347. If you’re paying a professional then do what they tell you to do

Navigating the choppy waters of financial transitions can be daunting, especially when unexpected changes catch you off guard. This week, we share our own story of navigating a major shift in our professional and personal finances. After receiving significant news that reshuffled roles within our team—including the appointment of an interim GM alongside our current GM who is transitioning out with severance—we found ourselves reevaluating our financial strategies. Join us as we candidly discuss the emotional and psychological challenges of adjusting to a more constrained budget, sharing insights into how we're simplifying our entrepreneurial ventures and practical steps for managing our finances effectively.

Our journey isn't just about cutting costs; it's about confronting discomfort and adapting to new financial realities while staying true to our frugal roots. Despite our pride in minimal spending and maintaining a stellar credit score, we've received advice urging us to fully utilize our budget, even if it means stepping outside our comfort zone. From sending a long email to our attorney with essential documents to reassessing our modest lifestyle—which includes swapping phones every few years and driving rusty vehicles—we explore how balancing familiar financial principles with new strategies can lead to stability. Tune in to hear our thoughts on embracing the discomfort necessary for financial growth, and perhaps find some inspiration for your own financial journey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

All right, well, happy Friday everyone. The team found out yesterday the news. I think I already did that. Yeah team found out the news. They all know the follow-through. So for the next couple weeks I'm gonna be doing a severance pay for my wrapping up GM. He's gonna be working some of those weeks, but I'll also be paying someone to be the interim GM, so payroll will be doubled up and I'm having to wind down my other entrepreneurial endeavors.

Speaker 1: 0:59

I've been doing some mark. I've been looking to do some marketing stuff, looking to do some some buying and selling of online things, and I'm having to just simplify. And this past month I looked at our personal finances and if you take out all of the entrepreneurial endeavors and and things I was looking to do, it actually came out okay, um, I ended up emailing um, my attorney to figure out like, hey, here's our home budget, here's what we make, here's what we spend, um, and now he's asking for stuff like you need a copy of your id or your mortgage statement and just all sorts of documents that will be needed for wrapping things up. And so I sent off a long email. I said, hey, I'm ready to onboard as a client, ready to get started. I see we talked a few months back and I have that to do list or checklist for a new client. So I'll be doing that this weekend, once we get rocking and rolling, if we could carve out time to go over this. Happy to pay for it if needed. But here are the top questions in mind and some advice I've received is to really make sure that we're at our full budget.

Speaker 1: 2:11

We're penny pinchers. We don't spend like we take our kids out to Chick-fil-A once a week Like that's our splurge. Like we are not exciting people when it comes to that. We haven't taken a vacation in seven years. I haven't been to the dentist in 15 years. Like I buy my clothes off Goodwill and eBay. I swap my phone out every like four or five years. I drive rusty vehicles. The last vehicle I have before that my truck was a salvage sedan like with a classic. If you saw someone at the restaurant like you probably buy their meal. Like we're that family.

Speaker 1: 2:48

And uh, some some personal friends have counseled us to make sure we're maximizing our full expenses of our budget and that's uncomfortable. We are the folks that want to have an 830 credit score. We want to have buffer in the bank. We don't want to have to be squeezed tight, and so if we're being advised to wind down our endeavors to reduce our budget, so that it's favorable and it's not like the damn Ramsey plan, like that's uncomfortable for us and so figuring out, okay, maybe we have to do some things that are outside of our comfort zone. That is how you play the game. So that's where we're at now getting uncomfortable. You follow the advice you pay for. You follow your own advice, you pay someone else. You're really dumb.