Marriage Kids and Money: Personal Finance for Families

There may not be a single right way to achieve financial freedom, but supersizing your savings is certainly a powerful strategy.But what does supersizing your savings mean? More importantly, how does someone go about doing that?I sat down with Kelly Smith from Freedom in a Budget to learn more about how she and her husband are crushing their goals and enjoying their lives while living on 50% of their income. In our chat, Kelly proves that budgets aren’t constricting. They’re a pathway to freedom. She shares details on making the decision to take the 50/50 path, milestones they’ve already crossed, and where they are headed. Plus, she offers actionable steps for people who want to make more money and want to make saving 50% of your income a reality. RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine being able to take your side hustle to the next level and quit your full-time job?That’s exactly what Kelan and Brittany Kline managed to do after working on their blog for over a year. They were able to leave the shackles of their day job and go full-time with their passion project: The Savvy Couple, a blog and community that helps families organize their lives, simplify their finances and unlock the freedom to do more of the things they love.We chat about how they get into blogging as a side hustle, how they first started making money and their future plans for their business and family.RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most important decisions anyone can make is who you choose to spend your life with. Marriage impacts us emotionally, socially, legally, financially, and in so many other ways.While the divorce rate in America is dropping, so is the marriage rate. That means married couples understand marriage is important, we might not know exactly where to turn for good advice.Today, I sat down with Kimberly Holmes, the CEO of Marriage Helper, to learn more about the reasons why marriages end and what couples can do to save them. Kimberly explores three broad categories of marriage trouble, details some of the warning signs, and outlines steps that we can take today to be better partners tomorrow. RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam from Tampa is skeptical about working with a financial advisor and wants to know how to invest on his own.Andy, For most of my life, I have been told what to do with my money. I had a family member work for Morgan Stanley and he invested for us for years. Last year, we had some issues within the family and decided to part ways. My wife and I quickly decided to go with another guy who does good but the last email was life insurance focused.The main question is I want to handle all of this on my own. I feel like I can’t teach my kids what is best without knowing. Any advice?Thanks for reaching out Adam!That is a tough situation you’re in and it sounds very familiar to me. I wanted to invest for the future, but I didn’t know much about investing. I got hooked up with an investment broker that ended up having very high fees and I felt didn’t have our best interest at heart. Based on that experience, I wanted to learn as much as possible about investing so I wouldn’t get burned again. That’s part of the reason I started this podcast ... to learn, grow and help my family get to the next level. Regarding your situation, I’m going to share with you 7 thoughts I have.RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In May 2010, I married my dream girl. She was funny, beautiful and chock-full of 90's TV trivia. Our first couple of dates consisted of a lot of Saved by the Bell and Seinfeld jokes.Outside of knowing the Soup Nazi episode verbatim, Nicole and I both came into the marriage knowing the general basics of personal finance. You know, advice like: "Don't carry a credit card balance" "Always have some savings for a rainy day" "Good debt is okay to have" In the years before our marriage, we did rack up a hefty amount of "good" debt. Car payments and student loans were a few of the good debt offenders we carried into our marriage. Hey, you NEED a car to get around, right?! And how else are you going to pay for college?! After some research and personal soul-searching, there really was no good debt or bad debt in our eyes. It was just debt to us. This was all just money we owed someone. It wouldn’t go away until we decided to clean it up.We decided that being in debt was not something we wanted for our new family. We vowed to become debt-free (outside of our mortgage) before our first child was born.In September of 2010, we owed $20,908 on my wife’s car and $27,124 on my student loans for a grand total of $48,032 of good/bad/indifferent debt. During the next 12 months, we took that $48,032 of debt and clobbered it!By September 2011, we owed $0. Zilch. Nada. Bye-bye debt.Here are the 5 steps we took to rid debt from our family forever.RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being neck-deep in debt can make you feel like all the odds are stacked against you, especially when you reach almost the seven figures!Today, Andy talks to Wendy Mays on how her family is climbing out of nearly $1,000,000 of student loans, home mortgages, car loans, and other consumer debt. Wendy is the host of the House of FI podcast, a part-time work-from-home lawyer and a mother to six children. We talk about how she and her husband accumulated their debt, the turning point that led them to fix their situation and their progress on their journey to financial independence so far. RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a $36 billion industry, but according to AARP, 73% of people who participate in MLMs make no money or lose money.So what’s the appeal? Why do people keep coming back with such a high failure rate?Today, Andy talks to Melissa Blevins from the Perfection Hangover about the two MLMs she took part in to make some extra money while staying at home with the kids and how she ended up losing money.We talk about what MLMs are all about, Melissa’s personal experiences and her current side hustle (that has become more profitable for her).RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our question of the month comes in from Mike:Andy,I saw the Business Insider article about you paying off your mortgage early.We’re in a similar situation. With $228,000 left on our mortgage, our plan is to pay it off in 6 years. We’re looking for advice and shortcuts!That’s awesome to hear you want to pay off your mortgage early, Mike!You’re looking for steps, shortcuts, and advice on how to pay off your $228,000 mortgage in 6 years … Let’s do this!RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One fall night in 2010, my wife Nicole and I were watching the Suze Orman Show. (Yes, I used to DVR it). There was this fun segment where someone would call in and Suze would analyze that person's financial health and give them a grade. It was called How Am I Doing?One term that we kept seeing over and over again on this segment was “Net Worth”. Since we were personal finance newbies, we had no idea what this meant. Nicole and I were making a combined annual income of $130,000 so we figured our net worth must be HUGE.After the show was over, we decided to see how rich we really were. There was no doubt in our mind that we’d be better off than most of the jokers that call in to the show and get an “F” grade from Suze!We walked upstairs and started to write down all of our numbers on a big whiteboard. By separating our “assets” (what we owned) and our liabilities (what we owed) into two big columns, we started to discover that we weren’t rich.We were kinda broke.Although we were making a solid income together, our liabilities were much higher than our assets.Here is a snapshot of what our numbers looked like back in 2010 (rounded educated guesstimates based on me losing some of our data along the way): There’s no way were going to get an “A” grade on Suze’s show with a -$50,000 net worth!This epiphany moment was just the jolt of reality we needed to start making progress on our finances. Our short-term goal was to get this net worth number in positive territory ASAP!It was time for us to make a change. Here's what we did to increase our net worth by $800,000 in 8 years. RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okeoma Moronu recently paid off over $300,000 of student loans. She and her husband worked for over 6 years to become debt-free and now they are making some big life changes with $4,000 extra per month.RESOURCES**Sponsor + Partners + Deals: https://www.marriagekidsandmoney.com/sponsors  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices