52: We Blew a $600K Lawsuit Payout Before Learning How To Budget with Haley & Justin Brown-Woods

What would you do if you suddenly received a $600,000 settlement check? For Haley and Justin Brown-Woods, hosts of the "Price of Avocado Toast" podcast, it was the beginning of a journey from windfall to wake-up call. After blowing through $600K they also found themselves in $220,000 in debt. Tune in as they disclose their earliest money memories, shaped by a scarcity mindset, and the emotional whirlwind that accompanied managing such a large sum of money. They share how these experiences propelled them toward becoming advocates for financial education, and led to a new career as financial coaches, helping their clients pay off more than $2 Million dollars. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss  

Watch this episode in video form on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP55O4Ku4dukHcK0kExhpcA

To apply to be a guest on the show, visit 
https://www.thesugardaddypodcast.com/guests/intake/ 

If you’d like to leave us a question to be answered during future episodes, you can do so at:https://www.speakpipe.com/thesugardaddypodcast

You can email us at: thesugardaddypodcast@gmail.com

Be sure to connect with us on socials @thesugardaddypodcast we are most active on Instagram

Learn more about Brandon and schedule a free 30-minute introductory call with him here: https://www.oakcityfinancial.us

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/thesugardaddypodcast

Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review.

Notes from the show: https://www.priceofavocadotoast.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/price-of-avocado-toast/id1520347266

https://twitter.com/priceavocado

https://www.instagram.com/priceofavocadotoast/

https://www.facebook.com/priceofavocadotoast

https://www.youtube.com/@priceofavocadotoast9115

https://www.tiktok.com/@priceofavocadotoast

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

it was overwhelming, for sure it was super overwhelming.

Speaker 2: 0:02

I mean, like you said, you know you're holding an amount of money that you don't really think you're ever going to have in your life and obviously I recognize that through my work history.

Speaker 2: 0:11

You know I would have earned that at some point, but you don't think that it's going to all sit in your bank at one time. And going back to my earliest money memory, you know it's coming from a scarcity mindset, of thinking we don't have enough, and I also remember times where, when my family did have enough, the goal was to spend it on ourselves. I remember when my mom was getting tax refunds and we would all go to the mall and get some little thing. There wasn't an idea of saving or looking ahead towards the future. It was kind of all let's just enjoy this while we have it, because you never know when you're going to have money again. And money is meant to be spent, which I do think is in some regards a healthy idea. But when it dropped into my lap with a $600,000 check, I didn't have the necessary tools and skills to be a good steward of that and it led to some poor choices that ultimately found us in debt.

Speaker 3: 1:11

Welcome to the Sugar Daddy podcast. I'm Jessica.

Speaker 4: 1:14

And I'm Brandon.

Speaker 3: 1:19

And we're the Norwoods, a married millennial couple, here to help you build wealth so you can live the life you've always dreamed of. Brandon is an award-winning licensed financial planner with over 10 years of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the US. Don't worry, we leave all the intimidating finance mumbo-jumbo at the door. Stick with us as we demystify the realm of dollars. So it all makes sense. While giving you a glimpse into our relationship with money and each other, we are so glad you're here. Let's get started.

Speaker 4: 1:47

Hey babe, what are we talking about today?

Speaker 3: 1:50

Well, I'm so excited. I always start with I'm so excited, but I really always am so excited when we have new guests in the stew, because today we have Haley and Justin Brown-Woods from the Price of Avocado Toast. We have Haley and Justin Brown Woods from the Price of Avocado Toast, one of my personal favorite podcasts, and I love the name. I know I'm kind of going off on a tangent already, but I love the name and, funny enough, brandon's always like only white people eat avocado toast and I'm like that is not true. Like what are you even talking about? But he, what was it last time? You were like I don't think I had an avocado until I was in my twenties or something ridiculous.

Speaker 4: 2:28

That's true.

Speaker 3: 2:29

So it's just so relevant and they are also a married millennial couple, just like we are, and the podcast is so similar to ours and I just feel the vibes and the energy is always so good slid into their DMs and now they're here with us today. So, Justin and Hayley, thank you so much for being with us today. We're so excited to have you.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Thank you so much for inviting us on. We're excited to chat.

Speaker 2: 2:54

Yeah, it's always cool going on other podcasts, especially ones that are similar to ours, because it seems like we always get just as much of a takeaway as what we're maybe sharing with other listeners. So thanks for having us.

Speaker 3: 3:04

Yes, of course, and I think there's a lot of. There's just a lot of similarities too, because I was in education, as were you, and then obviously, I've now left. You guys have left, no looking back, no regrets on my end anyway, and so I just feel like, you know, our kind of life trajectories are going in a similar direction of like let's be work optional, let's do what we love every day when we wake up, you know, let's put finance as a tool right To to live the life that we want and to grow the families the way that we want them to be. And so it's just. I think it's going to be an exciting conversation.

Speaker 4: 3:46

So the thing is you say you left education, but you're still an educator. You're just not a teacher. You're just not in the classroom because you're still educating.

Speaker 3: 3:53

You're not a classroom teacher, that's right.

Speaker 2: 3:54

You're still an educator though yeah, totally, and we actually lean into that all the time too Like we are still educators, we're still teaching, we just teach a new content into different learners, but it's still the skills and backgrounds. Of education is still super prevalent.

Speaker 3: 4:11

And I think that's so valid because, as educators, we obviously love the work that we do, but when you're in the classroom, there's so much red tape around everything and so much admin heavy work that I mean you're what teaching 20% out of all the things that you're actually doing, which takes away the joy. And at least now you guys get to build the curriculum and the lessons and the learnings the way you want them to be, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1: 4:40

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:40

So, okay, we need to tell people who you are and why we're talking to you. Sorry, like to ramble. Ok, let's get into the bio and then we'll get into your first money memory and we'll let it roll from there.

Speaker 4: 4:57

Sound good OK awesome.

