Host: Ever wonder what Scott’s duplex in his twenties was like, or how frugal he really was? Well, today we are bringing on an expert and pivotal player in Scott’s life and Scott’s FI journey, his wife Virginia Trench. I am so excited to talk with both Virginia and Scott about how their money story has evolved over time.
Host: Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my co-host, Mr. Virginia Trench.
Guest: That’s right, Mindy. Super excited to be on BiggerPockets Money today with my lovely, wonderful wife, Virginia here. And Virginia is actually gonna take it from here with the rest of the intro.
Guest: BiggerPockets has a goal of creating one million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.
Host: Virginia, I am so excited that you are joining us today. Welcome to the show.
Guest: Thanks, Mindy. It’s great to be here.
Guest: I’ve been uh, entrenched in this guy’s life for almost 10 years.
Guest: She has better puns than me and and many times, uh, the puns that we use on the show have actually originated from Virginia without due, uh, accreditation. Yeah, due citation.
Host: We’ll let it slide. And hello to Fred the cat behind you, who is apparently uh, going to horn in on your show today, Virginia. So Fred, pipe down.
Guest: Our daughter is at school but we have Fred, Virginia, and our little one on the way here as well.
Guest: Almost everybody.
Host: Almost everybody is here. Well, that’s awesome. Okay, and quite frankly, the uh, the other one is what, two now, so they’re not known for being quiet.
Guest: No.
Guest: Yeah, that’s would be a short episode. Yeah.
Host: Okay, so let’s go back to the beginning of your journey together. Scott was house hacking a duplex. Were you what was your opinion of this? Cuz I saw that duplex that he was living in so I I know where you’re coming from. Uh, what was your thought when you first met this guy?
Guest: Well, I thought, well, first of all, what a sweet, wonderful man. Um and second of all, you know, frugality takes on another level when you don’t heat your apartment in January in Denver, which is when we started dating. That was a red flag for me, but both Scott and Walker, funny how getting serious girlfriends timed almost exactly with the decision of, hey, maybe we’ll spring for heat here.
Host: So I uh also agree with you, that is a red flag. I would walk in and be like, dude, it’s way too cold in here. I’m out. But it’s that he chose not to as opposed to his heat got turned off.
Guest: Oh yeah, this was not uh, Oliver Twist situation. This was very much self-inflicted.
Host: At what point when you guys were dating did he bring up this concept of financial independence?
Guest: Gosh, you know, I don’t remember. I can’t it’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment when you brought it up. But I think it was just when as we were getting to know each other and at the time you were creating a lot of content in the FI universe that you would tell me about articles that you were working on or ideas that you had.
Guest: So, gosh, like probably third or fourth date? I don’t know.
Guest: Yeah, somewhere early on there.
Guest: Early on, yeah.
Host: It was really near the beginning. Good, I like that. Um I was married before we discovered financial independence so he’d like he couldn’t bring it up on a date, he didn’t know what it was. Um did you know anything about it before Scott shared it with you? Had you ever heard of it?
Guest: No. I was so out of the the whole world. I was um at the time I was teaching middle school English so that was kind of my entire universe. Um so I was a complete newbie, novice, and am still am in so many ways. Um but it was I was very impressed by Scott’s commitment to it and intrigued when you started telling me about it.
Host: Was it a difficult change to make to go from however you were handling your finances before to this like kind I don’t want to say extreme frugality. I don’t think Scott was ever extremely frugal, although I say this and then we just had that story about him not turning the heat on in January in Denver. Scott, you’re crazy. Um, but but did like did you make changes over time or was it kind of a, oh, well, I guess I’m just going to like completely change the way that I handle my money.
Guest: Honestly, I was so frugal just by out of pure necessity, um, just with my job and what I was trying to accomplish at the time. If anything, it opened up my horizon to think about, oh, are we being frugal to achieve a specific goal down the line as opposed to are we being frugal just to survive on a teacher’s salary and my summer side hustle and all that stuff. So I was I was very very ready to be made a believer in Scott’s philosophy.
