Episode 15: Book Club—Money Honey

Crys: Hello, welcome to the Write Away Podcast. Things are going to sound a little different this week. My computer is solidly broke, broke. So we’re recording this podcast on JP’s computer one shot. No intro or outro, and you’ll probably hear Smalls & Co. in the background.

This is our book club podcast for the month, and we chose Money Honey by Rachel Richards, which is a book on personal finance. With me for this conversationI have a couple of fellows from last month, JP Rindfleisch and Lon Varnadore. And JP has a special message for us. 

JP: Alright. The information provided in this podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not intended, and under no circumstances should it be construed, as providing personal investment, tax, or legal advice, or recommendation.

Crys: Did you read this straight from the book?

JP: I sure did.

Crys: That’s excellent. Okay. So this is a book on personal finance, and some people might wonder why we’re talking about that on a podcast/book club that’s about growing our author business. I very firmly believe that getting your personal finance in gear is extremely important to getting your writing business in gear. So that’s why we picked this one. Guys, first thoughts?

JP: I absolutely loved the sass of this book. It definitely brought it down to a level that felt like it was your best friend telling you some solid financial advice, and it gave me a little kick in the pants. I liked it.

Lon: I thought it was really good too. And listening to the very beginning—because I listened to the audio—the first part of it was talking about finance was about as much fun as watching paint dry. Yes, it is. Then just getting through that and listening to the rest of the rather sassy information that was given, it was just like, okay, now it’s still dry, but it’s in a much more informal tone and much better really.

Crys: One of the things I really liked about Rachel is that I think she says that she achieved financial independence/retired by age 29. It might’ve even been younger. There’s a lot of coaches, like on Instagram, specifically, who market themselves as six figure business owners by 26. And most of the time I look at them and I’m like, I don’t actually want you to teach me anything because I think you lucked out. Not to judge people or anything, but it could have been because you’re young and cute. It could have just been because you’re a really good social media person. You didn’t tell me why and how you earned six figures at that young age, just that you’re magic for earning it at that young age. 

Rachel does not do that. She’s like I started selling Cutco knives, and then I did this, and then I did that. And now I own 32 rental doors and that’s my main income. Then COVID hit that, but then I have the income from my book. But she lays it all out and that makes me trust her.

JP: Yeah, for sure.

Lon: This isn’t like, oh, hey, I’m internet famous and I get six figures or almost seven figures doing this. And it’s like you are pretty, that’s pretty much it. You became an influencer. Congratulations.

Crys: Yeah, and there are lot’s of people who do work really hard, but it’s really hard to see beyond the facade of the internet. Like you’ve really got to lay it out there if you want to use lessons to teach people how to actually build their own. Another reason I think Rachel is really good for authors to read is because of her focus on passive income. Because she wrote this book, she does use books as one element of passive income, but not the only element.

Lon: Correct.

JP: Yeah. It was really nice being able to see her progression as someone who is not necessarily fully in the author business, as someone who’s just starting out. I still have that average nine to five, so getting that person who was in the same boat as I am and seeing how their path went, it definitely lays the plan ahead for how I could perceive building up that sort of system so that I’m more prepared when I go full time.

Crys: What was the most useful thing for either of you? If there is something that you feel like you can apply right away?

JP: For me, it was the four bucket system because I definitely use like a one and a half bucket system. 

Crys: Can you explain that a little bit?

JP: Yeah, definitely. She has this concept where you should have four buckets of where you’re putting your money away. The first one is emergency. It should be roughly about a thousand dollars and that should be in something you can easily grab. Then you’ve got your short term, so anything that kind of happens within a year as well as about a six month salary. This should be in a high yield savings, but it’s still something you should be able to easily access because it’s within a year. Then you’ve got long-term, so this is bigger events that are about a year away, more life events. This should go in the stock market. And then you’ve got your fourth bucket, which is retirement, and that’s kind of just this big bucket you should be filling everything in. But she has this system where you should almost always be giving money into retirement, but you should be starting at bucket one and kind of dripping down as you continue to fill each one.

Crys: Yeah, and she picks out kind of an arbitrary number of 1000. She says your emergency fund may be lower or higher, whatever you feel like you need to have on hand.  I chose that pretty much as my number as well, and so I had a big personal celebration when I was able to hit that amount in my savings. Other than when I was preparing for having Smalls and having to cover my maternity leave, I don’t think I’ve ever had that much saved. So that feels really amazing.

