think of a few instances where in relationships where there was secretive spending or the taking out of credit cards in, you know, an unknown and and then those situations going off often bad directions quickly. And and as always, I mean, this is any of these conversations are

they are relational conversations you. You know, it's we do have financial advisers, but they are. It is a form of there's a there's a counseling aspect to this too, because we are talking about values, we are talking about goals we are talking about, you know, what are we trying to achieve together? And you know, there's so many times it's we're also bringing in.

Prior experiences or perceptions of money from when we enter into when we enter into a marriage or into a relationship and some of it's so much of it's unvoiced, I know it certainly was for in my case where just approaches to money were different or thoughts. And I've said before, even, you know, early in my early in my marriage, I mean, Jackie and I were married. Married two years and then the recession hit.

And I I mean, I graduated college into into a recession with, you know, with a Bible degree, highly marketing, highly marketable. And so for so long, we we lived in a reality of just getting by like to be be able to think, I mean, to your point, you said earlier about like you get $1,000,000 and then we'll do whatever it was.

Well, well, my mindset for the longest time was when I went to see a poverty mindset was it was a mindset of lack of like, OK, we were not going to end like we were just going to get by for for probably for a while, for the foreseeable future. So let's just make sure that we, you know, recession-proof ourself as well so we can try to keep a low mortgage. You know, we're going to get a house where you have a very low mortgage payment.

We're going to we're not going to have any, you know, the cars that were the cars are all going to be gifted to us by people. You know, we're going to try to keep all every possible cost down and then just make it. But then going to a place then of kind of a healthier, a healthier perspective of not from a place of lack, but from a place of like there are things that you can accomplish, even if it's in modest ways over a long period of time.

I think that's the big one of the bigger reveals to me has been like, Hey, if you do this thing with even this small amount of money over the course, you know some amazing things can happen. And I'm sure you've I'm sure you've seen that with with with folks. Well, and it comes out, especially when you're talking with couples and it can be younger or older who are dealing with like credit card debt can just eat people up.

I think I read something the other day that it's something like, I think the average person has around eight to $10,000 of credit card debt that they're carrying. And you know, when you think about that much in the interest that's accumulating with that, it goes back to helping people look at their goals and their dreams, like, do you have to have what you feel you need this this dream that maybe if I'd wait ten years of being married, very much a reality, but do I need it now?

Yeah. And sometimes I get used to that now in whatever context I grew up in. And if those are at different Poehler points in a couple's marriage, you're right there. The the tension is going to be there almost immediately. But trying to figure out ways than to say, How do I, how do I take care of this debt? How do I kind of the old snowball effect? How do I pay as much on the one that's the lowest? Let's get rid of that. Roll it over to the next one and so on.

And at the same time, say, How do I work out? You mentioned recession proof, Joel. And one of the things that can really be helpful is in your budget to actually set aside money. That's an emergency fund. Like when I heard people say get three to six months of of income for an emergency fund when my wife and I barely could pay the bills right my life to people, right?

And that's yeah, that's one of the things that you look at and you're like, There is no way that I can do this in a way, except when you start doing just a little saying what? We're going to set this aside and we're going to do our best to not touch and we're going to pray that nothing major breaks in the meantime, no water heater breaks, right? Kind of break down, right? Yeah. Yep, yeah, I I think that's just so interesting.

We, you know, we for the longest time, well, here's what I here's what I've kind of gathered and what I've what I've noticed is that, well, even like with with the church that I work at, you know, a lot of not for profit financial advising or saying for like for non for profits, bare minimum three months, be able to cover all all expenses. If if you know, if giving just dropped off tomorrow that you would, that you would be able to. And so what works for individuals?

Also, I see another for organizations and things like that. And just having that perspective of, listen, I'm not waiting for doomsday, but I know I mean, I still remember, I mean, 2008 is vivid in my mind, and I feel, you know, and I know like my grandparents, you know, I have one remaining living grandparent. Hi, grandma Carla, who you know, who remember a listener of the who is a listener and a supporter of the show? Yes, God. And she had, by the way, 89th birthday this past fall.

Happy birthday. She's she's kicking up my favorite grandma. Awesome. But you know, folks of that age, they remember, you know, like you can see, it's affected their life. They remember a time when there was, I mean, when things were, you know, things were serious. And then, you know, and the resources were not always there. And I feel like that's kind of the same for me now. What about the coming, the coming generation? Who's had?

