Mindy: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast, show number 316, finance Friday edition, where Carl and I recap our big June spending. I have started to notice inflation at the grocery store. I don’t really notice inflation for clothing and shoes because I shop at the thrift store mainly, and I don’t really notice inflation for a lot of other things. I just don’t buy a lot of things. Uh, but for food, I’m starting to notice that at the grocery store. And it’s I’d like to think I have a pretty good handle on our food budget, um, and, you know, on food prices in general and it seems like they are going up and up and that can be scary if you’re paycheck to paycheck.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and joining me today is my co-host Carl. You might know him from 1500days.com or the Mile High-Fi podcast, but I’ve known him as Mr. Mindy Jensen for the last 20 plus years.
Guest: This is the first time I’ve ever heard you refer to me as Mr. Mindy Jensen.
Mindy: Oh, I say that all the time.
Guest: Really? Oh, I’m okay with it. I mean, you bring home most of the bacon, so you can call me whatever you want. Just don’t good. No bad words at least not in front of the kids.
Mindy: Oh, I would never. In front of the kids.
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Mindy: Carl and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
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Mindy: So, Carl and I are here to talk about our June spending, which was the most expensive month that we have ever had. We spent, let’s open up our spending tracker, which you can follow along with every single month, every single day if you’re really all that interested at biggerpockets.com/mindy’s budget. And I say Mindy’s budget because I work at Bigger Pockets and you don’t. So, we spent a whopping $11,995.70 this month, all in one month, which is, um, a lot for us.
Guest: Yeah, that hurts a little bit, but let’s flip over and say where most of that spending came from. Let’s see what we got.
Mindy: It’s right here.
Guest: Oh, okay. Um
Mindy: I even highlighted it for you.
Guest: Oh jeez. I yeah, I can’t do anything. I you new? need glasses. Yeah, I pretty much am new. What get your glasses then? So what get your glasses then? 8,000 $437.15 were travel expenses, which is quite shocking. And we had a slippery slope situation where our child decided to go on the school trip to Germany. We said, fine, if you want to go on this, we’ll pay for half. You have to cover the other half. And then I started thinking, I’ve never been there. I’d really love to go to Germany, so let’s go over there and meet her, which is fine. We can shop for flights and get all that stuff and try to find budget accommodations and do all that stuff ahead of time. But it turns out this tour company who will go unnamed, but they’re a big tour company, doesn’t book the tickets until like weeks before the actual trip. And keep in mind, this is an international flight, and they booked it less than a month before the trip. So we were forced to book our stuff a month before the trip. So I think we paid a premium. Most of that 8,000.
Mindy: You think we paid a premium? Let me confirm that for you.
Guest: Yeah, I don’t know, it’s not I don’t frequently price f- flights to Frankfurt. It sounds like a tongue twister, say flights to Frankfurt 10 times fast. What’s another German F word? Vergnugen. That’s a Volkswagen thing. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, the flights were like for the three of us. And then we had to buy another one for the daughter because of this other debacle with the story company. So we had to buy three round trip flights and a single flight home back from her. And that was weird. It was cheaper to buy her a round trip flight to go from Frankfurt to Denver and then back to Frankfurt and then just ditch the second half than it was to buy one flight. So, yeah, we ended up buying three and a half flights and I think that was close to $6,000, right?
Mindy: That was over $6,000 and what makes it so painful is that we couldn’t even fly or we couldn’t even shop for airlines. They didn’t tell us if they were going to fly Lufthansa or if they were going to fly United or American or any number of other airlines. We couldn’t even start accumulating flight points. They just said, we will get to you when we get to you, basically. Um so we weren’t able to really accumulate any points anywhere that would have worked out. I suppose we could have, you know, going back now, we probably could have gotten those Chase ultimate rewards points and done a one to one transfer that actually might have been a a really good choice. If anybody knows about the Chase ultimate rewards points, would that have been good because we did end up flying Lufthansa, which is a lovely airline. Um, everything worked out really, really well with the airline once we were there. Um, we flew during some pretty awful domestic flight cancellation weekends. So we’re really thankful that we didn’t have any of those. We did go direct Denver to Frankfurt without any sort of, uh, layovers or stops at all, which was my favorite way to travel. Um, all in all, we had a good time.
Guest: Wait, is it Frankfurt or Frankfurt? How I think I’m saying it.
Guest: Well, I’m American, so I say Frankfurt because that’s how we roll.