Host: Did you have any big money, uh, disagreements? Let’s call them disagreements.
Guest: I don’t know it wasn’t a disagreement, but, you know, I remember one maybe you could talk about how, um, we were like, well, we don’t want to live in the basement of the duplex which then had heat anymore after the second or third year of dating. And…
Guest: Oh, these weren’t disagreements. It was just sometimes, you know, it’s remarkable the blind spots that Scott can have sometimes. It’s like, well, we’re looking to upgrade our living situation slightly, and wouldn’t you know, the lease in the upstairs unit is coming due in a couple of months and um I went ahead and connected those dots. And when, you know, we’d moved into another townhouse after that, but then we were thinking, okay, we could use a little more space, we’re looking to grow our family, but we’re not ready to commit to our forever home yet. What do we do? And it’s like, well, the lease is coming due on the uh four-bedroom apartment.
Guest: I I just like, I like I I do this for a living, right? And I just like couldn’t process like, oh, money going into my business is more advantageous than money going out uh to to somebody else as a renter there. I was like, I’m paying rent anyways. why why don’t I go to this other and Virginia was like, Scott, you’re a moron with this.
Guest: I protest the use of the word moron. I just gently pointed out that we had options. But to answer your question, Mindy, I think one point of shared frustration we have is now that we track our spending using Monarch is we have really had to come to terms with the amount of like Amazon spending, DoorDash spending, things that we, I think were we not monitoring it would just balloon and be completely out of control. And so I think about what, like a year or two ago we decided we need to be really meticulous in tracking every dollar and it was very eye-opening and I sometimes have to do like a breathing exercise before I sit down to categorize our Amazon spends.
Guest: Yeah, that’s been a problem I think for me in the last two, three years specifically as well because as, you know, the job with BiggerPockets, like BiggerPockets ballooned over this time period, right? So when Virginia and I had started dating, my title was Director of Operations as as an early employee at BiggerPockets and then became VP at BP. I was super proud of that. And uh at that point, but BiggerPockets ballooned so much over the course of the the following six, seven years after we started dating. And if there’s anything that I can get from a convenience standpoint, I’m gonna spend it right now because that if I’m not doing that, then am I am either not having time with Virginia and Katie or I’m taking away from the job at BiggerPockets but and that got a little out of control probably like the last, like two years ago, um a year a year or two ago and it’s gotten much more under control now.
Host: I think Amazon Prime is the worst, best invention ever because it’s so easy to click and I already paid for shipping, so I don’t have to pay for shipping. I have a huge disconnect between buying something online and then it’s like, hey, by the way, you have to pay for shipping. I’m like, I don’t need that.
Guest: The indignity. What is this, 2002?
Host: Yeah, exactly! And it’s always expensive shipping too. Um like three or four dollars. I’m like, no, thank you, I’ll just go over to Amazon and get that for free. In fact, I have shared uh a couple of times at least on the show when somebody is having a hard time getting a handle on their spending, I’m like, cancel Amazon Prime. See what happens.
Guest: Convenience is a really slippery slope.
Host: It really is. And DoorDash is not something I’ve ever done just because I am so cheap that I can’t pay somebody to pick up my my food. I would rather just go there.
Guest: We don’t have that problem, Mindy.
Host: Good for you.
Guest: Well you can’t, it’s hard to go back once you’ve again, the convenience slippery slope. Just beware.
Host: So have you two combined your finances? I know you’ve been married for five years?
Guest: Yeah, we’re coming up on five.
Guest: I forgot. Four four and a half years, yeah.
Guest: That sounds about right. Sure. We’ll we’ll say that that’s right. Yeah, we um signed a premarital agreement, I want to say, we were talking about this the other day, about six months before our actual wedding and at that point is when we combined finances.
