How Money Talks Help You Have a Healthy Mindset with Luke Ensign - 125

[00:00:00] Welcome to Money Talk with Skyler Fleming, where you learn what you weren't taught in school. Let's get talking. Welcome to today's video.

[00:00:30] Today's episode of Money Talk with Skyler Fleming. In today's episode we're having a great money talk with Luke Enzine. He is an educator not necessarily a financial expert, which is leading us directly into those conversations I want to have with normal everyday people about their money.

[00:00:43] We have a really insightful conversation about growing up with money, managing money in a relationship and in a marriage, and how frankly Luke says he doesn't know how it's possible to not talk about money in a marriage.

[00:00:53] Money touches so many different pieces of our lives and this interview is going to be very insightful to help you get an understanding of how a regular, everyday person handles their money and does well with it.

[00:01:03] Get ready to explore the impact of childhood views on money, navigating financial conversations and a marriage and the importance of maintaining a robust emergency fund and much, much more.

[00:01:12] Let's dive right into this enriching discussion on Money Talk with Skyler Fleming.

[00:01:16] But first, the money talking points for today's episode are how did your childhood experiences with money influence how you handle it now and to do you have an emergency fund? And number three, why do you think it is important to talk about money?

[00:01:29] With the money talking points in mind, let's get right into today's episode.

[00:01:34] Hello, welcome to today's interview on Money Talk with Skyler Fleming. I'm here with Luke Enzine and I'm really excited for this conversation.

[00:01:49] I asked Luke about a week or two ago, he said, hey, would you come on my podcast and here we are. He didn't really have any financial background per se.

[00:01:57] He's in education so I'm excited for this conversation for us to talk about money. Luke, would you introduce yourself a little bit?

[00:02:03] Yeah, so like he said, I'm Luke Enzine, Skyler and I have known each other for a year and a half now.

[00:02:11] I'm here in the good old town of Sunset, Utah. It is a real place.

[00:02:16] And like he said, I'm an education. I used to be a teacher and I'm an assistant principal and Levin, Utah.

[00:02:23] Yeah, and Luke and I had conversations about money here and there and we've talked about it. We've shared ideas. So I said, hey, let's talk about it on the podcast and kind of nail down some of your ideas and have a conversation about it.

[00:02:34] So we'll jump right into it with this first question of how when you were growing up, how did your view on money impact your view on money now?

[00:02:42] So like, so like, how did your parents handle money? How did that influence your lifestyle of money?

[00:02:49] I would say it is rather unknown of how my parents handled money. They didn't really talk about money a whole lot.

[00:02:59] The information that I was given from my parents was you should save every penny.

[00:03:06] And it was a bit of a scarcity mindset of don't spend it unless you have to.

[00:03:13] And that probably came from a couple of bouts of unemployment, but that my dad had.

[00:03:18] So as this cycle of I'm employed have a pretty reasonable salary job. I'm feeding six kids. I'm unemployed now.

[00:03:26] I need to work several jobs to even put food on the table. So that impacted me now because up until I got married, I kind of treated money the same way.

[00:03:39] I shouldn't ever spend money on anything. And if I do, I kind of felt bad what I would do it.

[00:03:48] That's changed a bit now with me and my wife as we've grown in that conversation.

[00:03:53] Did your parents ever talk to you about money or was it just something in the background?

[00:03:56] Something in the background.

[00:03:58] Yeah, I think that's often a lot of people's situation is that it doesn't get mentioned. You notice that things might be challenging.

[00:04:04] You can tell that stuff something ain't quite right but no one ever talks about it.

[00:04:08] My dad would say we have sufficient for our needs and I never knew what they have meant, but.

[00:04:13] And she had enough.

[00:04:15] I guess.

[00:04:16] But who knows where it's going or what you're doing with it, I guess.

[00:04:18] Right.

[00:04:19] So how did you learn about it?

[00:04:21] Like where did you like you said you were in this place where it wasn't really talked about.

[00:04:24] So I take it.

[00:04:25] They didn't like sit you down and teach you how to invest one on one and stuff like that.

[00:04:29] Where did you learn about money?

[00:04:31] I'd say so I'm the fifth of six kids in my family and all of us have a very similar yet different mindset to money now in our adult lives.

[00:04:41] And so when you're the fifth of six kids, you get to watch your older siblings make mistakes and do really great things too.