You know, relatively speaking, it's been it's been pretty good. Talking to younger people about finances, and then I've also just at a personal level, you talking to your own kids. What was the journey and you talking to your kids? Financially, budgeting, planning like that? How is that? How is that? How has that played out? Because we are the theoretical, but we're going to put we're going to put kid in my hands and say, Well, that's great. What? What did he do?

Because then I'm going to take the notes on that one and just follow his gut. You're not going to know now. And I'll just tell you that right now, the first part of the question first, in terms of young families, young, yes, young families now. So here's here's one of the really I think it's a dilemma and that is you have had every generation for boy, the last. I don't know how many generations they've they've made more money than the previous generations.

And we're opposed now to be at a point where this coming generation is not going to make more money than what their parents did. And and that's going to be hard on them because they've kind of been accustomed to a certain lifestyle, right? And so that that can be very difficult to figure out. How are we going to make this? How are we going to make this work?

If you know, people want to pursue things that they love doing over and above, say, I'm just going to put my nose to the grindstone and do the job I don't like because that's that's a cultural shift, the desire for spirit, for experience and exploration much more than I know myself or indefinitely. Definitely my parents, which were like, Put your nose to the grindstone, get it done, and then when you retire, maybe you can enjoy your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I even had my my wife's grandfather when he was alive. I was working for youth for Christ and pulled me aside one day and said, So when are you going to get a real job? Makes me, you know, I mean, was one of those, those kind of dynamics. And so you felt that pressure? Yes. And it didn't make any better when you're in youth work, either. I've heard that when you become a real pastor, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for my own kids.

So and then they'll probably tune in and listen to this at some point. But we actually were pretty miserably and failed at doing very much when they were little. And that's the best time is to help kids understand about savings hope. Hopefully, we're doing a little bit more with our grandchildren now being in the same house and not in the whole bit. But, but one of the things that we did try to do is help them understand the gravity of debt, like interest rates will eat you up.

So if you're putting money and buying things on credit, here's what that does. And so I mean, that really was something we dealt more with when they got into, you know, high school and into college. But we tried to, you know, Okay, hey, you've gotten some money, let's try to give 10% to the church. So we did some of those things. But in terms of really helping them walk through and understand money, I think my wife and I both say we really didn't do a good job when they were little.

I think we've had a lot more experience now and being able to help them learn and understand not only the value of money, but but be able to say, how do we structure our money in such a way that we can still live in the compound? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So for our listeners, if you have any questions, we'd love to hear your feedback on this. Obviously not live, but give us a call. 5742138702 is our voicemail number 5742138702.

Let's talk a little bit about why are some common reasons that people fall off of the budgeting track once you're on it, because it can be hard to stay on that track? Well, first, I want to clarify that I am a firm believer in knowing where your money's going and in budgeting where you want to go, and understanding that a budget is a guide.

Sure. Because some people want to say, Well, we put this in the budget and we can never veer off of that one iota, but you have to stick to this and and that can cause as much tension in a social situation as anything else. And so part of that is to you in this, I'm going to sound like a repeating record, but go back and say, if it's not working, then we need to do another month of keeping all our receipts because one that's just a pain.

Yeah. And so sometimes that threat of that might say, OK, I maybe need to watch what I'm doing because I'm going to have to account for everything, every charge I make that comes through on the, you know, on the the bank statement now and are online or whatever. And if I have so much cash.

The other thing that can be really helpful when you're trying to say, how do we stick to a budget is making sure you're budgeting in ways to your point, earlier, Joel, that you have some money that you can just spend however you want. Yeah. Now that might only be three bucks, depending on on your scenario, right? That's OK.

But if you have that $3 or $5 that I can spend however I want, and maybe that can grow at some point, depending if we improve those, there are circumstances that sometimes can. Help you hold on to the budgeting a little bit more. You know, making decisions that are healthy for your family when it comes to the kinds of foods that we buy, sometimes it just buying the cheapest things. I mean, that's one things I talk to people all the time. I worked. I'm on the board and just left.

The board finished a term with a food pantry board here locally. And you know, a lot of the food that they get is just full of carbs and starch. It fills them up and it's not healthy for them. And sometimes you can spend your money a little differently. Get food that's healthier for you. You actually feel fuller, blah blah blah blah blah right? And get all that. Making some of those kind of changes can actually help you in the long run.

And and coming down to having a kind of a come to Jesus meeting with what do we really need and what do we really want? What's a need? What's a want? And that can be a discussion that's that's can be really hard sometimes, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I I know we're also right now in the throes of purchasing a new vehicle, and this is the this is where it'll be new. It'll be new to us. My father has worked in the automotive manufacturing industry for my entire life.