Guest: You’re mostly German, though.
Guest: I did I I’ve actually only been in Germany like 10 whole days, which occurred in June of 2020. Okay. It’s the first time I’ve ever set foot in the the motherland.
Guest: I I do know they we have some multiple German listeners and they will correct you because I think I’m right.
Mindy: Okay. Well, if you want to correct me, you can send it to Carl. So, Mr. 1500 at 1500days.com.
Guest: Okay. So, something we have never talked about. I’m going to ask you this right now. Do you regret the trip?
Mindy: I do not regret the trip. I wish we had more time to plan and I say that like we didn’t have a year and a half to plan this stupid trip. I wish I would have planned it a little bit better and maybe gotten a bunch of airline miles on Luftanza and United and American and I mean you can always use them some place else or maybe you can’t. Maybe we’ll just go back there. Um, I wish we would have done it a little differently, but I’m glad that we went. It was a lot of fun.
Guest: Yeah, I regret nothing. It was such a good trip. We saw Oh thanks for setting me up like that and then you I regret nothing.
Guest: No, no, I think there’s a lesson in here. We’ll tell you real quick what we did and why I don’t think we should regret it. We went to Berlin. That was four days. Uh then we rented a car, we drove as fast as our little Skoda could go. If you want to haul butt down the autobahn, a Skoda is not a good choice. We had that thing pegged at like what, 160 or 180 km an hour. I think that 110 miles per hour, which is not fast on the fast parts of the Autobahn. No. So we took that thing to Munich after that for another like three nights and then we we came back, we stopped in Rothenberg on the way back and that’s it. I wish we would have had more time at both places, but especially in Munich. Uh so back to my original question, I asked if you regretted spending that kind of money and you said no and I don’t say no either.
Guest: Oh, you didn’t say if I regret, you didn’t ask if I regretted spending that money. You asked if I had any regrets.
Guest: Okay, I guess that was my question then. Let’s go back to it then. Do you regret It makes sense? This is a money podcast. Is kind of the same thing. Do you regret the trip because we spent that much money on it or do you regret the money part of it?
Mindy: I don’t regret the money. I don’t regret I wish we would have been able to save some money. I mean, how many times do we sit here and talk both of us collectively on our blog, on our podcast, on our respective podcasts. We talk about money and saving money and you know, saving money where you can and we didn’t really have that opportunity. Although I think we could have saved more money if we would have tried a little bit harder. Um there’s a lot of information out there about how to earn miles and points and sitting down here talking to you about this was the first time it popped into my head those Chase ultimate rewards, which are like really fabulous rewards points. And we have the ability to get new Chase cards fairly frequently. I don’t think we’ve opened up a new one in the last 24 months. They have this five out of 24 rule, you could only open up five chase credit cards in the last 24 months. I think I’m pretty sure that’s still the same rule, but I don’t know, maybe it’s not. Um if you know for sure that that’s changed, uh feel free to send us a note um or comment in the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/bpmoney. We’d love to hear the updated. If you have any tips for travel, saving money for travel, last minute tips when you have a specific deadline, a specific location that you’re going, a specific date like we had. Um, if you have any off the wall tips, that’d be great too. Um, but no, I don’t regret our trip and spending that much money. I mean, $8,437 in one category that is not car is a lot. But let’s talk about what exactly that 8437 is. That is the airfare, the hotels that weren’t booked on miles, which we do have boatloads of. That was all of our food, all of the restaurants, all of everything that would normally go into different categories. We put that all in travel and the reason we did that and we did it consciously is because we would not have had those expenses at that level if we had been at home. So groceries are more expensive because we’re not going to a real grocery store, we’re going to like a tiny little grocery store because we don’t speak the language, which is another, that’s a regret. We should have learned some German. Um we don’t speak the language and we don’t know where these other grocery stores are, so we just go to the little convenience stores and convenience stores always have higher prices. We went to restaurants, we went to what’s the big brew, the brew house, brow house?
Guest: The Hofbrau Hofbrau house.
Mindy: The Hofbrau house. Thank you. I always forget that. Uh we went to the Hofbrau house and we got a great big beer. Well, did you post that picture of me holding two giant beers? I look like such a lush.
Guest: I did.
Mindy: But, yeah, thank you. That’s great. You’re awesome.
Guest: They’re light beers.