[00:04:48] So I asked some of my older siblings a lot about money and how they treat and what they do and I would take their advice, you know.

[00:04:55] In the ways that I felt like it was applicable to me.

[00:04:59] But my wife Rachel, she's she's where I feel like a lot of our healthy mindsets and attitudes the money have stemmed from.

[00:05:08] So now instead of feeling poorly about spending money, it's what are our priorities and what's important to us and how does our budgeting ever money reflect that?

[00:05:19] So for example, you know if I if I had to go to the doctor before and I had to spend money on a prescription, I would feel bad.

[00:05:26] Even though you're taking care of yourself so it was not a healthy mindset.

[00:05:31] Now what we did for this year, 2024 is we have a health savings account.

[00:05:37] We spent hours and hours and hours writing an Excel sheet.

[00:05:41] Here's what we spent this last year on all of our health expenses whether it's expected or unexpected.

[00:05:47] And let's budget for this month for this year. So when we do have those things happen, it's a no brainer.

[00:05:55] You're comfortable with it. Yeah.

[00:05:56] Health is priority. Safety is priority. You should never feel poorly about spending on that.

[00:06:02] Yeah, that I mean that totally makes sense that how did you move from that place of like guilty spending to feeling comfortable?

[00:06:08] Because that can be challenging for a lot of people.

[00:06:10] Yeah, honestly I think just preparation. Like to me in the absence of knowledge or in the absence of anticipating something we create our own dialogue.

[00:06:20] So like growing up because I didn't really hear a whole lot about money you know they did the best that they could and I don't fault them for that.

[00:06:27] But when you don't know what the dialogue is you create your own story.

[00:06:31] And so that association with my childhood in that money is you know when I'm older, I can't spend money on anything because if I do something bad is going to happen.

[00:06:42] It's a realizing you know there's some pretty significant things that happen in adult life like you get married and then if you want to have a kid you have a kid and that kid is really expensive.

[00:06:57] But are we going to feel poorly about childbirth? No, no, we're not going to get food because it's money.

[00:07:03] Yeah, we're going to plan for it and because we plan for it that those dollars have an assignment instead of everything feeling unexpected.

[00:07:11] Yeah, I mean that makes sense. You don't want to you don't want to feel like you're spending everything out of guilt and stuff but there is some obligation and need to spend money.

[00:07:21] You've got to realize at some point it has to be spent like there's no way around that unfortunately you can't save every penny.

[00:07:28] Yeah, so you mentioned you're married. How do you guys manage money?

[00:07:32] Let's start at the beginning because right before we started recording you mentioned it's changed a lot how you guys talk and handle money.

[00:07:37] How was it when you guys first got married managing money?

[00:07:40] So when we first got married I think it was the conversations were kind of hard because we both come from very different backgrounds.

[00:07:50] I kind of explained that there was some unemployment that happened growing up and we were always provided for.

[00:07:57] Super grateful for that. We never were hungry or anything like that. Rachel, my wife, her family went through a pretty serious drought of money, unemployment in a home is foreclosed.

[00:08:12] And so she, we both have or had kind of a scarcity to mindset or a fear based mindset with money.

[00:08:20] But as we talked about it more and we got really good at understanding where to put our money and how to budget it and what's reasonable and what's not, what's important

[00:08:29] what's not, what can wait for goals and what needs to be happening now.

[00:08:33] Our conversations were no longer fear based they were goal based and optimistic about the future.

[00:08:40] So now when we talk about money it's routine.

[00:08:43] Yeah, it's more fun.

[00:08:44] Yeah, we know what our dreams are we know what our ideas are we know where we struggle and we know where we're getting better.

[00:08:50] So it's a lot better.

[00:08:53] Yeah, I can see that especially with Rebecca and I too.

[00:08:56] Like at the beginning it was very interesting to see some of the like our initial beliefs with money come out like with how our parents influence the way her and I were talking about money.

[00:09:06] I'm sure you guys saw that too.

[00:09:07] Yep.

[00:09:08] Like unemployment was probably a real thing.

[00:09:10] And you guys moved all the way out here.

[00:09:12] I'm sure like that's a concern of like what are we going to do once we get out there and how do we even go into like Utah?