Host: Ah, okay, so you combined before the wedding. That’s interesting. And the, uh, the prenup, was that your idea or was that Scott’s idea?
Guest: I think it was both around there, yeah.
Host: I love that. So I, uh, Carl floated the idea when we were getting married a thousand years ago. He was like, hey, we should get a prenup. And I was like, no, if you ask me again, we’re not getting married at all. I was so offended that he would say that. In my defense, uh we didn’t have anything at all. Like we had I don’t know, a zero dollar net worth. And it and in fact, it turned out I had more money than he did, so I should have signed that prenup. But I think that, uh, we had a an interview with Aaron Thomas uh from the prenup prescription, he wrote a book about prenups. That changed my entire view on prenuptial agreements and I thought it was, I think it’s episode 301, I thought it was such a great episode. I love that you both are young and understanding that a prenup helps you in your marriage, in your, you know, protecting both of your uh positions even before you get married. You guys are way more mature than I am.
Guest: And I think that there’s an undue cultural stigma attached to prenuptial agreements. And of course, we want to be married for one we we joke one lifetime at least. But um it was from mostly, you know, how do we be transparent? How do we make things, I don’t know, as equitable as possible, um and I don’t know, it just seemed like it was like a no-brainer.
Guest: Yeah, I I I think we didn’t, you know, we didn’t it wasn’t approached from the standpoint of like, this is, you know, going, you know, these are the things here, this is how it’s going to be kind of. It was more just like, let’s let’s make sure we understand what the rules are and the event that this ever happens, what’s Scott’s property, what’s Virginia’s property, what’s marital property there? And then hopefully we never need to review or look at the document again, because we’re married for a one lifetime. Um we I haven’t looked at it since we since somewhere maybe in our states. Yeah. And I will add that this was also in line with we did estate planning, we did our, you know, legal contingency plans to take care of our daughter, just so a lot of things that I think are, you know, nitpicky things that people don’t like to think about. We were just, we just thought, why don’t we knock this all out at once so we can go on with our lives.
Host: I love that. Knock it all out at once. It needs to be planned. If you don’t plan, then your like, uh, who is it, Erin Lowry says, you already have a prenup agreement. It is the divorce laws of your state. If you want to direct them yourself, then you need to have this in place.
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Host: Welcome back to the show joined by Virginia Trench. So Virginia, Scott has shared multiple times on the show that you two have an annual like financial planning retreat that you do. What is your take on this?
Guest: Oh, it’s just it’s such a it’s I don’t know, this is going to sound corny. It’s one of my favorite things about our relationship and it’s such a nice way to connect on a regular basis to make sure we’re on track for living the life that we want to live. Um I think we did the first one on our honeymoon and we update it semi semi-regularly.
Guest: We do update it every every quarter. With very, with few exceptions, yeah. A handful of times we’ve missed it in a quarter, done it in the middle of it or whatever.
Guest: Yeah. Um and occasionally Scott will bring up, oh, I got another question from a BiggerPockets community member, how do I get my spouse on board with FI? How do I get my girlfriend to get on board with all these seemingly nutty ideas? I really think that making, sitting down and making a vision together, it’s a great way to get on the same page and have a why behind the choices that you’re making. And it is, it has been eerie how it has it has worked out. Like I remember sitting down to do our vision and saying, okay, well, sure, I’m gonna try to write a book and maybe have some intellectual property to my name and that all seemed like a pipe dream. And my first novel is coming out this summer. It was just wild the other day to finally be able to hold the the book in my hand for the first time. Um and getting back to your question, Mindy, um the vision is great but the habits and the goals are better. They’re so much more important. Um and it’s a great, we try to hold each other accountable and it is noticeable when we’re off track on our habits. Like, does this habit support what we ultimately want out of life? No, do we need to be exercising more? Do we need to be checking our spending more? Am I happy at my job? Do I need to, you know, change up my approach to my day-to-day at work and so on and so forth. I could I could ramble on this just as much as Scott.