Speaker 3: 4:59

Haley and Justin Brown Woods are a married millennial couple that began their debt-free journey in the fall of 2019. After blowing through a $600,000 lawsuit payout and racking up over $220,000 worth of debt in three and a half years, they got serious about changing the narrative they had created for their lives. In 18 months, they had paid off over $132,000 of debt and restarted their wealth journey. During this period, they began their podcast Price of Avocado Toast. Their focus has been on having open and honest money conversations with others to help remove the stigmas and shame around finances. The hope is that these conversations enlighten the younger versions of themselves and save them from the pitfalls Haley and Justin fell into. Now, over 160,000 downloads later. Haley is a successful financial coach who has helped her clients pay off over $700,000 of debt. Justin has since left his career as a public school teacher and joined Haley's business full time. Their family is working towards generational wealth building and a future of outrageous generosity. Love it.

Speaker 2: 6:12

That is a great bio y'all.

Speaker 3: 6:13

Thank you for being here. There's a lot to unpack in that bio.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Yeah, we're going to get to it. As you were talking, I was like, oh, that's a lot that we've been through.

Speaker 3: 6:27

You're like reliving it. You're like oh yeah, we did do that.

Speaker 4: 6:30

That was us as soon as you said blowing through the $600,000 lawsuit settlement. I saw Justin's head just going like reliving through that loss.

Speaker 3: 6:41

You're like how did I do that? Okay, wait, we're going to get to that, but let's start with money memories, because we always feel like your first money memory and the way you grew up with money really dictates what you do with money and how you are towards money later in life. Right, I'm sure you guys would agree with that, justin, what's your first money memory?

Speaker 2: 7:05

You know it's a later memory, it's not one from when I was super, super young I was probably 10, but it's one that I told Haley the other day that really struck a chord with me and it stayed with me in such a vivid memory since my brother I have a twin brother.

Speaker 2: 7:20

He and I were playing baseball and playing catch and I threw a ball to him and he missed it and it shattered my mom's windshield. And I remember super vividly racing up the stairs to tell mom and then her telling us to get out of the house and she essentially locked us out until like 8 PM that night, which, looking back on it, you know, in the early two thousands isn't. That isn't that bad, I guess. But I just remember thinking how much that windshield was going to cost our family and that my household of a single mom who worked a minimum wage job at Safeway did not have that expendable income. We did not have extra to go around. And I remember how upset I felt and how sorry I was that I put my family in this position. And it's such a core memory for me, it's so vivid. I remember exactly where I was standing when it happened, exactly my path up the staircase into my mom's bedroom. It's really really vivid, and so I would say that's probably my earliest money memory.

Speaker 3: 8:21

Okay, I have to ask a follow-up what happened after she let you back in the house that night?

Speaker 2: 8:25

we got back in and I think the next day, you know, we had it replaced for probably 200 bucks or something and my mom never made a mention of it again. You know, I honestly had never talked about it past that, even with her, or even my brother, uh, but it's just such a vivid memory for me and it's so interesting looking back on that. It's not a super early memory, but I think because, like I said, it's just such a vivid memory for me and it's so interesting looking back on that. It's not a super early memory, but I think because, like I said, it's so vivid, it's so deep ingrained in me.

Speaker 4: 8:52

So here's the guy me asking a quick question as far as was it, because your brother should have caught it, or was?

Speaker 2: 8:57

it. Yes, he should have caught it. We were playing, like you know. Yes, we were robbing home runs, so we would throw the ball, and the other one kind of had to track it and and rob it. And, um, it was just a little too inside my mom's car and so he's leaning over the hood trying to reach for it, but he's a lefty and couldn't catch it appropriately with his right hand.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Oh well, oh well, all right. Well, now that the record has been set, straight it was his fault exactly you heard it here first, guys. You heard it here first, hayley, what is your first money memory?

Speaker 1: 9:35

I knew that you were gonna ask this and I had to think back kind of far because I feel like money has just been a big part of my life in one way or another since like the beginning. But if I think of like the earliest, earliest memory, my grandma used my great grandma used to have this gigantic container that she would just put coins in. And I remember being maybe like five or six years old and we'd go to the bank and get the little wrappers and then just wrap a bunch of coins and she said you know, if you can count all these out I don't even know if I was in like kindergarten yet I was really young she said if you can count all of these and put them in, then we can go to the bank and we can, like, give you some of the money and then we can go shopping and get some candy bars or whatever. And I do remember rolling coins with my grandma.

Speaker 3: 10:27

And yeah, do remember rolling coins with my grandma and I yeah, it was pretty young. Thanks, grandma, I love that. So she would give you a cut of the coins for the work that you did rolling yep, she did a little bit of paid labor.

Speaker 1: 10:36

I love it that's awesome.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Well, how do you think that your your money, memories and how you grew up with money as a couple that then got this huge settlement right, the payout from the lawsuit? You get a check for $600,000. What goes through your head? First off, I've never held a $600,000 check. So what is that like?

Speaker 4: 11:02

I have just not for myself.

Speaker 3: 11:04

Yeah, not the same. Well, your name's not on that.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Well, justin mentioned that he grew up with a single mom and I also grew up with a single mom, so that has a lot to impact with our relationship with money. From the beginning, our moms did the best that they could. They hustled, but it just was really hard for them. So the financial education that we were given, passed down from our parents, was really just the best that they had at that time, which, quite frankly, was not very much financial education. And then when we got this money, we didn't really even know what to do. It's like when someone's unprepared to receive the lottery and they just win the lottery. It was kind of like okay, well now what do we do? I mean, you're the one that the check was in your name. How did you feel when you received that? It was overwhelming, for sure it was super overwhelming.

Speaker 2: 11:53

I mean, like you said, you know you're holding an amount of money that you don't really think you're ever going to have in your life and obviously I recognize it through my work history. You know I would have earned that at some point, but you don't think that it's going to all sit in your bank at one time. And going back to my earliest money memory, it's coming from a scarcity mindset, of thinking we don't have enough, and I also remember times where, when my family did have enough, the goal was to spend it on ourselves. I remember when my mom was getting tax refunds and we would all go to the mall and get some little thing. There wasn't an idea of saving or looking ahead towards the future. It was kind of all let's just enjoy this while we have it, because you never know when you're going to have money again.