I think the thing that I took away as my most immediately applicable thing is that I’ve always been intimidated by the stock market. She recommended an app that’s not your best as far as like returns, because I think they charge you like a dollar a month and they’re not very clear about that. But it’s called Acorn. So now I just drop in $25 a month and if you hook up your debit card or credit card, it’ll do roundups based on your purchases and drip a little bit more money on there.  So I started that four or five months ago when I first read the book before she put up the second edition. It makes me feel really powerful. Even though it’s this tiny little bucket, I’m like I’m investing.

JP: I have a really fun workaround for Acorns because I don’t like paying them a dollar a month because I’m that stingy of a person. So she mentioned this other app, Qapital. And that is totally free and you can put a rule on there for round up rules and then it will totally accrue an amount. Now, it doesn’t invest. So then you have to take that bucket of money once you’ve accrued it, and then I use an app called M1 Finance, and there you can create a pie of different stocks and you can buy portions of stocks. So say that you wanted Apple and you don’t have that number, but you could put a couple of dollars towards Apple and this pie will just buy fractions of these stocks. So I really like using those two apps in tandem. Just as a random recommendation.

Crys: Yeah, I love that. I opened a Vanguard account at the same time I opened Acorn and stuck like $40 in there and promptly got overwhelmed by the fact that I couldn’t afford anything with $40.

JP: That’s definitely why I like M1. M1 Finance is really good at doing those little partial stocks.

Crys: Yeah. And you, Lon?

Lon: Unfortunately, just everything. There’s no one single bit. I was listening to it and just letting it flow over. I need to go back and listen to this again. And I do have the actual ebook and I’ll have to go at some point and just drill down onto different things like personal finance, and investing, and retirement, and just everything. I am a financial mess.

Crys: I am part of the financial mess club.

Lon: Awesome.

JP: Me, also.

Crys: I don’t want to say that writers are more financially messy, because I think that’s just creatives in general.  We tend to try and ignore that dirty money thing, but please give us it. We just want to buy our coffees and our computers and books.

Lon: A mound of books, our computer, and printer paper. And for me soda, and for everyone else, coffee, because I’m weird. And yeah, we’d be fine.

Crys: So I would say this book is for people who don’t really have a clue. This is such an amazing beginning book on personal finance. I’m in her class right now and it does feel slightly next level. She’s got a lot more spreadsheets on tracking your total net worth. Surprisingly, I have a net worth that is positive. It’s not highly positive, but it’s positive. So it’s fun to be able to look at that. She has it so that you can track it month over month. So I recommend reading the book first because I feel like that’s the easiest step, and you can pick out your first step or two. Then for people who need more attention or just have more questions and really like her style and her character, then her classes are great.

JP: One thing I think I would recommend to anyone, especially to those working a nine to five, because I’ve switched companies a few times here and there and I’ve had multiple 401Ks that I’ve had to move, is she kind of steers away from the use of a financial advisor, but I just happened to have one. And I personally like him because he’s just able to offer that kind of advice and we have a pretty good deal where he takes based on if my investments actually make money and then he makes a small fraction of that. So it’s a good setup, especially if you need that assistance of figuring out how you can move a 401K from here to here without screwing it up. Because I don’t necessarily have the time to really educate myself a hundred percent on that, and so it’s a good starter. Then once you get more comfortable with it, then you can wean off of them.

Crys: Do you have any advice for finding a good financial advisor or did you just luck into yours?

JP: Mine was a family one, so no.

Crys: Yeah. So ask your family and ask your friends and their parents. Yeah, I’m too old to not know enough about this is. That’s the saddest part. Like we should know this stuff and they don’t teach it to us in school.

JP: That’s very true.

Lon: That was one thing I just kept nodding to at the beginning. It was like, they don’t teach this stuff in school. I was like, no, they don’t. I do remember when I was really young, they taught us how to balance a checkbook for like one class session. That was it. And I still use checks once in a greeeeeaaaat while. 

Crys: I have used them for two people in the last 10 years, and they were my ex’s grandmother and my grandmother because they didn’t trust PayPal.

JP, will you tell us what book we are going to do for next month?

JP: Yes, we are going to do Invisible Ink.

Crys: By Brian McDonald. I think all three of us are Brian McDonald geeks. Yes, Lon? Are you also a McDonald geek?

Lon: Eh.

Crys: Good. We need some ehs in the conversation. Our mentor, Jay thorn, turned us on to his podcast, Are You A Storyteller, a few months ago and a good handful of us promptly tore through everything that man has created on the art of story. So that will be good, especially if Lon is eh, we’ll have a good conversation.

I will see you guys next month.