Mindy: We drink a lot of beer in Germany. It was delicious. And I didn’t categorize that into different spending categories because we wouldn’t have been going out so much, we wouldn’t have been spending that much money if we would have been at home. So we lumped it all into travel. And again, the reason we have so many different categories in our spending tracker is because if we had to, we could cut out travel all together. Let’s say the stock market takes a big dump like a 25% dip. Theoretically, of course, that would never happen in the first quarter, the first half of 2022.
Guest: Is it down 25% or just 22%?
Guest: I think it’s like 22. Yeah. Definitely in bare market. Yeah. Over 20%.
Mindy: Don’t get crazy. Don’t say 25. It’s only 22. And we’re recording this on July 4th. I don’t know what the market’s going to do by the time this releases on July 7th. Um however, the market has taken a big dump and there are a lot of categories we could cut out and get back into our normal spending threshold. So let’s look at some of we did some math before we started this. Oops, let’s scroll down. So we, we are in this is the end of June that we are sharing numbers for and the total spending that we have done thus far in 2022 is $46,484.79. Now, when we first extrapolated our fi number, what did we say that was going to be?
Guest: $40,000.
Mindy: $40,000 for the whole year. And here is us going $6,000 over in six months. So that’s a lot. We looked at some of our expense lines and the biggest one that we could very easily cut out is travel. We have spent $17,000 in travel this year. And this is, you know, two years after or the first year after a pandemic. So we kind of want to go out and see things. And yes, and I’m not saying the pandemic is over, the pandemic is still going on, but we have been able to travel more this year than we have in the last two years. That’s a very easy cut. But that’s $17,000. So without the travel expense, we’ve spent $29,424. Okay. Well, we planned on 40,000, so that’s still at six months we should be at $20,000. But we planned on $40,000 with no mortgage payments. How much have we paid in mortgage? Well, lucky you should ask that question. I anticipated that and I did the math and we have done $7,938 in mortgage payments. So without travel and without mortgage payments, the amount that we have spent this year in six months is $21,486.71. So now we’re only 1400 or actually if you round that up to 1500, that number comes up all the time. It’s kind of crazy how frequently the number 1500 pops up in our lives. We are $1,500 over our spending, over our anticipated spending over the course of six months, which feels pretty good because we haven’t had to tighten our belts. We go out to dinner frequently, we go out to tap rooms with friends, we spend way too much on groceries and we live a pretty good life without feeling like we are restricting ourselves. I mean, that’s what I think. What do you think?
Guest: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true and this is something I say, I think every time I record, every time we record, I say this, so sorry I sound like a broken record, but we’re frugal for the things we don’t care about so we can spend on the stuff we do care about. Uh, the travel is important to us. staying when we went to Munich and Berlin, we stayed close to the city center so we never had to get into a car. We walked everywhere or took bicycles and we paid a little bit extra uh, for that convenience, but it was well worth it because I don’t like to get in a car if I don’t have to. So it was great. Uh, but we’re pretty frugal. I’m going to, I’m about to order 20 tons of rocks to put in our yard and I’m going to move all of those myself because I think it’s great exercise and I’ve
Mindy: You heard it here, I don’t have to move any of those rocks. He’s going to move them all himself. I love that.
Guest: Well, did I say me? Oh well, we, we
Mindy: No, no. They’re not going to cut that out. They said you said you are going to do that all by yourself.
Guest: There’s no I in rock. I guess there’s no we in rock either. But, yeah, so but I don’t mind because I get a bunch of exercise from it. Um, what are some other things? We take care of our own lawn. I know some people absolutely hate mowing their lawn, but I don’t mind it so much. I can put on my noise cancelling headphones and catch up on the bigger pockets money podcast.
Guest: Yeah.
Mindy: Uh, What is this episode 316? So what do you have? 313 episodes to go?
Guest: I think so. I’ve listened to a couple. It’s pretty good. I like it. Anyway, it’s too close. Um, yeah, what else? We do our own car maintenance. I don’t really like that that much, but it’s faster to change the oil than it is to go to one of those places and sometimes they screw it up. I I cut my own hair, which looks so so great. Yeah. So I’ve paid like zero for haircuts for the past 10 years at least, right?
Mindy: Oh, it’s been longer than that. We’ve been cutting your hair. We, I, we, that’s a team effort.
Guest: Yeah. So, if you think of that, like 100 times 20 bucks, that’s $2,000.
Mindy: 100 times 20? What are you 100 times 20 for?
Guest: 100 haircuts times 20 bucks with the tip and all that. At least 100 haircuts probably. a lot more than that.