Host: Well no, I love that. I love that because we have frequently spoken to guests where he will say, oh, she’s not on board, she doesn’t want to talk about it, she says just handle it all, or she will say, I would love to get him on board, he’s not interested, he won’t even listen, he won’t have these conversations. And having the money conversations I think is so important because you just said the vision is great but it’s the habits and the goals that are even better. And you have an I said annual, it’s a quarterly financial check-in. How frequently are you checking in on your habits and goals?
Guest: Um weekly, I’d say. Sometimes biweekly.
Guest: We, weekly is the goal is that is what we try to do. I would say this year we in in like the last couple of months we’ve been a little less diligent about that, but we’ve gone through stretches where I’d say we would have gone 20 weeks in a row.
Guest: And it is noticeable. Those are the times if we were to look back at those times like, oh wow, that’s when we got this, this, this and this done. And that’s when we were really happy and thriving and stuff.
Host: Oh wait, so you’re saying frequent check-ins with your partner to help you stay on track to meet your goals is a good thing? What a novel concept.
Guest: Guess it it has to be mutual buy-in though. My advice to anybody who’s hesitant to talk about this or maybe you were raised in a culture where money is a taboo subject, once you rip the band-aid off, like it’s it’s it becomes more, it will stay scary and unapproachable if you let it stay scary and unapproachable. But if you have honest conversations with your partner, um it gets easier and easier and better and better with time.
Host: Okay, and you briefly showed us the book and then you didn’t, then you put it back down again. What is the name of this book?
Guest: It’s called Our Secrets Were Safe. Um it’s a sort of a juicy summer thriller. Comes out July 15th. Um it’s about a group of friends who thought they got away with something, but were very, very wrong about that. Um if you love sort of Gone Girl type books it’s very much in that vein. Um and yeah, I’m I’m I really credit in large part our our super dorky goal setting process to getting this done and getting another book in the pipeline for 2026.
Guest: The The book will be published by Penguin Random House as well, um with that. So as part of a two-book deal, Virginia will have another book coming out. We’ll we’ll uh in summer of 2026 as well. So that was super exciting.
Host: Okay, I am very excited about that. I am I have published two books. They were both with BiggerPockets publishing. I turned them both in late. Uh way late. One of them was written with Scott and his crazy schedule, my amazing ability, unparalleled ability to procrastinate, led both of those books to be published late. So this goal setting and, you know, regular checking in is really, really helpful. What are some of the things that you talk about in goal setting? It sounds like there’s money, it sounds like there’s life stuff too, but what what sort of things you’re talking about?
Guest: Gosh, unless you want to pull up the we could just consult our latest draft.
Host: Oh, you have a document written down, Scott.
Guest: We sure do.
Host: Mindy, we we save each version of it.
Guest: Oh, and it’s so much fun. It’s like a little memory book looking back at, you know, previous uh iterations of this. But um usually we start by describing our home environment, what we want that to look like, what our dated, what what we like our day-to-day to look like.
Guest: But we start we start with gratitude. So and we’ll we’ll list like 20 things that we’re just like so so I’m a big I’m a I always push for this, um but it we have to do this work when we’re both in a really good mood, which uh typically involves a morning, kind of like late mid-morning weekend or like vacation day where we both worked out and then are on our first or approaching our second um cup of coffee at that point. And and there’s got to be like a view in the background. That that feels really important to us. It could be it can be mountains, it can be a a picnic it doesn’t have to be like an expensive, lavish thing but just has to be something that we are that that gets our juices going.
Guest: If you’re trying to get your spouse or your significant other on board, think about where when they would feel relaxed. If you have young children, maybe it’s after the kids are in bed or, you know, when you can give your undivided attention to something. I I have been, you know, campaigning for years now to do this with a cocktail, but we’ve compromised with coffee, but basically, um, a time where, you know, clear-minded, you remove distractions and potential sources of stress and sit down with your partner.