[00:09:18] Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:19] Because you guys moved from the East Coast so it was a long ways and there is a lot of a lot of bumps right at the beginning with your stuff but that's it.

[00:09:25] That's a whole different story.

[00:09:27] Be careful with removing company.

[00:09:29] Yes, definitely.

[00:09:31] How do you how do you involve do you involve your guys as families at all in financial decisions?

[00:09:35] Do you talk to your parents now about money?

[00:09:40] I ask periodically for advice from my parents and usually it's something that's low stakes.

[00:09:51] I can't really think of a specific example of what advice we would ask for.

[00:09:57] I think the most recent one is how we decided to allocate money to different goals.

[00:10:03] So we're trying to get our student loan debt down so that there's no high interest rate loans and we consider anything that's 5% or more to be high in this case for us.

[00:10:15] And we're trying to save up for a down payment for a house and to buy a second car all at the same time.

[00:10:22] And so the most recent advice that went to my parents too was what do you think of this is if we did a 40-40-20 saving approach.

[00:10:33] So we have our basic expenses which includes our student loan debt already, the basic minimum payment.

[00:10:40] And then the surplus of money that we have is we spend 40% on loans, 40% on a down payment and 20% towards a car.

[00:10:48] And I ask my dad what he thought and he's like that sounds like a great idea to prioritize all of your goals at once instead of just one.

[00:10:55] Because in our case let's say if we put all our money towards student loans we want to get it to net zero which would be amazing.

[00:11:02] But you can't move for a couple of years and you can't move.

[00:11:05] And maybe we miss out on the opportunity for a house.

[00:11:09] How did you guys decide to balance that?

[00:11:13] Because that could also be a tricky conversation because I know for Rebecca and I they're her student loans and there's that weight on her because it's her education.

[00:11:20] So she wants to pay them off more than I do.

[00:11:23] How did you guys journal that?

[00:11:26] We tried to take the most logical approach because whether anybody wants to admit it or not there are feelings attached to money.

[00:11:35] And sometimes with loans sometimes it can be regret, sometimes it can be frustration that we didn't make a different decision before that.

[00:11:42] Sometimes it's just being mad at the system.

[00:11:45] Yeah definitely.

[00:11:47] And it took the most logical approach like well interest accrues on a monthly basis which are these loans or the highest interest interest rate loans between the two of us.

[00:11:56] And then it became irrelevant who's are getting paid off because since we're a unit and because we do everything together it's ours.

[00:12:04] It's ours rebuilding our foundation.

[00:12:06] We're not getting rid of her problem or my problem or my debt or her debt, it's ours.

[00:12:11] Yeah once you get to that point where you're combined on that decision it's really powerful because like you said there's always a moment when you get to that point where you're combined on that decision.

[00:12:15] It's powerful because like you said there's always a motion in any money decision especially if you're continuing to separate it.

[00:12:21] You're both going to still have strong emotions.

[00:12:23] You can't work through that if you're separate.

[00:12:25] It's really interesting but...

[00:12:26] It could be a team but not.

[00:12:28] Yeah it's like be a team but yeah there is an iron team when you're like that if you're separate like that.

[00:12:33] So how do you guys manage your budget now?

[00:12:35] So you've moved through a couple years of marriage and you've talked about money.

[00:12:39] How do you guys sit down monthly? Do you do it yearly?

[00:12:42] Yeah so right now we sit down monthly and we do that for a couple of reasons.

[00:12:47] So I've always loved music before I was an administrator, I was a music teacher and I love piano.

[00:12:53] So I teach piano lessons now and it's less about the money and more about just the enjoyment of it.

[00:12:59] But that coupled with a couple of random opportunities that come up with work to receive a stipend or additional whatever are monthly budget fluctuates slightly every month.

[00:13:10] And so that's why we do monthly budget meetings at the end of the prior month or right on the first day of the month.

[00:13:17] And our style of budgeting is zero based budgeting so every dollar has an assignment.

[00:13:23] We have a spreadsheet that we use where we put for example for the month of March we have our expected expenses that don't change ever.

[00:13:34] Yeah rent, car insurance, phone payment utilities, all of that.

[00:13:39] And we highlight that into a certain color because that won't change any month. That's really easy just to copy and paste.

[00:13:44] And then sometimes there's some variation in food and fun and random expenses or a birthday or you know a trip.