Speaker 2: 12:36

And money is meant to be spent which I do think is in some regards a healthy idea. But when it dropped into my lap with a $600,000 check, I didn't have the necessary tools and skills to be a good steward of that and it led to some poor choices that ultimately found us in debt. So I think really the deepest part of it all is just the scarcity mindset, the idea that there's never going to be enough and so we might as well just enjoy it while we're here, because the future is up in the air anyways, so why worry about it?

Speaker 3: 13:09

So what did you spend $600,000 plus dollars on? We want to know.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Yeah, oh, my goodness, do you want to run down the list? You want me to?

Speaker 1: 13:18

start, we did buy a house. We live in California. We bought a half million dollar house but we could have just paid cash for it and we put about $270,000 down for the down payment on a $530,000 house. So that's a massive, massive down payment. But then there's literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that kind of went unaccounted for. I mean, we've kind of gone through the list Like Justin bought a car which was like $30,000. He paid off his undergrad student loans which was like maybe under $10,000. He helped me with some of the credit card debt that I brought into our relationship when we first met. I think it was like $10,000-ish with that. And then we went on a vacation, spent some money there, we bought some technology like we bought like computer, camera, tv, but all of those things collectively didn't add up to $600,000.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Yeah, because we've done this reflection a lot over the last few years, like what the heck was that? And, quite frankly, it was just spent on lifestyle creep, just like day-to-day spending, and at the time we must have been spending so much money because we were both working and then we both were going to school receiving like financial aid, refund, reimbursement checks, spending those on living expenses as well, as well as this six hundred thousand dollars. So, yeah, we were probably dropping like ten thousand dollars a month just on living expenses and at that time this is a long time ago that's a lot of money.

Speaker 2: 14:52

We also did have a $30,000 wedding, which was totally worth it. That is one thing that we both say we would do again in a heartbeat. It was the most fun. I would honestly love to relive that day any chance I get. So that was well worth it. Haley's engagement ring was $10,000. So that was added in there.

Speaker 2: 15:11

I paid off my mom's car at the time, which I think was like 13 grand. And then the other wise financial thing we did was invest in my Roth IRA. So I put in for two years. At the time when I got it because I got the check in, I got two checks. The first one was $60,000 and the second was 540. So when I got them it was January and I think March. So I was still able to do the Roth for the previous year and the current year and so we did invest in my Roth IRA as well for two years. So there were bigger chunks like that. But Haley's right, predominantly it was kind of lifestyle creep living in a townhome, or I should say renting a townhome that we had no business affording until we bought the home, going on plenty of dinner dates that included wine and wine tastings that we probably didn't need to go on Like $200 dinner date on a Wednesday.

Speaker 2: 16:07

It's just, yeah, just lavish spending that we didn't need and we had no clue how to manage it all.

Speaker 4: 16:14

See, I would give you some grace and say that you didn't necessarily blow through 600,000. Reason being is that you did make some smart choices with the money and I would say, from the numbers you provided, over half of it I would say, went towards smart choices.

Speaker 2: 16:30

You know, we have shared this story so many times with so many people on our show, on other podcasts.

Speaker 4: 16:35

You're the first person, I think, who has said like, hey, you did make some wise decisions, so thank you, brandon. That makes my heart feel so good. I think that's the financial advisor in me.

Speaker 3: 16:45

Yeah, seriously, yeah, looking for the positive, I love that.

Speaker 2: 16:47

That seriously makes me feel so good. Four years we've been sharing this story. Somebody's like hey, you only blew through half of it, Don't worry.

Speaker 3: 17:01

Don't worry. Well, do you feel like I mean? At any point did you sit down and say, hey, here's how we're going to allocate this money. Here's what we want to do? Yes, we want to go on a couple of nice vacations. Let's set aside 30K for the wedding, 10k for your ring. At any point was there a? Let's write this down, let's list it out, let's have a conversation or was it?

Speaker 1: 17:23

hey? Hey, it's in our account now and let's just swipe until our heart's content. Jessica, there was no conversation until it was spent, and then we were like wait, what just happened?

Speaker 2: 17:29

yeah, like at all there was no conversation.

Speaker 1: 17:30

I remember casually we'd be like, oh, let's just transfer another twenty thousand dollars into our checking account, like no big deal. Frequently. And yeah, there was no. There was zero, zero conversation, which is crazy, that's also that's indicative of when you're younger, that's indicative of when you're younger too.

Speaker 4: 17:48

You know, like I would say that majority of people, if they were in the same scenario, would have done the same. Actually, honestly, I think majority of people would have done the same. Actually, honestly, I think majority people done worse because they probably wouldn't have spent half of it towards, you know, a home, do smart things.

Speaker 2: 18:03

Much more of it would have gone towards things that they didn't need and, you know, just blowing money we were both also in, you know, like cupcake lane, so I think we were both just like so enamored by one another. It was like let's just spend on all the things fun, because we love being around one another, and we had no clue how to talk about money.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Yeah, it was, oh boy there was this one time for justin's birthday and I made this I gotta go find it. I made this little like word doc spreadsheet thing being like, okay, it's justin's birthday, here's how we're gonna spend. He was turning 25. We're gonna go spend like a thousand dollars at this, like uh, bed and breakfast, go get massages. Then we're going to go do a whole day like wine tasting, pool day thing, and then we're going to go do a fancy dinner. It literally probably was like a $2,500 two day birthday thing. And if anyone wants to spend like that, that's totally fine, no judgment. But looking back I'm like, oh, that's where it went Little things like that.

Speaker 3: 19:03

Little things like that, that add up Little little $2,500 birthday treats, just a little bit. Well, I love that you guys have this story to share, though, because I mean especially at that age, right, I don't? I mean, I'm thinking about my spending habits in my twenties and somebody hands me $600,000. Yeah, you probably don't think that that's going to run out anytime soon, until one day you wake up and you're like, oh, my God, where did my money go? Right, and I think I think you're in the majority. I don't think that most people, especially in their twenties, would have been like, yeah, let me max out all of my accounts and let me put this away. And like, sure, now we know, yeah, I probably could have quit my job if I did the right thing with $600,000. Right, but that's not where our head is in our twenties. Unless you literally I know we're all doing this for our children now unless you're literally giving your children the financial tools that we wish we all would have had in our 20s, right, yeah?