Host: Well I would also encourage one cocktail.
Guest: Yes, yes.
Host: One, not two. Or get a bottle of wine and split it over the course of several hours. Well, okay, that’s another question. How long do you spend on your weekly check-in and how long do you spend on your quarterly check-in.
Guest: They’re about the same, probably.
Guest: No way. Weekly check-in takes 10 minutes. Quarterly check-in takes half an hour, minimum.
Guest: Yeah, yeah. That’s fair.
Host: I would love to see this document. Not your actual document, but like, erase it all the stuff and just see the uh the way that you’ve set it up.
Guest: I think I think I did create a template version of it that was like with some of the like a lot of the things like that were personal to us removed or whatever, but yeah, there’s no like secret sauce to this. This is not like a like a this is a piece of paper. This is a Word document that we fill out with gratitudes and then we start we say, here’s our December 31st, 2030 vision and here’s our December 31st, 2027 vision. So we start with the longer term one and then kind of bridge that to what. So here’s what here’s what perfect looks like in five years, right? And then here’s what perfect looks like in three years.
Guest: But if you’re following if you’re, if we’re trying to do a step-by-step, step one, gratitude list. That’s always really fun to do and a great way to center the conversation. Step two, sort of begin with the end in mind, which is a great habit-forming framework. Um, think, I don’t know, you could do 10 years, you could do seven years, five years into the future. And be as descriptive as possible.
Guest: And um it’s always a draft, right? So there’s no there’s no like none of this is permanent and we actually update it every court. Like that’s the that’s the ritual. So it probably took us maybe an hour the first time, um and now it’s 30 minutes. But then but then we we always make a slight change, a tweak here or there. Hey, we want to travel a bunch. Uh that that kind of urge is is smaller now. Let’s not let’s let’s revise that component of this and do something and replace it with something else that’s awesome instead, like, um a toy that we have.
Guest: That’s so true. Having a, introducing young children into our lives like, hm, we’ll get back to the travel one in a few years. Yeah.
Guest: But but and so that that’s and so it probably it’s moved a lot. Like if we if we’re to start with our first one four and a half years ago, when we got married on our honeymoon, uh that would be that one is is very different than the one we have now, but it hasn’t moved much in probably the last two years, two and a half years. Like we’re they’re pretty remarkably consistent now. Um and we just keep trying to move closer and closer towards them.
Host: My dear listeners, we would love to hit 100,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel and we need your help. While we take a quick break, if you could do me a favor and hop on over to youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney to make sure you are subscribed to our channel. Stay tuned for more after the break. When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree. If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, and waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for it. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP Money listeners need term life. And the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths stacked together, so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that a makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online. Same day coverage, no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online. Up to three million dollars in coverage. Some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three-layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is ETHOS.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary. 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 bucks 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 P O C K E T S.
Host: Thanks for sticking with us. So you’ve got the setting, you’ve got your like I’m assuming that you revisit the most recent one that you did. Are you you’re checking in on your quarterly walk me through how this works.
Guest: Sure. So after we go through the five year, 10 year vision, we hammer out a few more specifics. So we think about, okay, what are the top, what are my personal top three goals? The three biggest things I should be focusing on in my life in order to be working towards that vision. So often, I mean, I say 90% of the time, that shakes out to a professional goal, a health related goal, and one related to family, community, um and that sort of thing. you’d say that that’s right.
Guest: Yes. Yeah. Um so once you define the big three you think about, okay, how does that what does that look like on a weekly basis, on a daily basis? What do I what should I be focusing on?
Guest: Then then we’ll we’ll usually branch off from there and we’ll each set our goal, like here’s the goals that we have jointly, but then we each set our goals in in derivations of that. I use that’s where we start branching out a little bit. I use a journal that I’ve used for 10 years. that’s kind of like a cheesy self-help journal, and Virginia uh just switched over to one from Target for $12. She didn’t order it online because we’re not ordering as much stuff online anymore.