[00:13:54] Because we still do fun stuff, you know we do it within reason and what's appropriate for our budget but we still do fun stuff.

[00:14:02] Because if not I feel like we would get fed up and then splurge.

[00:14:05] Yeah, yeah. And once you break all those goals and the emotions come right back up to the surface.

[00:14:10] Exactly. So we do zero based budgeting kind of in that style.

[00:14:13] In addition to that we have sinking funds so for car repair for expected family vacations like I have a family reunion or a wedding coming up this July that we saved money for.

[00:14:28] So when it comes to buy tickets, it's not one month you're totally you're totally off in your goals instead it just does minor alterations to several months which doesn't hurt nearly as bad.

[00:14:41] And then the other I don't know if I mentioned Christmas but we do that for Christmas too.

[00:14:46] Yeah, same.

[00:14:47] We pick a number this is how much we're going to spend this year and then we can buy throughout the year and it's fine.

[00:14:53] Yeah, you'd be surprised to how much easier it is to pick that number in February than it is in November.

[00:14:58] Then there's no member because there's the pressure coming too of Christmas but also you have to save so much more if you wait.

[00:15:04] Yes, so we do it for birthdays too.

[00:15:06] Yeah.

[00:15:07] I'm trying to think, oh the other thing that we do we started doing this recently that helped us a lot.

[00:15:13] When we talk about money and you're in our stage where there's a lot of different goals all at once you constantly are evolving your ideas and it's really hard to remember what you talked about the month before.

[00:15:22] Yes, it is.

[00:15:23] And so we created this is Rachel's doing because she's a genius.

[00:15:27] She created a new tab that talks about notes last month's notes.

[00:15:32] Like when we decided we're going to do a 40-40-20 for a surplus we wrote that down and she even took a separate tab and put in a formula that goes you know here's the amount of loans we have.

[00:15:43] Here's our goal for a down payment.

[00:15:44] Here's our goal for our payment.

[00:15:47] And so we know what month we're expected to achieve that goal.

[00:15:51] We can hold ourselves accountable a little more.

[00:15:53] So that's kind of our style budgeting and even further we try and do something called fair play in our family there's actually a cool book and card sets where there's as equal of responsibilities in both the brainstorming and the execution in different areas of life.

[00:16:12] And so one of Rachel's responsibilities that she wanted to take on is to be money manager.

[00:16:19] So Rachel creates the budget, she creates a proposal and then we look at it together to see if we should you know change anything.

[00:16:27] And then within those within the realm of money were responsible for different things like I am responsible for bath time stuff or you know all things related to shower and the bathroom

[00:16:41] and kid stuff in the bath.

[00:16:43] Whereas Rachel is one of her things for money is when we host people she really likes hosting so she says here's how many people or how many times I want to invite people over this month here's a much money we need for it.

[00:16:59] So that way it's a team effort and it's not all falling on one person.

[00:17:03] Yeah so you can't like bring back your topics of that realm to your conversations that that's really interesting I could see how that could be helpful because it doesn't feel like Rachel's taking care of everything money the whole household money wise but you and you still get some input too or you don't feel like maybe she's taken over taking control and stuff like that that can be a tricky balance.

[00:17:22] Yeah one thing that I just thought was interesting is like you said Rachel's the money manager and she wants to take that on but you're here still talking about what you do.

[00:17:30] It's so often I think people can say oh my husband takes care of the money and I don't worry about it or my wife takes care of it I don't worry about it but yeah it's important you still know and I guess that leads perfectly to my next question how important do you think it is for you guys to talk about money?

[00:17:43] Oh it's super important again like my biggest thought and this is just a thought I have a lot as a leader

[00:17:51] and you know in a school or in the community or whatever your role is is when there is no information or the absence of information stories are created in people's minds.

[00:18:04] So if we're not talking about money I'm operating under assumptions this is what I think is being done and then unfairly so it puts my partner puts my spouse in the position where they're in a terrible position.

[00:18:20] Yeah because I'm expecting them to tell me that why can't I just say hey what are we doing this Ben?

[00:18:26] It's you know I work full time Rachel builds her home and keeps her child alive and she also works part time from home online.

[00:18:40] And so we are we are both involved in money in different ways I might be at home I might be at work you know working full time Rachel understands the needs of her home.