Guest: Over what time period?
Guest: Like one haircut a month for 10 years. That’s actually 120 haircuts. Okay. So bump that up. That that’s all our airfare. My haircuts bought us our airfare, most of it to to Germany, but yeah, I think there’s something in that. I think you need to at least our motto is to carefully consider where we spend so we can not spend on the things that we I I just totally messed this up. so we can spend on the things we really care about, but then save money on things that we don’t care so much about.
Mindy: Well, let’s look at the things that we don’t care so much about. Oh, I don’t really want to because we haven’t really done this line at all. We need to work on that a little bit more.
Guest: We have done here’s a, here’s one entry right there.
Mindy: Charitable contributions needs to be increased significantly.
Guest: Yeah, we we do do some. I think we gave some money to Ukraine, we forgot to put that on there. Um, yeah, and we’ll certainly do more, I think our our goal in life is probably to give in much bigger amounts. And I think we’re in this is a whole other conversation but I always think like right now is the most spendy part of our lives. We have two children, but in a like 10 years, they’ll be out of the house. I hope they’ll be out of school, I hope. And then we can live super cheap and then we can give more of our money away. Now I still feel we’ve done well but still a little bit of shakiness and unease due to financial insecurity. So we’ll give and we’ll give big but it’s probably a little bit further down the road. I’m not gonna wait till I die like Warren Buffet though. It’ll be cool to see your money in action while you live but we’ve gone way off topic.
Mindy: We have, but that’s something that we need to start discussing. We don’t need to discuss that right now and hash that out as people listen to us awkwardly discuss this. We’re gonna stop that. But we will discuss this after the lights go down. Um, where, let’s look at our spending. If you look at our June spending, we only hit four red categories and one of them was utilities by a dollar, which doesn’t even count. Um one of them was school. I don’t remember what I bought for $27, but it was a school expense that I had allocated zero to because it’s June, and I didn’t think we’d actually be spending any money on school. Um so I think I just need to have $100 in the budget for June, or for school for every month and then sometimes we hit it and sometimes we don’t. Uh, gifts. What gifts did we buy this past? We bought a lot of gifts in June, I can’t remember why. But we went $173 over the gift giving budget and oh goodness, last month we went, we really need to up our gift giving budget because we have really gone over.
Guest: In, in May, we had a family member graduate from school and we took the family out to dinner. So I put that in the gift category. So that that’s where that came from.
Mindy: That’s right and I didn’t think of that when I was making my budget. So, you know, there’s that’s a learning opportunity and a research opportunity for everybody who is listening, who wants to make their own budget. Think ahead. I don’t know if you know this, but my projected is kind of just a guess for a while because we haven’t been tracking our spending for so long. I don’t really have a good guess, a good, uh, gauge as to where my money is, where my money will be going this month. So I am now guessing based on or estimating, let’s call it an estimation and not a guess. I’m estimating based on the previous month and that’s right. May was expensive. Um June was expensive. I think that maybe for gift giving, we need to bump that up to about $150 a month and see what happens. Um except for Christmas, which will be more.
Guest: It feels good to be generous. I don’t mind spending money in that category at all. I think one of the gifts was we sent something to Jay Money, budget our sexy. Congratulations, Jay on buying it back.
Mindy: Oh yeah. Budgets are sexy is now re-owned by Jay Money.
Guest: Yeah.
Mindy: Uh, what else do we have? That’s right, I did say that. Um, our household budget, I think $200 a month in random household expenses is going to be our sweet spot. It feels like we have finally figured that out. Although I’m looking back, $1,000, $2,000, we bought a couch. What did we buy in May? I don’t even remember. Um, that’s kind of, that’s kind of sad. What did I buy? I don’t even remember, and yet I blew my budget way out of the water by $1,000. Now I have to go back and research that. Um we didn’t have any entertainment last month, but we were in Germany, so that was kind of all entertainment. And again, that went into the travel expenses. So a lot of these numbers, the category numbers in June are artificially low because we were in Germany for 10 days. Uh what else do we have? Healthcare is going to be ongoing um until we figure that out, we are going to have that about $400. And I’m happy to come in a little bit lower, but overall, we had pegged it at 13,600 and we came in at 12,000-ish just under 12,000. So we’re 1600 low below budget this month and it feels good to have a green month instead of a red month. Yeah. Um, next month I have us pegged at 9200. I think I’m going to bump that up to 9500.