Host: You’ve learned already!
Host: Carl and I, actually, this is kind of crazy that we’re having this conversation right now. Carl and I just decided, we had been setting some goals like meeting every morning to have goal setting for the day and that is very easy to fall by the wayside because it’s so frequent but also, you know, life just kind of jumps up in front of you. So we decided today that we were going to do this and I really like having the different goals. It’s not right now, it’s just how are we going to get this house done, but professional goals, health goals, uh family and community goals, we’re not really talking about those. So I like these different ideas.
Guest: We pick three. We pick, or at least I do. I pick I pick three big ones that are the most important um, for that because I I can’t get you can’t get all eight, you know, they’re like these all these all these these self-help gurus have like these like eight wheel of life categories because like they’re the right as the right way to do it. Just like how you doing in each one of those? You can’t ever prioritize all eight at once, I feel. There’s only to be three priorities, one to three.
Guest: And I will say that, you know, we are rarely, if ever, perfect when we do these check-ins. Like it is rare when we have a couple days in a row when we hit 100% across the board. Um like this is very much a try, you know, try for it but most days, I’d say I average like 75%, 80%, 100% on like a great really productive day when everything seems to be going well but it’s it’s very much like we we try we’re not too hard on ourselves. And I don’t want to sound like we’re super militant about this but as long as you are trying, like that’s when you start to see the result, in my opinion.
Guest: Yeah, most quarters, most weeks, and uh most days of our marriage, we’re we’re we’re we’ve been applying some version of this imperfectly and tending to move towards the life we want, I think and it’s been it’s been wonderful.
Guest: Yeah, progress over perfection for sure.
Host: Yeah, perfection is the enemy of progress. Okay, so Virginia, looking back on your financial journey with Scott, is there anything that you would have changed?
Guest: I think one thing that I’m working on now that I should have worked on sooner is just more self-education. Like I I truly am there are areas in in our marriage where I’m the expert and there are areas where Scott is the expert, but I wish that I had taken more time to educate myself to be more of an active participant. And there are still times, like it’s tax season, Scott is handling that, um where just the sheer lopsidedness of our expertise makes it so much more efficient for Scott to just drive, um and obviously we consult on everything but sort of be the decision maker. Um but yeah, I think that for so long I had a a very fear-driven relationship with with money. um and if I could go back and talk to my younger self and say, look, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Like just by avoiding something doesn’t mean that you’re going to, you know, magically get any sort of result. Like avoiding things never uh gets you what you want. Um so I think that would be the thing I would change.
Host: I’m right there with you. I do 0% of the taxes and if it was up to me to get the taxes done, I would F gather up all of my stuff and take it to somebody to do them. And Carl is taking it to somebody to do them, but then he’s got all of these these records and all of everything that he’s double checking against everything before he submits it to the accountant and I’m perfectly happy to let him handle that because he’s good at it, he, I don’t know that enjoys is the right word to describe his his feelings for it but he doesn’t hate it and I would absolutely hate it. And he’s done it for kind of our whole lives so why would I want to deprive him of that joy? But also, like, it would take me so much longer to figure it out. Plus, one of us has a job and one of us doesn’t, so he can take the time to do it as opposed to me, sitting there, taking all of the time to learn how to do it all, when he’s already done it for so long.