I will never purchase a new vehicle on principle alone. But you know, and he tells me when my dad told his stories, it used to be like GMAC financing. For instance, there was a time when General Motors was not making any money on any other vehicles apart from the financing. So the product itself you couldn't like if they didn't have people financing it, if they just had people just buying the product, they would not be making any money.

So just that's telling again to the system in which we are working and I'm trying to participate in that system as little as possible. But, you know, every day, every day when I start up my 2004, uh, Ford Ford van, which which is it's still running. Still running. I'm a little every. There's just one thing after another. You know, it's whatever, but we're making it last. But now it's but now it is is a thing of like, what do we what do we need right there?

Because these are this is what the conversation is between my wife and I. What do we need for us as a family? We're a travel baseball family as well, so I know that we put between 24 and 25,000 miles on a vehicle every single year. Right. So I have that number in mind. We do. I no longer. I'm pretty handy. I can fix cars, whatever. But the time my role now in the family, the time and availability that I have to fix a vehicle myself.

Yeah, it's just like now for me, like time literally is money. And you know, so I'm in a different reality than I was when I think, you know, I think our good friend Matt Miller, when he gave me his 1992 Honda Accord, which I love that vehicle death loved it to death. I loved it into the I got good mileage out of it. Loved it into the graveyard, you know?

Now, the conversation is between Jacqui and I very and she's just going to love me that we're that I'm just putting this all out there, but what do we need, you know? You know, I really wanted I really wanted a truck, really, really wanted a truck.

Mostly the part of it is and again, for those of my coworkers listening, most of the other male coworkers that I have, how they truck and I get so much, so much grief when I pull up at my laptop and my minivan, it's not a major factor, but it is in the back of my mind for sure. But also, you know, we had the conversation like, well, how practical, how practical is that for the fact that we are a family of six?

And then we, you know, we going back and it's all these value things of going back and forth of, you know, because I am really stuck on it like, I do not want another minivan because we have we have we have one that will last us. The Toyota has got it's got more years, I'm sure. But you know, those value things and it really does make me like, I have to stop and go, What are the values that are driving my purchase?

You know, my purchasing of whatever, whatever it is, you know, I know for a long time, I don't think I give a whole lot of a whole lot of thought to that. We love having the conversation about we're big all fans, and I'm grateful for all that because when I go to Aldi, I don't feel like I'm compromising on what I'm getting right. But I'm clearly it's, you know, cheaper for sure. But we have this ongoing conversation about what generic things will you not buy like there, you know?

But it's also my wife had to have that conversation with me. Like, there are some things that you just don't buy you dinner. You just don't do. I would vote mac and cheese is one of them, actually. And Q-tips? I do not. I'm so tired of the the cheap Q-Tip just breaking apart my hand and my immature middle ear canal is just not OK. But those are all value conversations right of wo of back and forth. What you will compromise. What you what you will not.

Um, what are some things when it when it comes to when it comes to budgeting? Where is a general broad brush stroke, where you see people? Are. Most rampantly, misallocating and I know it's going to be kind of a judgment, but mis allocating their funds to something where we're with a little work and a little intention.

They could not have to make a major sacrifice or really cut themselves down, but could make some real gains and say, Hey, if not, instead of going with Plan A, if you try to be on this thing, you might be further ahead. But not really have to like, put your, you know, cut your, cut yourself off at your knees and really make some drastic sacrifice. That's a great question and a really hard one, because that does bring sometimes judgment.

Sure. Yeah. But I think one of the things that sometimes just reminding people that there are alternatives like brand buying is a great one. You know, there are alternatives. We might not compromise on some things, but there are alternatives to other clothing. New clothing can cost a lot of money. Now you can shop some of their clearance racks and you can do that case and you can get some good deals. You can go to these secondhand places, clothes mentor. Maybe they should be a sponsor.

There you go. But you know, there's there's other alternatives to saying, how can we back this off a little bit? I would be remiss and not telling a story of a time that I was judging one of my former youth having coffee with him, and he does some amazing work down in Indianapolis with helping to get rid of child trafficking and all this stuff. Just great, great young man.

And so we're getting together and we walk out of the coffee shop and there's this really nice Tesla sitting there like, wow, yeah, that looks that sweet, you know? And it's like, Yeah, that's mine. And I'm like, Oh, he goes now before you judge Wood too late. But no, what happened was this Tesla with what he saves and gas and making trips down three or four times a week to Indianapolis more than pays for the payment on the test. Interesting.