Guest: And it looks like a lot of this is coming from travel. We have one more big trip planned. Can you were just going crazy? We’re going to be out in Oregon for some time. Yeah. We We.
Mindy: I’m gonna be here in Colorado.
Guest: Yeah, after this we’re not well you’re coming out to California for a little bit.
Guest: Yes. Yeah. Uh so there is that. But then after that we’re going to calm down. We’re not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. We’ll probably stay here for the rest of the holidays. We’re going to travel out to you for the bigger BP Con. Is that what you all call it?
Mindy: San Diego BP Con, October 2 through four. You can find more information at Bigger Pockets conference about the bigger Pockets conference at biggerpockets.com/events.
Mindy: So, I think we should talk about what goals we have for the second half of the year. What have we learned the first half and
Guest: We’ve learned that we don’t know how to make a budget.
Guest: Yeah, but I think for me at least, I think the keeping track is more important than the budget. the keeping track and especially the reflection part like what we do now, this is probably our money date. I know certain couples do money dates where they’ll meet on a weekly or maybe monthly basis to review their numbers and that’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re just doing it in front of everyone. I don’t, I don’t actually like budgets because that puts constructions on your spending. You should spend thoughtfully, but that’s where what we’re doing comes in. We can review and consider if all our spending was thoughtful spending.
Mindy: Ooh, I’m going to disagree with you and say I like a budget because I open up this spending tracker frequently. I have this open on my computer all the time. So, you can follow along at biggerpockets.com/mindy’s budget. I am speaking specifically of the second tab, the 2022 budget. I keep this open every day and I will look at it. I’ll just check in to see how we’re doing and I will see that in the month of July, I have already spent $40 on groceries. Okay, that’s no big deal. I have $709 left. Or I will see that I have already spent two, that’s fitness, $250 of our $300 fitness budget was on a bicycle for our daughter. Um we’ve spent a lot of money on our travel budget. We have two trips to take and we only have $1200 left on that budget. I’d like to be a little more conscious about our spending on food when we are on those trips. So instead of going out to dinner every single night, maybe we go out to dinner every other night. And we make sure we have breakfast and lunch in the Airbnb or hotel wherever we’re staying.
Guest: Yeah, I agree. Can I go to Taco Time when I go on my road trip?
Mindy: Okay. What is Taco Time?
Guest: It’s a taco restaurant. They’ve got like a deep fried taco. It’s or a deep fried burrito. I think we call those chimy changas, but they call it something else. I’m not gonna have that once.
Mindy: Wrapped up heart attack.
Guest: I value my cardiovascular system so I don’t abuse it too much.
Mindy: Uh, what else do we have? Oh parties. Well, that party number is going to go way up because we’re having a 4th of July party today and I didn’t put that expense in yet. Like crazy. So, I like to keep track of this. We’ve already spent almost half of our clothing and shoe budget this month. So I want to make sure that we keep that under the 250 mark, which means that maybe I don’t go to the thrift store with the girls whenever they ask. Yeah. even though it’s the thrift store, we’re still going. Um, in fact, I think I didn’t put the Cole’s charge from yesterday in there.
Guest: Okay. There’s still.
Mindy: Which means that there’s more money that we’ve already spent. So it’s just it’s very helpful for me to see this. When I don’t see this, I don’t think about it. when I see this, I think about it and I think to myself, oh, maybe I don’t need to charge that item. Maybe I don’t need another pair of shoes. Maybe I can wait another month for a new pair of workout pants. Well I would like to know what about these monthly money budget dates are helpful to you and what you would like to hear from us in the next recap because we’ve kind of just been doing what we want to talk about, but we want to make sure that you’re hearing what you want to hear. Do you have any questions about our budget or how we come up with any of the things that we’re doing? Um or any other questions that you would like to know about? Uh making a budget, making a spreadsheet?
Guest: Yeah, I agree. I think it would be super fun to answer a reader question or two.
Mindy: Yeah, any questions you have about our finances? Do you think we’re missing a a category? I think we’re pretty good on categories. although we don’t have the uh umbrella insurance category in here. that’s going to add another $100 a month, $75 a month. wait, how much is it? Oh, it was like was it $900 a year?
Guest: No, I don’t think it was that much. I thought it was pretty an small old car. I should look that up.
Mindy: I should look that up. It wasn’t that.
Guest: It was $900 for all of it. Yeah, for all of it. Yeah. So that’s okay.