Speaker 4: 20:10

But that's just not the reality. I say that even my upbringing, I would say, was different than other people's, in the sense of more beneficial the fact that even though I was raised in a single household, my mother raised my brother and I. My mom was still more financially literate to a certain degree and she was also very frugal, and so money was not an issue, thankfully, in our household growing up. But even in that scenario I would have never had the proper financial literacy to handle $600,000 at 25 years old.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah, absolutely not. What's really crazy is I tell my clients all the time this is a crazy amount of money and yeah, that's a lot, but it actually doesn't matter that it was $600,000. We would have done the exact same thing if it was 6,000. We probably would have done the exact same thing if it was $6,000. We probably would have done the exact same thing if it was $1.6 million and it just came from the foundation of like we were not ready to receive that amount of money. It's the same thing that happens when someone receives a large tax refund of like $5,000 to $10,000. They blink and it's spent by June 1st. It's the same thing, just on a crazy, bigger level.

Speaker 4: 21:23

I agree with you 100%, because with my clients, it's all about the behaviors. If you are making, say, $100,000 and you have bad behaviors and you're just thinking that, hey, me making more money is going to fix all my problems, no, because when you start making more money, you haven't changed the behaviors, so you're going to be in the same scenario.

Speaker 3: 21:50

Just spending more on nicer things. Yeah, right Of like. Oh my gosh, where did our money go? And then it seems like you, you know, put your boots on and got to work because you paid off 130 plus thousand dollars in 18 months. How did you do that? Walk us through like your aha moment and then your plan to pay off a very significant amount of money.

Speaker 2: 22:15

So the aha moment is our famous pumpkin muffin story, and we laugh about it now because it's such a pivotal moment for us in our relationship. But we were both teaching at the time and Haley had worked closer to home and was off earlier than me, so she was able to go to Costco before I got home. And she had gone to Costco that day in October of 2019, I think it was and I got home. She's eight months pregnant and she says I got these really good muffins from Costco, you're going to love them. They're like fall pumpkin muffins.

Speaker 2: 22:51

And I see them in the kitchen and my first response was why would you buy those? They weren't on the list and we don't have the money to be spending on extra muffins, and muffins at the time at Costco were $7. And we were, and still are, best friends. We just don't argue, and so, for that to be my initial response, it took both of us by surprise, like whoa, wait a minute. We don't really talk to each other like that, and that was my immediate reaction. Something's up, something's deeper here, and both of us identified it really quickly, which was important, because almost immediately we both said, hey, this has to change, something is going wrong to where we are stressing about my eight-month pregnant wife buying muffins.

Speaker 3: 23:35

For $7.

Speaker 2: 23:36

For $7. Any partner that's got a pregnant wife should just say I'm so glad you bought those muffins.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Honey Right, and I was not in my right mind and it caught us by surprise so we realized that we had to change some things. And then from there we started listening to Dave Ramsey obviously a big personal finance podcast and show and then from there we started listening to Dave Ramsey obviously a big personal finance podcast and show and then we started following others in the personal finance community to figure out how we were going to tackle the debt. Do you want to talk about kind of our strategies there?

Speaker 1: 24:10

Yeah, I just want to say we come from a huge place of privilege, with us just really being on the same page from the beginning, because we had that aha moment at the exact same time. That was the never again moment for both of us at the exact same time, which I think doesn't happen for a lot of couples. It kind of is like one person realizes it and then the next person significantly later. But we were on the same page from the beginning. Like this needs to change. We're not working this hard to not have money for something that is $7. Like that's just not the life we want to live. So we went in hardcore on Dave Ramsey's plan and we just like cut everything. We cut our budget down to like the bare bare bones. We went well, we weren't really budgeting. We were not budgeting at all before that. So we started budgeting, we started tracking our expenses. We cut absolutely everything that was not necessary, and I mean everything. It was bare.

Speaker 1: 25:05

And then Justin picked up a second job. He was bartending and serving tables while teaching full-time. I was doing photography on the side while teaching full-time, while also coaching swim, and he was coaching football. Like we were doing everything we could to just make more money and then everything went towards debt. We also took a really aggressive approach towards selling things. He's like the Facebook marketplace master, so anything that we weren't using we were like, oh, we're, we're gonna sell this. You bought us this for our wedding gift, thanks sold. We were.

Speaker 1: 25:44

He was on a mission, this was like his thing, and we actually did a couple things that were not necessarily the best financial moves, if you're looking at it like from wealth building, but we pulled out the contributions from his Roth IRA and immediately paid off like $16,000 of credit card debt and usually doing that is not going to be good for people. You know you, you take this money and you're just going to put it on your debt and you're not really fixing the problem. Like what got you there? But thankfully we were on the same page and we were like, okay, this is gonna happen, we're gonna do this.

Speaker 1: 26:20

We refinanced our house, took some cash out to pay off some of the debts, like the car that we had at the time. He sold his car, which was paid off. So we just really got strategic and started doing a bunch of different stuff and it catapulted like every single stimulus check or tax refund at the time this was during covid everything went towards our debt and it was a very, very aggressive approach that I don't necessarily recommend for a lot of people because it can lead to burnout. But thankfully it worked very well for us and I can honestly say we've talked about this all the time if we were ever to be in a situation where we had to like strap down again, I would do the exact same thing over again.

Speaker 3: 27:03

Wow, I do have a follow-up question because A I love the muffins. Right, Because you were risking your life, Justin, in that moment, right she's eight months pregnant and you're like we don't need the muffins and she's like I'm growing a human. Yes, we don't need the muffins and she's like I'm growing a human.

Speaker 4: 27:18

Yes, we do.

Speaker 3: 27:19

So you know, kudos to you for surviving that moment. Glad you're here with us today. Were you at that time like obviously the muffins stressed you out and it was coming from somewhere deeper? Were you crunching the numbers at that point or did you? Were you you like falling behind on bills like what was the catalyst, and you being like why would you buy seven dollar muffins? Like were you crunching the numbers or figuring out like, whoa, we lost six hundred thousand dollars. What was that like?