[00:18:52] Rachel's also receiving money and understands where that needs to be allocated for a lot of different reasons I don't know how it's possible to not talk about money.

[00:19:01] So yeah like because if you're if you're at work full time or maybe you have a job that your work full time plus or something like how do you how do you know that it's okay that your other spouse that's at home is spending money on something if you're not talking about it because then you just get the feeling of I'm making all the money you just spend all of it.

[00:19:17] Yeah where is it going and then anger builds when how do I know what needs we have around the house if I'm not there all the time during the day like I can see how things are when I come home for a couple of hours but she lives in our house all day every day.

[00:19:30] And so she understands hey we need this supply we need to do this we need to we need to grab the sink is Caleb is learning how to walk and we don't want his head on the corner.

[00:19:40] So we need this those are things that I wouldn't think of because I'm not there and those conversations result in money.

[00:19:47] Yeah it always does like money money touches everything like any little conversation you have yeah I just like you said I don't know how Rebecca and I would manage even though we don't have any children.

[00:19:58] So it's maybe a little easier for us to say here's what we're doing with money and not make as many assumptions but when like you're you're working and there's also a kid to take care of.

[00:20:08] Yeah there's just so much that comes up I'm sure yeah I can't I can't imagine not talking about money is a great place to believe that one.

[00:20:16] Let's talk a little bit about emergency funds do you do you guys have an emergency fund we do we do and we're actually very grateful for it because just in December we had a whole lot of car issues that we didn't expect that that drive.

[00:20:27] That drained our car fund yeah that we use for anticipated repairs and smaller things in a bit from our emergency fund so we're using our tax refund that we're getting to replenish that.

[00:20:40] So what we have is we have three and a half months of emergency fund just general it's a pool that we don't touch we put it in a high interest rate savings accounts so that it crews interest.

[00:20:54] And then we have another fund which is specifically for car and we just have about a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars I'm not I can't remember what the exact number is there so that when an oil change comes or a flat tire you get a nail in your tire like we got this week.

[00:21:10] Oh man.

[00:21:12] We could patch it so it was okay yeah so again you know something that you have to deal with immediately because it's a safety issue there's no guilt or there's no worry associated with can we sp you know can we swing this is this gonna hurt me in other areas.

[00:21:28] That's just kind of a non-negotiable that's why we have an emergency savings fund I'm not worried about not having a job I'm very secure in my job but how can you anticipate the unexpected.

[00:21:40] Yeah there's no way you know like I could get seriously hurt or it could happen a Rachel or it could happen a Caleb or nothing could happen right yeah but because we have a couple of months of that emergency savings it gives us peace of mind and we don't touch it in the way we it's not tempting at all to not touch to touch it is because it's into separate fund.

[00:22:01] I don't even know if I have that app on my phone.

[00:22:05] Yeah it's just sitting there because you can get in that day or two I can get it easily so yeah that's kind of what we do with emergency funds is we make sure we have at least three months and then we replenish it as quickly as we can when stuff comes up.

[00:22:19] Yeah and one of the things I like to say is that emergency funds turn like small things into just slight inconveniences because like imagine for a second that you guys didn't have any sort of this car fund or emergency fund and you had your car troubles then it's bleeding into your ability to get to work.

[00:22:35] Then it's bleeding into your paycheck maybe you lose your job because you don't have an emergency fund now you really need the emergency fund.

[00:22:41] So it builds and builds just because you get a flat tire or your car doesn't start one morning and you need to go buy a hundred dollar battery like your car is shaking when you go past 65 miles an hour.

[00:22:51] You should probably get it figured out before we just pause apart on the freeway.

[00:22:55] Let's talk a little bit about retirement and like your long term goals you mentioned you got to have some shorter term ones saving for a house

[00:23:01] and saving up for other things a car and the like how do you guys approach retirement together because like the kind of the stage you're in there's a lot of things pulling on your wallet.

[00:23:09] Yeah. How do you even think about retirement in the long term?

[00:23:12] So we actually went and saw a financial planner I think it was mid year last year and we asked some several questions about what is the right timing for saving additional funds beyond the minimum

[00:23:29] like what your employer gives you and what's automatically pulled out of your paycheck because that's how mine works is automatically pulled out 10% which is great.

[00:23:36] And then they contribute contribute to it.

