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BiggerPockets Money Podcast

228: Finance Friday: Is “Random Spending” Ruining Your Budget?

BiggerPockets Money Podcast

BiggerPockets

Investing, Education, Business

4.53K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2021

⏱️ 90 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” This is the topic of today’s episode, where we interview Jenny for a Finance Friday review. Jenny is finishing up her fourth degree and has been working throughout grad school to help her family. Her husband brings in a sizable income, but he wants to retire in 2030 and spend more time with their (future) kids.  Jenny has great control over her fixed expenses, but as for her variable expenses...not so much. Her family is consistently teetering between $1,000 a month and $2,400 a month in variable expenses, many of which can be resolved with some simple shopping tweaks (like leaving your credit card at home when you go to the grocery store). Luckily, they’ve invested a fair amount of their take-home pay, have a stellar 401(k) match, and are about to have dual incomes once Jenny is out of school.  If you’re having trouble keeping a hold on your variable expenses, such as random Amazon shopping, tune in for this episode for advice on exactly what to do. In This Episode We Cover How to plan for retirement with two full-time incomes  Paying off your home vs. investing in assets like index funds and real estate Taking advantage of 401(k) matches and maxing out retirement accounts Leveraging a future job to pay off student loans  How to curtail your variable expenses and reduce “random spending” Why someone with “mortgage anxiety” should be wary of real estate investing And So Much More! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast, show number 228, Finance Friday edition,

0:05.2

where we talk to Jenny about paying down the mortgage early, early retirement, and

0:09.4

creating a budget based on actual spending.

0:13.8

Cancel your Amazon Prime account.

0:16.0

I think that it is far too easy to go in and be like, ah, shipping's free, I'll just

0:22.0

get that.

0:23.3

Whereas if you had to drive to the store, would you have bought that item?

0:28.0

No, I don't drive to stores when there's an option.

0:31.6

Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my young Bruce Springsteen

0:38.9

lookalike co-host Scott Tregg.

0:40.9

Mindy, you are born to run with these new adjectives each week.

0:45.5

Thank you.

0:46.8

I saw a, the born to run video this weekend when I was at a water park.

0:53.2

They had a big video screen over the wave pool and born to run came on and I'm like, all

0:58.4

I can think of was that's got Trent.

1:02.1

Bruce Springsteen looks like Scott Trent.

1:04.6

I mean, not now.

1:05.6

He's a little older than you now, but when he was your age, you guys are twins.

1:09.4

I'll have to get a denim short sleeve to see if that works.

1:12.7

That's so off brand for you.

1:18.7

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled intro.

1:24.1

Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce

...

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