Speaker 1: 27:49

so this all happened in like september, october of 2019, but like june of that year. We went on a road trip and we listened to Dave Ramsey's total money makeover book on the road trip, like the audio book, and so that's when we first got the idea of like, okay, we don't have to live in this credit card debt, like, we can kind of move some stuff around. So I was very like, loosely trying to pay a little bit of extra here, here, here, very loosely trying to pay a little bit of extra here, here, here here. Up until that point. But there was not much strategy with crunching numbers until that point. So, yeah, I would put an extra $200 on some random card here, an extra, whatever we had.

Speaker 1: 28:31

But there was no real strategy up until the pumpkin muffin time. And then, once we added everything up, we're like, okay, we just had $600,000. Yeah, the wedding was the last little piece of the money, but somehow we accrued $27,000 in the last year. And once we added all of that up and that was just credit cards, that's when we were like, okay, this is why, how, how is that happening? That was very quickly added. So, yeah, that's how we crunched the numbers. We just added them up one day and we're like Nope, we, we cut our credit cards up. We went extreme.

Speaker 4: 29:10

And I would also say for people who maybe haven't listened to your podcast, I would recommend listening to it, because then you get their full take on Dave Ramsey.

Speaker 3: 29:19

Yeah, there's a good what was it? A three-part series which is so funny that you guys did the total money makeover and you were like go Dave. And now you're like, uh, it's a cult which we have our own opinions about. Good old Dave, obviously, but it, you know, it sounded like it sounds like it helped you get to where you. It helped get you where you needed to go in that moment, right Before learning a new way.

Speaker 4: 29:45

Essentially, I always say that I like listening to all you know a variety of people within the finance realm, because I always say that you can normally find at least some piece of information or strategy, whatever it may be, from somebody that could be beneficial. I'm not saying that you should listen in everything they say is correct, but you can listen to a bunch of people and take the different pieces that you think would be beneficial to you. I said like I said. I always say I think there are some things that Dave Ramsey says that I agree with.

Speaker 1: 30:15

I would say there's a lot of things that I personally just don't agree with yeah, yeah, I think we also didn't really know where else to turn, like all we oh yeah, he was, he was, he was the person right everything that we knew was just like okay, we have debt, we want to pay it off, and this is supposedly the guy that like helps you with that.

Speaker 1: 30:37

so that's where we turned. And I think a lot of people find themselves in that position where they're like okay, let's just follow this person because they're the loudest finance guru out there. So let's just go this route. And yeah, over the over time we realized that necessarily wasn't how we wanted to do things, but we did take what worked, because there were things that did work for us.

Speaker 3: 30:58

It's not necessarily the right approach for everybody, but, like I said, the bootstraps thing did work for us because that's how we function Well and I think there's value too, because you, you realize, okay, we can cut back in all of these areas, not saying and I think you would agree probably now, like you still have to find joy, right, you still have to, you know, save, invest, budget for things that are important. Right, like you still have to find joy in your day to day because, like you said, that burnout is real and if you're just paying off debt and you're just grinding to get to zero, right, but you haven't found any joy, you're not going out with friends, You're not even trying to find free things to do or hey, let's have a game night, it's not going to cost us anything you still have to find joy to keep the journey going, because otherwise, oh my gosh, it's just misery, right? So I think that's an important thing, that people who are now like, okay, dave Ramsey is not the only voice in finance right, he's this old white dude, he is not a millennial, he's not facing the things that we're facing with student loans, the cost of strawberries alone, right, I mean the cost of avocado toast, the price of avocado toast. Right, he grew up in a different time and we have to make adjustments that work for us while still living a life that we're excited about. So I do want to pivot into the price of avocado toast.

Speaker 3: 32:25

How you guys came up with the name. How you went from okay we blew through $600,000. We paid off all this debt. Haley, you're now a financial coach Like. Walk us through the journey of hey. We want to share our story and I'm going to leave my career for this new adventure. Walk us through all of that.

Speaker 2: 32:44

So during the pandemic, which was right at the start, kind of, of our debt-free journey, we realized that the folks that were around us and listening to us were probably getting burned out of us talking so much about finances. And so we thought, hey, what if we just started a podcast and talked into the void about it? We kind of threw it up on an Instagram poll on Haley's personal account and said if we were to talk about this, what should we call it? And somebody said the cost of avocado toast. But that vowel sound of cost avocado toast just sounded really weird coming out of the mouth and so we said, well, why don't we call it the price of avocado toast and just have that be it. And it's so funny when we look back. You know Haley took essentially an intro to podcasting cohort group. We had no business spending money on her taking this cohort community thing.

Speaker 1: 33:40

It was like $400.

Speaker 2: 33:41

Yeah, but it was something that was really pulling on her and so I said, okay, go ahead and do it. And we started the podcast in 2020 and just kind of grew it from there. We never really thought it was going to be anything, but at the end of our first season of the show, haley was having it on her heart that she was maybe wanting to go into financial coaching rather than head back into the classroom with the kiddos at home. And so I just said at the end of our season one hey, haley's going to start financial coaching next season. So you've got a couple of months and then you can expect to work with Haley. And then we paused the recording and I told Haley, like you've got like three months, put together a business and what you want it to look like.

Speaker 1: 34:26

And you're like it's go time, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:30

I kind of threw it off.

Speaker 3: 34:33

That's good teamwork right there.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah, and so she started it in the fall of 2021. And it just absolutely took off last year grew so much and she's helped so many people and we were recognizing that there was only so much she could do. It was very limited. There's only so much time in the day that you can serve and she kind of tossed out the idea of like, well, what if you started working for me? And it's no, no, no, I really like being a classroom teacher. I'm loving what I do.

Speaker 2: 35:02

But then I realized that we had kids at home and the opportunity to be with them was really weighing on me. I wanted to spend more time with the babies while they were young and Haley had built a business that was going to allow me to come in and learn from her and train with her to be a financial coach for her business as well. And so, yeah, I think it was maybe February of 2023, I officially joined Haley kind of part-time and then in June, when I left my teaching position at the end of the year, I joined Haley full-time with her financial coaching business and it's just been so much fun. We love working together. I always make jokes and say that I love getting in trouble and having to go to HR because Haley has to wear all of those hats, and it's just been so much fun.

Speaker 2: 35:48

It's been a great time and we're having a lot of fun doing what we're doing.