[00:23:39] Yeah. I asked them I said when is it appropriate for you to start contributing more aggressively to your 401k when you're competing with loans?

[00:23:50] And the advice that we were given is get rid of your high interest rate loans and then start to contribute slowly but surely to your 401k based on your annual raises or increases in your salary.

[00:24:03] So right now we're really close to being done with our high interest rate loans so we we're just doing the bare minimum to our 401k right now.

[00:24:12] This year we're going to open up a Roth IRA account for Rachel so that she can put we can put some money in there to max it out yearly while she's at home.

[00:24:25] Yeah.

[00:24:26] And you know one day as we decide what to do because we're going to grow our family we just have one 11 month old wild kid right now.

[00:24:33] But we intend on having more kids eventually when returning to the workforce will be able to very aggressively contribute to that 401k account in the future with anticipated raises in my field and competitive positions.

[00:24:48] But that's kind of what we do now is it's not by the wayside we're highly aware of it and I check it every month.

[00:24:55] But we're waiting to get rid of our high interest rate loans so then that we can comfortably contribute to the 401k without worrying about interest accruing more than we would like.

[00:25:07] I think that comes back to like what you were saying comes back to our earlier conversation around just talking about him being prepared because it's very easy to just let your retirement fall and then suddenly you're 35 40 45 years old and you don't have anything safe for a time.

[00:25:21] Yeah, all your loans are paid off and you're in a good place savings.

[00:25:24] Good job.

[00:25:25] Yeah, compound interest is such a big deal with retirement like it's what you really need so yeah awesome.

[00:25:30] This has been great if there's anything you want to bring up feel free but I have one final question of what do you wish you would have known sooner that you know now about money.

[00:25:40] Oh man, I feel like this is such a like people our age thing to say but I wish that there would have been or I would have been more educated on the cost of college.

[00:25:53] But you know great opportunities and I even went to a university that's way less expensive than other places and I got my masters degree from a reliable and well sought after university that's also inexpensive.

[00:26:09] But I wish I would have understood better here's what it means when you sign up for this here's what interest means because when you're 18 you might not know.

[00:26:19] You have no idea what you're doing.

[00:26:21] Yeah, but I wish I would have known more about that and the opportunities for scholarships to be able to fund the education because education is important and you know it's a there's a return on investment hopefully for most people who do it.

[00:26:36] But I wish I would have known more about that awesome.

[00:26:38] Well there you have it if you know someone going into college or you are going into college learn a little bit more about what it costs going into it but Luke thank you so much for joining us a fun conversation.

[00:26:47] Thanks for having the money awesome thanks.

[00:26:59] So thank you again to Luke for coming on today's episode and for that interview here on money talk with scather Fleming I want to reflect on a little bit of impact that I feel you could take away from today's

[00:27:08] episode first I want to start about the importance of reflecting on your childhood experiences.

[00:27:12] The early experiences that you have with money can really impact and shape how you handle money today like Luke said it made him feel a little bit guilty when he spent money because of how he was brought up with money.

[00:27:22] He said that he would go buy a prescription and feel bad about it even though he was taking care of himself but thankfully he's moved to a place where health and safety are number one and if you have to spend money on that that's okay.

[00:27:33] I would encourage you to reflect on your childhood upbringing with money and see how it influences how you spend or save money today.

[00:27:40] Do you spend or save money in an unhealthy manner because of how you were raised with money that's something that once you realize it can be a huge huge milestone to cross on your financial journey.

[00:27:50] Another thing that I think is huge is navigating money and relationships money touches everything in our lives are you talking about money in your marriage with a friend.

[00:27:58] Well, if you aren't a great place to start is with the money talking points which you can find at skydifleaming.com slash resources but talking about money can help you bridge the gap between emotions and logical thinking when it comes to money.

[00:28:09] This is a great plug for my recent episode of Bob Wheeler where we talked about emotions and money talks and how you manage all of that but actually talking about money is a huge step towards navigating those emotions properly and in a good healthy way.

[00:28:23] I really hope you took away from today the importance of having an emergency fund if you don't have one get one.

[00:28:28] I can't encourage this enough and you know there's people out there who say you maybe don't need one and maybe there's some financial point where you don't but if you aren't sure if you're at that point then you need an emergency fund because I think you're going to really know if you're in a big comfortable financial situation and don't really need one.