And and so he also feels like that I'm helping the environment. I'm not used much, you know, fossil fuel, blah blah blah, blah blah. And I am like, Thank you, man, that really that convicted me to say, don't look at someone's decision just based upon what's right there. Yep, that that he thought that through he ran the numbers. He he looked at it, and that's where it can. But I just I think it goes to show you that there's there's hidden things here of other ways to think about.

If you know, sometimes it's like if I, for instance, look on the vehicle side, there's a tipping point there of. I can get a slightly better vehicle and reduce my maintenance costs by X and reduce the amount of time that I am otherwise pulled from. You know, x y x y z, because that's a big part of our decision wasn't when we started just getting new vehicles was like, OK.

The actual amount of money that it is costing me for for upkeep and fixing, and all of that is now becoming a prohibit, you know, a prohibitive thing when we do the end of year totals or whatever. And so I always had like over the several years I had like a I started coming up with. And again, this is not me. I am not like coming up with formulas and things very, very often.

But I did sort of have kind of a formula of like, here's how much this vehicle costs me to drive every like at the end of the year, like every mile, this the total cost for this particular vehicle. And then it was like, OK, if we get a new vehicle, the cost is the cost is this and that's all of the maintenance stuff. That's everything, whatever. And again, those are hidden numbers.

Until you start to look at them, you start to realize actually all said and done within a certain range, probably not up to Tesla range yet, but within a certain range, you're not you're not hurting yourself as badly as you, as you might think. And so I think there's so much of this just has to do with. And what I'm hearing from again is being intentional, taking the time to do some digging. Folks like yourself are there to help in that in that journey as much as people are willing to.

And I think about our our own, ah, our own adviser are very available to have those conversations and do that. Digging in that exploration, if we're willing to kind of like, as I like to say, getting get naked in front of people, you know and and have and have that transparency.

Well, I want to talk a little bit about that too, because I know that as especially if you're struggling in the finance area, it's hard to look and go, OK, what can a financial advisor help me out with and how so what are some ways that you can kind of get over that idea of? I don't need that. It's going to cost some more. I'm going to go to the financial advisor. And what are the advantages of doing an advisor? So, so one, I'm a financial consultant.

Exultant. That's right. Which is OK because there are legal terms we just have to watch. But but one of the things that and this is kind of a plug for reference, but we are a sponsor, so it's 100% OK, but we're one of those when you hear about being a fiduciary, like, that's what we are. So someone comes in and talks and wants to just look at where things are at, take a snapshot of where things are and ask questions. We don't charge people just to do that.

Now, if you want to develop a financial plan, we have, you know, different advisors that are our financial planners in our office that don't work that way. There's fees with that, that kind of thing. But if you just want to talk to someone contact, someone had evidence they'll be happy to talk with you, set up a call and Zoom come in in person. However you want to do that and just say, here's the things I'm struggling with that I'm dealing with. We'll talk to you about how we work.

We'll talk to you about the things we do, how we might be able to help. We're going to talk about a budget. I almost guarantee everybody is going to do that. Yeah, but we'll do that and kind of talk that through with you. And there's no cost to that. Don't don't feel inhibited by that. That's that's great. That's good to know. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think because I would agree. It's like, I know for the longest time I was like, Oh, financial consultants, financial advisors, whatever this is for, this is for the rich people. This is this is for that other, you know, I have a friend, a friend of mine, a passed guest, Randall, he's always talking about how the other half live, right? You know, that's for the other half, whatever.

But, but but really, I mean, every person would benefit no matter their age, their stage of life, what their what their particular situation is. Everybody would benefit from just having someone and so many things in life. That is the case. Having someone come alongside of them have a conversation, put new eyes, fresh perspective on it. It's it's good. And I mean, the reason we have partnered with evidence. one of the main reasons is we we want to see families thrive.

We want to see, you know, we talk a lot with our dudes and their dads. We want to see people be able to step up to the plate, have better health holistically, everything right all around the board. So this is this is a key conversation toward that. Yeah. So I think one of the last things before we get into our dads pop quiz, which you've been prepared for, hopefully you listen to a few episodes. So we just I know it's coming up. Are there any like apps or things that you could recommend?

Maybe budget wise, you know, you'd mentioned a spreadsheet, but any other like tools that could be used for creating a budget? So one that I've messed around a little bit with is called Mint, and a lot of people might have heard about that. But I would encourage the listeners, you know, check out with your own financial institution.

They will often have something even built in as a point of starting where you can, you know, put a budget into there and it will actually track things for you. So banks are getting much more and credit you. Is getting much more, you know, kind of sophisticated in that way. And so that's a great thing to do if you don't want to do any of that, even take a piece of paper and just write down like I had one person say, Well, here's my budget.