Speaker 3: 35:52

I love that. I do have to call out that we started our podcast because Brandon wanted to constantly, after a long day's work, talk to me about all the finance things. And I'm like love you, babe, can you not? And so I was like we've got to give you a different outlet. And I was like, and I literally I had a dream about starting a podcast. I know it sounds cheesy and people don't believe it, but that is literally what happened. I like had this dream, woke up in the middle of the night, put it, put the idea with even with the title, the sugar daddy podcast in my notes, went back to sleep, forgot about it for a couple of weeks until we were on a road trip, but that's literally, I think, where it came from. I was like probably constantly thinking about like how can I get him to stop talking to me about this stuff?

Speaker 4: 36:39

because I'm tired. Well, also, she would say as far as like I'd say something she's like oh, you should make that a social media post, and I'm like for me personally one. I think I love the aspect of social media providing people access to information they previously did not have access to, but at at the same time, I very much dislike people who put information out there in these little snippets and make it seem as though it's applicable to everybody.

Speaker 3: 37:05

The headlines.

Speaker 4: 37:06

Where, like, really, a lot of the answers in finance are. It depends. It depends on what your situation is, and she'd be like oh, make it a social media post. I was like no, like I don't want to do that because I'm way too long-winded for what?

Speaker 3: 37:17

people want to look at yeah, yeah. So then the podcast was a perfect outlet for it. So again, look how much we're aligned there I love that there's so much line what.

Speaker 1: 37:26

What is so funny is during the podcast course. I think when you do something that you have to do, like that you're designed to do, weird things start to happen. But in the podcast course they had me design this like avatar. Like who are we talking to? Who's our audience? I named the avatar Kennedy and gave a bunch of information about her. Um, that was in 2020, and in June of 2021 we had our second baby and named her Kennedy, and I I I didn't even remember that until like a year later. I was like, oh my God, this is so weird. The whole thing is just very serendipitous.

Speaker 3: 38:06

It was, it was in you?

Speaker 4: 38:07

Yeah, it was in me it was oozing out.

Speaker 3: 38:10

I love it. So what? Okay, Talk us through the idea to become a financial coach. So the podcast has launched, you're helping people through the podcast and then, Justin, you're like, oh, by the way, she's starting this business. Threw her off the ledge. Then what? Did you design a course? Did you start structuring like what you wanted to talk about, how you wanted to work with people? What did that look like for you?

Speaker 1: 38:35

So we had a financial coach, Ryan, on our journey for a very short period of time. We met him through social media after we started the podcast and we started working with him for maybe six months or so. But while working with him this is at the time of distance learning during COVID, I realized everyone else was miserable doing distance learning and I was like this is the best thing ever working at home, working on a computer. I don't know why everyone doesn't like this. This is my jam. And so I took that piece of wanting to work remotely because I'd never done that before, with the experience of us working with our own financial coach, and thought maybe I can do that too. Maybe this is something down the road. You know, after we pay off all of our debt and life is perfect, then we can do that. So I tossed it down the road for like we'll revisit this in like a year. But then the podcast started to grow and I kept talking about it and I just really wanted to do it. But I didn't really know where to start. And the person that we work with currently as our financial planner he actually went through Financial Coach Academy. It's a course to help coaches kind of start their business from the ground up, and he recommended it. So I decided I'll just give that a shot and I invested it was like $2,000 in this coaching program to get ready to become a financial coach and, honestly, some of the best money I've ever invested in. Because immediately I'm like in module three like 30% through, and they're like, okay, now you guys need to start taking beta clients. It wasn't like finish the whole thing and then Shazam, it's good. It was very much step-by-step building from the beginning and that's kind of how it got created. So I followed their outline and I initially wanted to take like three beta clients and I ended up with 12. And that was great. It gave me a great experience for, like, we're going in full force, we're just going to do this.

Speaker 1: 40:41

So I drafted up like things that I thought we would want to touch on.

Speaker 1: 40:46

And then I just kind of figured it out with my beta clients while talking to all these people from across the United States, being like what are the pain points and what do we need to work on?

Speaker 1: 40:55

I knew that it would be budgeting. I knew we would create a budget and create a debt payoff plan, but there's so much more to financial coaching than just the numbers piece, and that was something that I had to learn firsthand, working with people and figuring out like, oh, this, this actually has nothing to do with your numbers, this has to do with how you were raised and the psychological aspect and all of that. So all that honestly just came with time and experience, working with people, figuring out what we were going to do, and so I've created a program. Now that's very much like a generic outline, but even then with every client, like we've got the outline but we're not necessarily going to follow that outline because each person's very different and they have different needs and desires and goals and situations. So we kind of just customize it based off of each person.

Speaker 4: 41:46

I can 100% relate to you that it's. It's funny because most people think that you know as a financial advisor. They're like oh, you know, it's all about the numbers. You're a number person. I'm like the numbers, that's the easiest part. I was like math is the same in every language Two plus two always equals four. It's not that and it's not that people don't know what they kind of should be doing. It's the behavior behind it. It's people's emotions and dealing with how each individual handles that scenario. I was like that's the hardest part. I was like, if I can go back to school, I should have been a psych major.

Speaker 1: 42:20

Literally.

Speaker 4: 42:22

Because it's like I said, it's all about dealing with emotions.

Speaker 4: 42:25

And you could have, you know, two couples that on paper, from the number standpoint, are exactly the same and you have to approach their and they have the exact same goals they want to achieve.

Speaker 4: 42:35

But and you have to approach their and they have the exact same goals they want to achieve, but you have to approach it a completely different way because you have to account for their individual emotions and also, like you said, how they were brought up with money and having to work through that. So you know, I'm really big on the behavioral finance aspect because I would say, like I think one of the benefits that you have is like a financial coach, is that I think the financial coaching is much newer than quote unquote financial advising. So they are taking to account a lot more of the things that really should be within all financial services, as compared to, from my end, like I had to start weaving that in on my own because I wasn't getting that type of training from you know my previous experiences. So I lean very much into the behavioral finance aspect, where it's not the numbers that are the biggest important part. Those are easy. It's starting to deal with people's emotions. My long winded answer that's why I don't do social media.