[00:28:43] And even then you're going to be in a situation where you have money in the back up that is essentially acting like an emergency fund so really we all need one.

[00:28:50] If you're not sure if you need one play out a scenario that could be considered an emergency. How much money do you need for that to make it not an emergency?

[00:28:57] An easy one to pull from the interview when I was talking with Luke is a flat tire is a flat tire going to turn into this big problem where you're not able to get to work but you're going to lose your job over this one flat tire.

[00:29:06] Do you need to make sure you have enough money saved up to lose your job if you get that flat tire? Why not just avoid the flat tire in the first place and make sure your cars maintain and things like that with some sinking funds and emergency funds?

[00:29:17] Make sure you have that money in the bank ready to be used and deployed when you need to. How is your mindset let's use this as a check in point how's your mindset when it comes to money like Luke said in the beginning his mindset was around feeling guilty when he spent money but now it's moved to a place where he can comfortably spend money on the necessities.

[00:29:32] How's your mindset with money doing do you feel bad about spending do you feel bad about savings. Do you maybe feel too good about saving money and you're not enjoying your life.

[00:29:40] There's a lot of different ways we can look at it in a lot of unhealthy mindsets and healthy mindsets so that's why it's important that we're talking about money so that we can make sure we have a good healthy mindset and that we're bouncing ideas off of each other so that we can grow and continue to learn together.

[00:29:53] But let's talk about the money talking points next.

[00:29:56] The first money talking point that we're going to talk about is how did your childhood experiences with money influence how you handle it now for me it's that I always wanted to make sure that my car was able to be filled fully.

[00:30:15] I noticed that as a kid maybe we'd only put certain amount of money in the car maybe we wouldn't quite fill it every single time because I don't know if we could or couldn't or if it was just a decision being made but I knew for me that it was important to always make sure that I had enough money that I could get a full tank of gas and get where I needed to when I needed to fill up the car.

[00:30:32] I wanted to make sure that I had a comfortable savings and I also don't really like asking people for money those both are things that I think come directly from my childhood.

[00:30:40] I'm not first and initially going to ask people for money when I need help I'm going to figure out how I can make the money that I need or how I can make my savings and spending work to pay for what I want to pay for.

[00:30:51] So how does your childhood upbringing influence how you handle money now a great question to discuss and you can honestly learn a lot from someone just with this one question.

[00:31:00] The second money talking point is do you have an emergency fund the answer for me and my wife is yes it's completely yes we love having our emergency fund it's very helpful.

[00:31:09] Like I said with the flat tire story that something we face to how to flat tire thankfully was able to be prepared but if you don't have an emergency fund that can blow up and become a huge issue and really really stressful but you can avoid it all with a simple emergency fund.

[00:31:23] The third money talking point is why do you think it's important to talk about money I don't know how people cannot talk about money one I love talking about it but two it's so important it's something we have to learn about something we need to do good at and it's so easy you just ask simple questions open into questions get that conversation going listen to great podcasts and share them with your friends and then we all get talking about money and we all do better with money together but thank you for listening this episode let's wrap it up next.

[00:31:53] So thank you for listening to today's episode we've traversed the landscape of personal finance the impact of childhood experiences on money talking about money and a marriage and a whole bunch of things regarding mindset and changing your mindset when it comes to money thanks to Luke for coming on today's episode and his journey really helps show all those things that really go into changing our view on money and doing better with money if you have any feedback or questions about this week's episode please reach out.

[00:32:22] Please reach out I would love to talk about money with anyone who's listening and I'd love to get connected with more people who are listening if you like these episodes that we've been having with everyday guests are great and they're really coming out with some awesome stories so if you want to come on the podcast or know anyone who would like to come on the podcast or would be a good guest to share their money story please let me know either comment on YouTube social media or an email would be great and I'm happy to reach out and help set up an episode with them.

[00:32:46] I really enjoy being able to hear everyday stories about how people handle their money so that we can all do better with money together be sure to head over to YouTube or any podcast player and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes but thank you for listening to money talk with Skyler Fleming.

[00:33:00] I'm your host Skyler Fleming ever great week.

[00:33:02] Thank you for listening to money talk with Skyler Fleming this show is provided for informational and entertainment purposes and may not be specific to your unique situation please be sure to do additional research before making any financial decisions.