Eat the Avocado Toast w/ Justin & Haley Brown-Woods #1040
How to Money
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The supposed luxury of avocado toast, along with the latte, has become an “ok boomer” personal finance tip. “Stop frivolously spending your money and you’d be rich!”... we don’t actually believe that here at HTM and even if there’s a modicum of truth to that statement, it presents other challenges like: how long do you sacrifice in the short-term in order to achieve long-term financial success? Which is why we’re pumped to have financial counselors Justin & Haley Browns-Wood join the podcast today because these are the types of questions they guide their clients through on the reg.
Justin & Haley share their story which includes paying off six figures in debt – all on teacher’s salaries, despite burning through a $600,000 settlement. The couple behind Price of Avocado Toast discusses how lifestyle inflation led to their out of control debt, why debt consolidation is risky without behavioral change, examples of how tracking expenses are essential for gaining financial clarity, how shame around debt can be a common barrier to financial progress, but then we also talk about OkCupid and the intersection of intimacy and Dave Ramsey – it turns out that transformative experiences can strengthen relationships!
Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
- Head to PriceOfAvocadoToast.com to learn about everything Justin & Haley, including their financial coacking.
- Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
- Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
- Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
- Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.
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Best friends out!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.1 | Welcome to How to Money. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Joel. |
| 0:06.5 | And today we're talking why you should eat the avocado toast with Justin and Haley |
| 0:11.7 | Brownswood. |
| 0:39.2 | Thank you. Okay, so the supposed luxury of avocado toast, along with a latte, it's become an OK boomer personal finance tip. |
| 0:42.9 | Stop spending on those two things and you'll finally be able to create some financial margin in your life. Cue the eye roll. Nobody thinks that's real life. And my guest today |
| 0:49.3 | are proof that you can grow up without any real money knowledge. You can quickly churn through |
| 0:54.1 | a $600,000 settlement. |
| 0:55.7 | You can still pay off six figures in debt all on a teacher salary. |
| 1:00.3 | A lot packed into this one today. |
| 1:01.6 | Justin and Haley Browns Woods are one of my favorite couples in the personal finance space. |
| 1:07.4 | Fun facts, they met on OKCupid back in the day. |
| 1:09.8 | We can talk about that guys if you want. |
| 1:11.5 | They loathe Dave Ramsey, which we will get into as well. And now they're financial counselors. |
| 1:16.6 | They use their empathetic abilities and their hard fought money wins to help others overcome money hangups, tackle debt, and heal their relationship with money. |
| 1:25.3 | So Haley and Justin, thank you for joining me today on the show. |
| 1:28.4 | Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, this is so exciting. Thanks for celebrating us there. Oh, you got, okay, so OKCupid. How'd that go down? Who reached out to who? Tell me the love story. Yeah, this is like my favorite story. Yeah, he really likes to bash me here. Yeah, I really do. I found Haley on OkayCupid and another dating site at the same time. |
| 1:47.1 | Plenty of fish. |
| 1:48.0 | Yeah. story. Yeah, he really likes to bash me here. Yeah, I really do. I found Haley on OkayCupid and another dating site at the same time. Plenty of fish. Yeah, plenty of fish, not Tinder, don't worry. But I reached out to her and she ghosted me for like two weeks. No way. And I'm thinking, what the heck, we're 94% compatible. What's going on here? And eventually she messaged me and said, I'm sorry, I had to sift through just gross messages from other people. But here I am, and we sparked a conversation and the rest is history. We're actually celebrating our seven-year anniversary today, Joel. Today? Today. Congratulations. We could have found another day, so you didn't have to talk to me on your. Okay. Yeah, this is great. This is exciting stuff. I'm so thrilled for you. Happy anniversary. I would have sent you some beers or something. Speaking of which, first question I got to ask you, really, is what's your craft beer equivalent? What do you guys like to spend money on? You're super intentional, thoughtful about saving and investing for the future. What do you explore John |
| 2:34.7 | in the here and now? I would say for me, just in this season of life, my guilty pleasure is |
| 2:40.0 | fantasy football. Not like daily gambling, but I cannot turn down my friends and the fantasy |
... |
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