Guest: For sure. It’s like, and I this might seem like a silly example, but I really, one thing I I try to be loud about in my work is not devaluing the domestic work of women. But like if I were to send you to a grocery store and say, Scott, we need groceries for the week to feed our little family of three, keeping in mind our toddler’s uh likes and dislikes and just like, God, we’re just really trying to get her to eat a vegetable every once in a while. It would take twice as long, the result would be terrible, and it’s just more efficient and easier for me to just do it. Um okay, one one quick story. So Scott, is so sweet, he said, Virginia, for your birthday, I’m going to make you a carrot cake, my favorite. And he goes to the store to get the necessary ingredients and he does not pick a beginner recipe. This is a New York Times 100 recipe comment, um like very in-depth get out the standing mixer from scratch recipe, um with high altitude modifications. Um bless his heart, the recipe called for shredded coconut. Scott comes home with two whole coconuts. Um and he’s like, yeah, these are really expensive. I like, you don’t say that the coconut supply in Colorado, um, hey and then maybe you didn’t get a good price, this is eggs first, coconut’s next, what are you going to do? Um so you come home with two whole coconuts and the recipe further called for shredded carrots. So he brought home unpeeled like the the bag of whole carrots. And I was just like, oh, honey. Do you know you can buy these things pre-shredded, right? So back to the store. And so all that is to say,
Guest: But I I I manual I I hand shredded the carrots, but the coconuts were the coconut it was just it was unbearable. It’s you can’t do it. You have to hammer it apart and then I think you have to grate the coconut.
Guest: And I didn’t want to seem ungrateful because it was such a sweet labor of love making this cake which was absolutely delicious by the way, when you were done, I was very impressed. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful but like, what’s your brand for these? We have a hammer in the garage but what’s the next step? All that is to say,
Guest: I went out to the grocery store and got a bag of shredded coconut. And that solved the problem. I had no idea that uh shredded coconut shredded coconut come in bags.
Guest: Comes in the baking aisle of almost any grocery store. Um but all of that is to say in a in a marriage, there are times, I think Kevin Hart said this is a comedian, so funny. He said there are times when you’re singing lead and there are times when you’re playing the triangle. Um and it’s okay to shift those back and forth as necessary as you build a life together. Do I do I wish and am I trying to make an effort to be more participatory in our finances and how we, you know, leverage that to live the life we want? Yes. But does that mean I need to become, it’s worth my time to become a tax expert or for Scott to go on the Great British Baking Show? Probably not. Um so that’s where we are with it.
Host: Okay, I think our husbands are very similar, Virginia, because I have that same story except it was when Carl was going to make me a key lime pie meringue on the top. I don’t know if you’ve ever made meringue. I would love to see Scott try to make meringue. Carl just kind of, he put the egg whites in a bowl and kind of gave them a bit of a stir and then poured it right on top of the cake. And he’s like, does it just puff up in the oven? I’ve never made meringue. It’s a whole thing.
Host: You have to whip it with your blender for like five minutes on high. It is it is not just, they don’t just puff up in the oven. It was very, very sweet.
Guest: The important takeaway from all this is that the cake was awesome.
Guest: The cake was awesome. I was so proud of you. It was absolutely wonderful.
Host: So let’s get back into the the money discussion. Uh Scott recently sold a large percentage of the index funds that you hold. Did you guys discuss this ahead of time?
Guest: Yes. Um Scott is my favorite nerd on the planet. Um and what, you know, maybe we buy in literally and figuratively into this idea, was just his review of historical trends, saying, gosh, if you look back for the past century, every time this ratio has been this lopsided, like a crash has been coming or it’s good to protect against the possibility of one. I know you’re very bullish about saying, not saying the market’s going to crash, no, that’s not, that’s not necessarily the point here. Um but Scott does, he loves a deep dive and I love that about him. So when what I know that when he’s really fired up about something, he starts bringing out all the graphs and statistics and stuff. It’s like, oh, okay, here we go. Time to um buckle down and listen to what he has to say. So yeah, we did talk about it.
Guest: Yeah, and and the other the other part was was just the income that we think we can get from from this property. As you know, Mindy, helping us with the the deal there. I mean, it just covered…
Guest: Thank you, Mindy. We don’t know what we’d do without you.