Guest: Yeah, we have a cheap old car. so our, what is it? Our auto insurance is like $800 a year or something like that, right?
Mindy: No, auto insurance is like $300 a year. Homeowners insurance is $600 a year. That’s it? Wow, So I mean, or maybe homeowners is 900? I don’t know. I should look this up. Maybe it was $600 every six months before and now it’s 900 for the year.
Guest: Okay. Anyway, shout out to the Mazda people. That thing will not die.
Guest: Yeah, Mazda 5. We call yeah, it’s a Mazda 5, which is like a mini mini van or as Mindy likes to call it, the Mindy van. It’s the Mindy van. Yes. If your name is Mindy and you drive a mini van, you should change the name to a Mindy van.
Guest: It’s pretty awesome. It is great.
Guest: Is there anything else you want to talk about?
Mindy: I don’t think so. For the second half of the year, I would just like to keep watching things. It’s become a little bit, I don’t say scary, but yeah, this is the first time since I quit my job, since we started our journey, uh I we started talking about financial independence October of 2012. And we had a little bit of a correction when Covid happened, but that one was very short. The Feds jumped right in to prop things up, V-shape recovery, hit the bottom, bounce back up like a rubber ball. Uh this one has has already gone on longer. and I think it will be, it will go on for a little bit longer as well. We might be in for some more, I don’t even want to say pain. I hope it’s not painful for y’all. But have do you have any thoughts on that? Does that change the way we think about things?
Guest: And I I’ve been noticing inflation too. Like I always noticed gas prices, everyone notices that, but I went to the store to buy some other stuff and the diet Mountain Dew was like way more. So I’ve cut way back.
Mindy: You should cut way back because it’s Mountain Dew.
Guest: I know, it sucks. It is the diet, but it’s still bad for you.
Mindy: I have started to notice inflation at the grocery store. I don’t really notice inflation for clothing and shoes because I shop at the thrift store mainly, and I don’t really notice inflation for a lot of other things. I just don’t buy a lot of things. Uh, but for food, I’m starting to notice that at the grocery store. And it’s I mean, I’m starting to notice it, but I keep hearing that things are going to change, so we’ll see. Yeah.
Mindy: But I’m not, I’m not really concerned and I I really hope that this doesn’t come back to bite me in the butt. I have a job. We have saved. We we hit our fi number and then you didn’t want to quit, so you worked another couple of years. We doubled our fi number and it has continued to grow even after you left your job. And we have, according to the 4% rule, we have far more than we need. The 4% rule failed for four 4% of the time, um which is interesting and that’s not why it’s called the 4% rule. Uh but the 4% of the time that it failed was when the person, the retiree retired into a period of extreme inflation. So if that’s, if you were planning on retiring now, if this, if you did retire and all of a sudden we’re hitting inflation, keep track of your spending. Use my spending tracker, copy and paste and change my numbers to whatever you want and you know, keep track of your funds. You’re not going to go from perfectly fine to absolutely destitute overnight. You should have some warning, but you will have the warning if you’re paying attention.
Guest: Yeah. And right now is the best time ever to be looking for a job too. Super super low unemployment.
Mindy: Are you going to go get a job?
Guest: I don’t think so.
Mindy: Is Bigger Pockets hiring?
Guest: Yes, Bigger Pockets is hiring. Go to biggerpockets.com/careers and you can see all the current job openings that we have.
Guest: Are they paying me for my keynote at BP Con, or I think they’re gonna call it the Carl note, right? instead of keynote.
Mindy: No, you’re not speaking at BP Con.
Guest: Oh, okay.
Guest: Sorry. Speaker submissions are closed.
Guest: Oh, okay. I’ll try it next year.
Mindy: Okay, good luck. Okay. Do you have anything else you want to talk about?
Guest: That’s all.
Mindy: Okay. Should we get out of here?
Guest: Let’s go.
Mindy: From episode 316 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is
Speaker 1: When the change in season hits, some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized, and that’s great. If that’s you, or if it’s not you, either way, let Monarch do the financial spring cleaning this year for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property, and more all in one place. Another feature I love about Monarch is the weekly AI recap. It catches spending spikes before they become problems and flags big net worth shifts or upcoming expenses. It’s like having a quick personal check in every week, so nothing sneaks up on me. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just $50 with the promo code Pockets. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code pockets, p o c k e t s.
Mindy: is Carl Jensen and I am Mindy Jensen saying see you later alligator.
Guest: Right back to the basics.
Mindy: Thank you.