And it was just like, you know, twelve or 15 lines on a piece of paper written down. And the reality is, yeah, that that's a budget. That's something that that, you know. And then the question was, well, how how well do you follow that? Well, yeah, there's the work that can begin from that point. But just writing down, here's what we at least want to do. Here's how we want to get there. But yeah, check with your financial institution. Mint works with a lot of them.

That's a really good one. Great. And if ever anyone wants to check out evidence, obviously evidence that comes less. Machina is a local Michigan area, but everyone's talking about overall. We have a they have a large national organization organization, so there's an evidence near you somewhere. Yes. Bynum Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show tonight.

We've really appreciated you in the talk about budgeting and the light that you've said to that and how important that is for dudes and dads and families. And we've destigmatize that financial. The financial consultants are they're fun loving people. They are approachable. It's right. They are normal. Human beings give them a shot. That's right. Just give them a shot. But one last thing before we go, we have to do.

Now it's time for the dudes and dads pop quiz. Oh, thank you. All right, so if you've never joined us for the dos and don'ts pop quiz, it's just a random time. We ask questions to our guests and fun questions to get to know our guests better, so I will go ahead and start the questions out here . Sometimes we do skip them because sometimes we're like, Oh, that's not a good question. Of these questions are great, and some are not. All right.

So if you could send a message to the entire world, what would it say in 30 seconds? Oh boy, wow. Yeah, we don't. We don't come out late swinging. Boy, no kidding. Yeah. You know this. I love Ted Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. So you know the whole idea of just be kind to one another, like that's going to solve an awful lot of problems, not only for just kind of one another. Wonderful. Kent, what are you most excited about right now?

Right now, honestly, we're getting ready to start the least, the planning process for some renovations in the house we bought. So because we want to live there another 20 plus years, the compound's getting a facelift is going to get a facelift. So awesome. Awesome. All right, so this kind of maybe goes a realm of budgeting. But if you could be guaranteed one thing in life besides money, what would it be? But probably contentment.

And you need to say more about that, oh, that's good, that's awesome, that's wonderful. When you die, what you want to be remembered for. I want to be known as a guy who loved God, who loved his family and loved people. Awesome. Which living person do you admire most? My dad, my wife, he's going to listen to this or not, but my dad is a been an amazing example as a dad and even with what he's dealing with now continues on. So yes, my pop. Love you. Love the dads here. It's beautiful.

What will people look back at us 50 years from now and be shocked and appalled by? So I think Brant got this question. I think he did. He did. And when I was listening to the podcast, my immediate thought went to like Facebook. I mean, I just, I think what goes on with Facebook and the way people treat each other, I think we're going to go, Wow, I know that's very similar. Sorry, nothing new. But wow. Yeah. All right. My last question. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

I think bring out that one, too. Maybe we need a reshuffle. These characteristics the most overrated virtue. Wow. The real ethics question. Yeah, most overrated virtue. That's a tough one. Yeah, it's so. So I used to. I'm going to tell you a story instead of answering the question. So I used to always tell people that youth ministry is great as long as you can fake that honesty and integrity stuff. So I don't know somewhere in there. Look for the answer.

And I was joking, by the way, the standard integrity it's it speaks to my heart. A deep level. OK, here this is. This is where we really dig deep. And Andy has gotten asked this question before, too. When were your parents most disappointed in you? It would definitely have been in in late high school around fair time, making some decisions with a party I was at and still imbibing story of my life right there. Now that's usually, you know, here's the deal.

Most of those, like greatest disappointment are they do come in the teen years, and I just remind everyone the brain is not fully formed yet. The wisdom, indecision, decision, wisdom and decision epicenter the prefrontal cortex, and he loves mean throwing that word out. Super fancy. Just not all there yet. So it's not a surprise. Not a surprise. Well, thanks for joining us today. We really enjoyed the conversation with you.

We're looking forward to even more conversations in this coming year about money and ways to to do that generously and then be able to give. And we're here to educate. We're here to educate, to inspire, to destigmatize all those big words. Friends that you can always head over two dudes and dads podcast dot com for recent show updates, the show notes link the links. All the info on the video showed the socials. Join us and you can always provide feedback.

5742138702 or email us feedback and using does podcasts. And as always, good to remember that we we are on the Instagrams and all the social media. We're trying to stay hip and with it on the show. Guys, we excited about a season four as it started off. Thanks for joining us again. Tell your friends share like do all the good stuff. And until next time, we wish you grace and peace. Want to see some more of that? Head over and meet us on Instagram.