Guest: Yeah, thank you. and it just covers so much of the the the day-to-day household expenses that we’d have and that’s I I feel it’s important for us to maintain make sure that we’re living a lifestyle that is well, that is a conservatively fire, despite the fact that I for still earn an income as CEO here at BiggerPockets with it. I just feel like that’s that’s has to be congruent with the way that with what I do professionally and and in my home life around there, otherwise I’d feel, um, like I’m not I’m not living what practicing what I preach, basically.
Guest: I think we’re at a stage now with our finances where we’re playing to keep what we have. Um and that was part of that strategy.
Host: All right, the we are talking about Scott selling his index funds. That was episode 607. We just recently released it at the end of February. And Scott backs up his position, makes a really good case for why he’s making this choice. Carl and I did not choose to follow in Scott’s footsteps, which doesn’t make it a bad decision, it makes it a decision that we don’t want for us. I love what you said, Virginia. You said his review of his historical data. Scott didn’t just look at the stock market and say, oh, the PE ratio is 31, I’m going to sell. He looked at all of everything and you’re right, he loves a good deep dive as anybody of this uh anybody listening to this podcast knows Scott loves to go down a rabbit hole. He went down a rabbit hole and came to a decision for him. And, well, for you, uh not for everybody. He is just encouraging people to look at different points of view, not just one. Um which includes don’t just listen to Scott, don’t just listen to me. Like, do your own research. This is your money. And if you leave all of your money in the index funds and and something happens, you’re the only one that’s going to be having to deal with that with your position like that. Just like if I choose to leave mine in my in the index funds and it turns out that Scott was uh prescient, then I’m going to have to deal with that. But if I stay the course and Scott makes a change, he’s going to deal with that. And the reason he’s going to deal with that is because he went through and did all of the research in the first place. So yeah, I I also think it helps that you got a smoking hot deal on a property. There was this, uh Scott was happening to look at the market. He’s like, hey, that makes a lot of sense to me based on the information that I have about real estate in general, the market in particular and that location specifically, I think this is a good bet. So he made an informed decision, not a fly by the seat of your pants decision, and that’s what I love so much about that decision.
Guest: Yeah, just just a tip for folks listening here. You know, you can you can take five minutes to kind of test this out. But just go look at Zillow or talk to an agent in your local market and just look at what’s for sale for investment properties and then look at what has actually sold. And my guess is that you’re going to look at the stuff that’s for sale and say, that’s absurd. It would never work. It’s ridiculous. It’s way overpriced. But when you look at what’s actually sold, you’ll be like, huh, I would have bought like five or seven of those. Now this will not be true in every market, probably 75% of you will say, well, the stuff that sold is no better. But I bet you 25% of you listening will be like, huh, there are actually good deals moving. And that’s really what what came down for me. And we we Mindy, uh we talk about that at length in in the book we wrote together, uh first time home buyer just as a for for regular home buyers, not even investors in that. But that was that was really the different for me is I just looked up and did that exercise that I should have been doing more regularly for the last two years and I was like, wow, that is a big difference.
Host: All right, Virginia, I am so delighted that you joined us on the show today. And Scott, you’re cool too.
Guest: This was so much fun. Thanks, Mindy.
Guest: Thank you for coming on, Virginia.
Host: I think you should come back again. so I will once we stop recording, I will I will ply you with uh compliments so that you will come back and join us again.
Guest: Maybe Carl and I can do a, uh, a takeover. It will be fun.
Host: Oh, that would be awesome. All right. And of course, make sure to bring Fred.
Guest: Naturally. Yeah Fred Fred doesn’t need to be asked.
Guest: That’s so true. Few cats ever need to be asked.
Host: All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Virginia. This is so much fun. And the book is called Our Secrets Were Safe?
Guest: Yes. Yes. Awesome.
Host: Okay, thank you so much, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Guest: Thank you.
Host: All right, that wraps up this fantastic episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. She is Virginia Trench, he is Mr. Virginia Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen saying goodbye, cool.
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Host: Cat, that’s a wrap.