Speaker 2: 43:28

No, I think that's a great answer and you're right. You know, so often in financial services, often in financial services, it's marketed and spoken about in a numbers way and I'm sure, as you've seen, the large portion of folks that you work with, and particularly the large portion of folks that we work with, need all that behavioral stuff so much more. It is so much more important to actually break down the habits and the goals, which is not always number-based and all of these other totally auxiliary things, than just hey, a plus B is going to equal C for you this time, and that's what's kind of missing, unfortunately, from traditional financial education is just that it really does take a math lens versus all of the other stuff that I think, particularly in today's time and age, that we need even more.

Speaker 4: 44:19

Oh yeah, it's starting to definitely be an overhaul in regards to you have. So I'm 40 and I would say that I'm on the older end of the younger end of advisors, and so you have that big gap where, like now, it goes from like 40 to like 60 year olds and those are the ones that are doing the you know old way and it's you know there's a lot of those are the ones giving the industry a bad reputation.

Speaker 4: 44:43

Yes, and so those people like myself, you know that are trying to change it and make it one more accessible to more people.

Speaker 1: 44:51

But then, like you said, also as far as breaking it more down to just the numbers, I think that behaviors drive the numbers I think that when we were following dave ramsey, we got so good at paying off debt, like that was the end goal. And the missing piece was, for me, like, yeah, okay, we can pay off debt with vengeance, but like, how are we going to not get back into debt? And that's the problem with every single client I've had. Anybody can pay off debt. That's not the end goal. The end goal is some sort of freedom.

Speaker 1: 45:25

People just want to not worry about money and that means you need to break the cycle. You need to stop and say we're not doing this anymore, we're going to break this permanently. And it's not like, oh, I paid off $10,000 and then, oops, now I'm in $50,000 of debt. We're not doing that, we're not going to play that game. But that's where the hard work is required, because it's kind of somewhat simple. The numbers are. That's the easy part. Like you said, brandon, the numbers. It's easy for someone to just pay off X amount of debt, but the hard part is the rest of it. Like, okay, the sustainability piece, we're going to stay out of debt.

Speaker 4: 46:02

And starting to really understand yourself and like why are you like? For example, why is an individual buying these certain things? Is there some type of underlying issue that we need to address that issue? And once that issue is addressed, it will definitely help fixing the quote unquote, you know, overspending aspect and, like you said, that's what's missing from a lot of things. Like you know, with Dave Ramsey's method, and one of the things that reasons why I don't like his debt payoff method is is because it sacrifices saving at the same time. Like, a thousand dollars is not an emergency fund. I don't know of anyone whose emergency only costs a thousand dollars. That's not an emergency. So I'm really big on, like you know, you know focusing on that emergency fund so that when you do pay off all your debt, you have also, at the same time, built up that substantial emergency fund so when life happens again, you don't go right in the back of the debt.

Speaker 4: 46:54

Because it will happen, and that's the piece yes life will happen it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Speaker 3: 47:00

Yeah, what was the the turning point for you all in your spending? So you, you know you paid off the debt. You got really serious sounds like you took a lot of the joy out of life, right, like you said, you got rid of everything that was unnecessary. Now, obviously, following you on social media, I can see that you're living a great life. Right, you're finding the joy. You're splurging on the things that are important to you. Haley, your lashes always look great, your nails are always done right. Some people would say, like, don't spend money on those things, but again, we have to spend money on the things that bring us joy and help us live the lives that we want to live. So how did you cross that barrier of payoff debt, payoff debt, payoff debt and now, ok, the debt's been paid? How do we now live this life that we really want to live within our means? While saving, while investing, you know, while doing all the quote, unquote, correct things, but still finding joy in every day and buying the Costco muffins that have since gone up from $7.

Speaker 2: 48:03

One of the really cool things about going through the debt-free journey and slashing everything in your budget is that you don't go out, and so when you don't go out, you have a lot of time to just sit and talk. When you don't go out, you have a lot of time to just sit and talk, and when you do the debt-free journey, when you're also quarantined, you have a lot of time to just sit and talk.

Speaker 2: 48:27

Oh yeah, timing. There is important wanted in our life that we had never really even talked about, that we were not going after, simply because it wasn't anything we'd ever seen. And the big one for me was our family meal time, when we were spending lavishly. We were going out to eat constantly. I mean, it was just remarkable how much we were spending dining out, and so we cut that to zero immediately. It was we are not going out at all, like no questions asked, and we were making every meal at home and what that forced us to do was also sit and have dinner with each other at the table and through that we created a really great kind of family system of our family eats dinner at the table every night. That was not something I had ever experienced growing up. It was something for Haley, but it was never something I had. It was really rushed dinners. It was a single mom trying to throw stuff together on a low income. So I just never really knew what family dinner time looked like, and as we've added kids to our family, it's been something that I really take comfort in coming home and sitting at the dinner table with my wife and kids and actually enjoying a meal with them that I got to cook and hearing them talk about their favorite part of the day. So that was something that's really helped.

Speaker 2: 49:52

Change for me was that going through the debt-free journey and pulling back on some of the spending actually illuminated what I wanted for my life and it brought joy into my life, even though I thought I was removing it. And there's other examples of that. We cut streams, we cut Netflix and all of that stuff, and I realized that so much of my TV watching was like sports. And so I still follow on Twitter and or, excuse me X and other sites and stuff and I still get my sports fix, but I don't need to have live streaming sports at all times. And it's just really illuminated for us what brings us joy in our life and what we actually want to spend on. So I know that the debt-free journey can be really intimidating to a lot of folks. It can be really scary to think, well, I'm cutting this and cutting that, but I think that everybody can find that there is that one thing that actually brings them joy or that brings them comfort. I don't know about you.

Speaker 1: 50:50

Well, I think for me, it was just being on the same page about why we were doing it, and I was not happy Don't get it twisted I was not happy to cut our TV and to cut my nails and to do all of those things from our life. That's what we were used to doing, right, we were spending so much money. So to go and just drastically cut all of that, it wasn't easy. I wasn't happy about it, but we were on the same page that this does not have to be forever. We can cut cable, we can do this, this and this for a reason for a season, we can be intentional and then we can add things back. And it's so beautiful looking at our story Because I feel like we're literally living our best life Like this is absolutely the perfect little scenario.

