BOBW: Interesting Money Questions

I listen to approximately one billion podcasts, and for the most part it is a case of "in one ear and out the other".

However,  I recently listened to an episode of The Best of Both Worlds podcast called Interesting Money Questions, which I am still thinking about.  Given that the episode went into an ear and did not go out the other, and that I met one of the show's hosts last week, I decided to play pretend and be a guest on the show.  Here are the questions that they asked and my answers.

Are you a spender or a saver, and how about the other members of your family?

I think that the answer to this question depends on the age of the person being asked.  At one point in time it would have been accurate to say that all four of us were savers.

Me - through my late 30s I was a saver to a fault.  This was good because I have always been cash positive which means that my money has made more money than I ever could.  It was bad because in the early years I did it at the expense of having fun and at the expense of spending money at the right time (i.e. I ended up spending more in repairs, etc by putting them off).  In recent years I have been on a path of spending money in ways that bring me joy, so I'm on a path of reaping what I sowed.  I am never going to do anything crazy, but if I get a yen to travel I can drop everything and do it and we still have food on the table.

Hubs - his philosophy has always been to spend less than he makes, which puts him in a similar financial position without the misery.

Stepson #1 - from what we can see from his forays into the college world and his first job, that boy is a saver.  Like any other superpower, he is learning to harness it.

Stepson #2 - it is hard to tell because he is still in high school and his hobbies are all low cost, so he's not dropping the bucks.  I predict that he will be more in sync with Hubs's "spend less than he makes" model.

What are your earliest money memories?

My earliest money memory is from when I was very small, and for some reason I thought that it would be great fun to throw a penny in the trash.  My mother was incredibly upset.  I got the message that money is something that must be safeguarded at all costs and something that had a lot of fear associated with it.  Looking back with what I know now, I believe this stems from my parents being babies of Depression era babies, plus some financial constraints that they had at the time.  In any case, it is safe to say that I picked up a bit of Bag Lady Syndrome from my childhood, and there are times when I have to take myself aside and remind myself not to operate in a scarcity mindset.

Plan a free weekend

The assignment is to plan an exciting weekend full of low/no-cost activities, and I got this!  Laura mentioned using a museum membership pass, and I have one of those so I'll roll with that.

Saturday AM: drive to the Big City and go to the Big City Museum.

Saturday PM: head in the direction of Lake Erie and hang out on one of their beaches.

Saturday night: we're back home, and we have friends over for a home cooked meal (everyone contributes so it's minimal effort/minimal cost).

Sunday: head out to one of our many exciting hiking trails with my SIL and the dogs for a loooong hike.  Come back to our house and let the dogs run loose in the yard while we make a family dinner.

What is a smart financial move you have made?

Not to brag, but paying for college is a non issue.  Hubs and I both contributed to 529 accounts as we were able for many years.  We weren't aiming for a particular dollar amount and we did not strain ourselves to make the contributions.  Both boys chose state schools, and both got partial scholarships.*  We will certainly have money left over when their undergrads are done, which they can either keep in the 529 for grad school/their kids or eventually convert into Roth IRAs

*in case you're new here #1 is in his second year of college and #2 starts this fall.

What is a financial mistake you have made?

Thanks for asking, I have made many financial mistakes.  The biggest one was settling for a low income when I was in my 20s and 30s.  Now look, everyone starts with a low income, so that's not the mistake.  There are some careers that are low paying but rewarding/important to society, and that is also not the situation that I was in.

What I did that was wrong was to take a low paying job that I hated and that I stayed in without trying to find a new one or seeking my true value to the company.  'Member that scarcity mindset that I have to talk myself away from?  I thought that this one employer was the only employer and that I was lucky to have a job.  That's the story that I stuck with until the Great Recession when said employer dropped me like a bad habit, which put me into a terrible position in an awful job market.  It was only then as I clawed my way back into the workforce that I started making some baby salary negotiation moves.  If you look at my job history, I can point to so many instances where I could have pushed for more money and didn't.

If you received a windfall what would you change?

The windfall was defined as being one million dollars, and the assignment was to spend it.

I was shocked that when I really thought about it, I had no problem spending the cash, as long as I gave myself a few years to do it.  The telling thing is that the first three things will be done anyway, just on a much lower/slower scale.

• We'd redo our kitchen, put in some fancy landscaping to turn our back yard into an oasis, and take care of a few odds and ends around the house.  We'd hire a designer so that all we would have to do is tell them what we want and they would take it from there.  While the work was being done, we would go on a local Airbnb spree and get to live in all the nearby towns in a variety of neighborhoods.  Because the assignment is to spend one million and I can't see this costing more than $200k and honestly it's probably less, I would allocate $300k of the million to the house, and anything left over would pay off our mortgage.
  
• Travel with reckless abandon.  My current plan is to try one cross country train trip to see if I like it.  With bottomless funds, we're stepping it up to take every route that Amtrak and Via Rail have and we're first class/full bedroom.  We're going on the Alaska cruise.  We're renting an RV and taking the fam and Doggo on a National Parks tour.  If Hubs and I are both traveling, then Doggo is staying with a Dog Nanny instead of boarding at the doggy daycare place.
• Speaking of Doggo, I would invest in a dog trainer to deal with her fear of people using only positive reinforcement methods (positive reinforcement means teaching the behavior and encouraging it with rewards as opposed to punishing the dog for doing the unwanted behavior).  Dogs have a socialization window when they are puppies, and since Doggo was either a stray or in a shelter during this time, she didn't get the right introduction to us two footers.  The cure for this is to give her a lot of positive exposure, which might look something like having a whole line of people knock on our front door and come into the house one by one with dog treats and eventually Doggo would get to the point where she would have enough good people experiences that she would feel fully comfortable around anyone.  It's a very time intensive process, and we don't have a line of strangers willing to come to our house and win over our dog, so this is where having a wad of cash to drop on a trainer and a horde of door knocking volunteers would be handy.  Long term, I would learn more about dog training and maybe even get certified so that I could pay it forward as a shelter volunteer when I get tired of traveling.
• I would hire a personal trainer and a chef to get the extra 20 pounds that I've been complaining about for years off for good==>the end goal of this is for me to look great and feel great.  Presumably I'm not working so I would hang out with the chef and cook with them.  Once the weight is gone the trainer and I would work on putting some muscle on and keep going until I can do pull ups.
• We'd get a house cleaner, but only once a month for a deep clean.
  
• I might roll back some of my cheapies around subscriptions.  I'd get more Patreon podcast subscriptions and possibly sign up for Audible permanently instead of just getting it for a few months when there is a deal.  But even so, we're looking at $200 a year max, so it's not big bucks.
  

Notice what is not on the list:

• We wouldn't move
• We wouldn't get new cars
• Nothing specific for the boys.  We've already taken care of college, and in our house a high school diploma gets you $3,000 to set up a brokerage account.  We might drop some dollars here and there to help get them started, but it would be minimal since we're launching them into the world with no debt and the skills to make their own money.

What are five frugal things that you have done recently?

This question is a tribute to The Frugal Girl's Five Frugal Things series.

1. A few months ago I switched from Google Fi to Mint Mobile.  My cell bill in a normal month when I was using minimal data used to be around $30, but with travel I was using more data and all too often I found myself with a $40 to $80 cell bill.  Mint Mobile is $15 a month for 5 GB of data which is more than I ever use, and if you go to Canada they give you 3 GB of data per month to use there, so I'm covered anywhere that I'm likely to be.  The switchover process was easy, and the service is as good or better than Google Fi.  The only downside is that you have to prepay to get the $15 per month rate (first you pay for three months and then you have to pay for a year...but it's really not that much of a risk to drop $180 for the year and to be done).

2. My handy dandy museum pass got Stephany and me into the Dali museum for free.  Admission for two people would have been $64 and instead it was $0.

3. I used my annual $50 Chase Sapphire hotel credit to pay for most of a cheapie hotel room for my last night in Florida, and I saved money on my car rental by booking it through the Costco travel portal and using the hotel shuttle so that I only had a car for 6 of the 7 days that I was there (only for the portion of the trip that I needed one).

4. When I was traveling last week I ate at least three meals from my snack stash instead of buying food.  I could have had dinner on Monday at the airport, I could have stopped on the way to St. Pete's for lunch on Friday, and I coulda had another airport dinner coming back the next Monday night.  The issue is that buying fast food would not have been "better" - the airport meals would have been crap and would not have made me feel good, and it would have made a long day even longer to stop on Friday. 

5. Tonight for Valentine's Day we are raiding the pantry for a romantic dinner.  Not so much to save money as to avoid leaving the house because it's as cold as balls right now.  Our menu is Recipe Rebel's Creamy Italian Sausage Pasta and Two Peas and Their Pod Flourless Chocolate Cake.  We could have made everything without leaving the house, but Hubs and I decided to splurge and make a grocery store trip for fresh spinach instead of using frozen.  We are adjusting to the lifestyle to which we would like to become accustomed!

That's my hot take on the interesting money questions!  How would you answer - do it here or better yet write your own post and drop me the link.  What's on your menu for Valentine's Day?