Speaker 1: 51:38

Right, we did everything for a, for a season, and now we get to bring those things back in and it's just cool seeing like it wasn't forever.

Speaker 1: 51:46

It was not forever and and we would do it again in a heartbeat if we had to it really taught me like we can do hard things.

Speaker 1: 51:53

I can do hard things if needed, I can cut all of this tomorrow, and the true things that matter are the two of us, our kids, our marriage and just being happy with our family.

Speaker 1: 52:06

And I think that because everything was so simple during our COVID time we were in quarantine, we weren't dining out, we weren't doing all of the rest of the stuff we were able to find the happiness in those moments, like going for a walk. That's free but that brings us so much joy. And it doesn't have to be all of the rest of the stuff that people might think is materialistic. That can all go, because at the end of the day, when we're dead, we can't bring all the money and that stuff with us. It's the family piece that really matters, the memories that we're creating with our kids every day. That's the piece that matters. And I feel like we were able to, like what Justin said, really unveil what that looks like in a simple form, instead of like all of the rest of the frilly, nilly stuff that we see in life and on social media.

Speaker 4: 52:56

I love everything that you said because one you know, talking about the piece of both of you guys being on the same page, that is huge Cause, as you said before, often people are not on the same page, like maybe one person has a realization and it takes a while for the other person to come in, and I'm assuming a. You know, as you know, financial coaches, you've sat down with couples who you've realized are not on the same page at all and it can be very awkward, because I've definitely been in those scenarios. But then I also like how you said you were outlining the life that you guys want to live. What is important to you, Not what is important to your next door neighbor, not what social media tells you should be important. What is important to you and how do you need to structure your life so that you can focus and have those things that are important to you? So, like, I love all of that because that's right up my alley.

Speaker 3: 53:47

Amazing. What is next for you guys, for your family, for Price of Avocado Toast? Tell us what's coming.

Speaker 1: 53:56

I'm going to call it here Ready, sure, okay, yeah, affirm it.

Speaker 1: 54:01

I love it. We're going to just keep building this business and get to a point where we're able to really aggressively invest in our goals, whatever those are. And I really want to build a house and we live in California and that's going to be a lot of money. I want to build a house from the ground up. I want to create the whole thing just like I want it and that's my goal. Like I'm very focused on doing that, and it's not going to be tomorrow, but I truly believe we're going to build the business big enough to where we can build a house in one country, in California. I think that's where we're going, because that's what I want. That sounds amazing. California. I think that's where we're going Because that's what I want. That sounds amazing.

Speaker 4: 54:36

If you did it in North Carolina, it'd be a lot cheaper.

Speaker 3: 54:38

I know I'm like Taylor, you'd probably do it.

Speaker 1: 54:40

tomorrow we could move to Alabama.

Speaker 2: 54:44

Yeah, oh, gosh, don't do that. North Carolina sounds better to me.

Speaker 1: 54:49

What about you? What do you think? Vanilla, vanilla, alabama.

Speaker 2: 54:58

Where do you see this?

Speaker 2: 54:59

I don't know.

Speaker 2: 54:59

You know, I think that right now I'm I'm still kind of in the transition phase of leaving the teaching career and joining Haley, and so she has these tremendous ideas and great ways to grow, and I'm kind of like still trying to find my sea legs, I think, um, as an entrepreneur and as a as a partner in the.

Speaker 2: 55:15

But one of the things that I'm really enjoying is much like Haley did at the start. I'm getting to the end of the program with several of my clients right now and I'm seeing their progress and seeing their change, and it's really lighting me up to continue doing this work, and so I'm hopeful, honestly, that I can just continue to do this for as long as possible and be home with the babies while they're not in school. Yet Beyond that, for the show itself, for Price of Avocado Toast, we're up for a couple different awards for the podcast, for the Plutus Awards, which is essentially an award that celebrates content in the personal finance community. So I'm hopeful that we'll find out a little bit later today that maybe we won an award for our work.

Speaker 3: 55:59

But yeah, fingers crossed.

Speaker 2: 56:01

Thanks. Ultimately, I just want to continue to serve as long as possible. It really brings me so much joy to see people doing better, and I think that it is important work and necessary work, and I think that we're both so blessed to be able to do it. So my hope is just to continue to do it as long as possible in whatever capacity we're able to.

Speaker 3: 56:33

That sounds exciting and it's, I think too, for's made the sacrifices. Who can speak from experience? That means so much more than somebody who's like oh yeah, I cashed out my trust fund and now I'm going to tell you how to live your best life. It's like, uh, no, thanks, not interested in that version. So I'm you know, I'm sure that your clients are super ingrained in like, okay, I can see the hope, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel because Haley and Justin have been there. You guys are so wonderful and open about talking about the numbers, right, and those are big numbers, and so I'm sure that gives them hope and excitement and energy to keep going and to trust you in the process. So I think that's fantastic. Where can people find you and connect, trust you in the process? So I think that's fantastic. Where can people find you and connect with you?

Speaker 1: 57:18

You can find us on all social media at Price of Avocado Toast and our podcast, Price of Avocado Toast is available anywhere where you listen to podcasts or where you're listening to this one today. Right now. You could just go find us and subscribe.

Speaker 3: 57:33

Yeah, subscribe, rate and review both of our podcasts. We will, of course, link all of your socials in the show notes. Um, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you for spending some time with us today and for sharing your really incredible story, and we're so proud of you for making it out on the other side after all of the sacrifices, and it's really great to see you now living on the other side of your best life in a sustainable way, might I add. So we're excited. We're rooting for you. We'll be following along on the journey and hopefully growing our friendship. So thank you for being with us today. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 58:15

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Don't forget. Benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid until next time. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We are so glad to have you as part of our sugar daddy community. If you learned something today, please remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with your friends, family and extended network. Don't forget to connect with us on social media. At TheSugarDaddyPodcast, you can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our Pass the Sugar segments at TheSugarDaddyPodcast at gmailcom or leave us a voicemail through our Instagram.

Speaker 4: 58:56

Our content is intended to be used, and must be used, for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based upon your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a licensed professional in connection with, or independently research and verify any information you find in our podcast and wish to rely upon, whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise.