Rebecca Brooks & Dylan Pollock are a couple/financial coaching team that helps other married couples navigate their finances in an effective and low-stress way. In this episode, they share how they’ve been able to get themselves (and others) out of debt and the role that housing has played in that area of their finances. They also talk about how to decide how much house to have and ways to balance your current goals with your future goals.
For full show notes and more information visit https://tinyurl.com/mr3fhxhp
Rebecca Brooks & Dylan Pollock are a couple/financial coaching team that helps other married couples navigate their finances in an effective and low-stress way. In this episode, they share how they’ve been able to get themselves (and others) out of debt and the role that housing has played in that area of their finances. They also talk about how to decide how much house to have and ways to balance your current goals with your future goals.
For full show notes and more information visit https://tinyurl.com/mr3fhxhp
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Full Episode Transcript
With Your Host
Laura Lynch
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
It takes a brave and independent mindset to go tiny. If you are trying to
figure out your tiny pivot, this podcast is here to inspire and connect you
with the other unconventional, gritty, inspirational people within this
community.
I’m Laura Lynch, your tiny house friend and host. On this show, we are
always going to come back to money because, as a financial planner, this
is the question I hear the most: How do I make this work for me financially?
Well, that’s my jam. So jump in, let’s go. New episodes drop every
Thursday.
Laura Lynch: Rebecca and Dylan, welcome to Less House, More Moola
podcast. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you all today. I
think that your unique perspective on money and relationships will be super
valuable to folks. I know that money has been, boy, an ongoing work in my
relationship. So I'm super excited that we get to delve into this topic for the
listeners. Would you please introduce yourself and highlight kind of - we'll go
back at the end to where people can find you. But just sort of let us know
who you work with and kind of what your focus area is. And also talk to us a
little bit about your journey through housing together.
Rebecca: Yeah. So yeah, so thanks for having us. So I'm Rebecca. And this
is Dylan.
Dylan: I'm Dylan.
Rebecca: And so we are a married couple and we focus on being financial
coaches to married couples. And we started this about five years ago or so
when we first got ourselves completely out of debt. A big part of our strategy
was downsizing our housing and examining that, and saying, “Do we really
need this much house? Do we need to be spending this much on rent or -
we travel so much.” I mean, we just pretty much sleep there anyway.
Dylan: Right. Yeah. And it's just a landing pad. We saw it as a place that we
could use to just sleep and then go do the next thing, because we like to
travel a lot.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Rebecca: Yeah! So if we weren't working, we were traveling, and we wanted
to pay off our student loans. We wanted to achieve financial freedom. And
so that was a really - I don't think we would have been able to do it, definitely
not in the amount of time that we did if it wasn't for that.
But after we achieved financial freedom, we decided that we wanted to start
helping other people with, this whole money thing. And so we became
financial coaches ourselves and yeah! Like I said, now we focus mostly on
married couples and helping them to navigate those really challenging things
of getting aligned, and not only learning what should I do with my money, but
how do we both agree on that, and how do we both know what we need to
do?
Dylan: Right. I definitely see in working with couples: couples have a unique
challenge that we have two different points of views, two different
perspectives, two different histories with money. And so how do you figure
out how to deal with all these challenges that come up with how I view money
versus Rebecca views money?
For example, I came into the relationship with $30,000 worth of student loan
debt. So how do you deal with that when the other person's totally debt-free?
And so we just love navigating those conversations, because when couples
figure out how to do that together, it strengthens the relationship and just
helps them do so much more than trying to play this individual game with
money, which is just so prevalent nowadays on the internet. It's just like, how
can you be you instead of how can we work together to go further together?
Laura Lynch: Yeah. I think that's so important because part of the beauty of
being in a relationship is getting to have two different sets of strengths and
two different sets of perspectives. But our bias, our affinity bias, makes it so
that we like people who think like us.
And so when you have two different thought themes around money, it takes
like a lot of intention to say, “Hey, your perspective is as valid as mine.” And
how do we bring the two perspectives together so that we can accomplish
more than we would be able to do individually?
Rebecca: Exactly. Yeah. And really just stepping away from that “protecting
self and I'm always right” to, “Yeah, exactly, just being able to understand
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
there's more when we come together.” And that's really transformative,
especially when doing big things like saying, okay, yeah, let's downsize our
house.
Dylan: You're going to have to have both people buying into that sort of
decision-making.
Laura Lynch: Yes, that's so true. And I think that there's one person often
in a relationship who feels less confident around this and is less likely to sort
of express their opinion because one person has traditionally been more
money-dominant in the relationship.
And so then they can like really stop an action from moving forward with
resistance to the idea without ever having previously expressed kind of what
their money motivations or relationships with money are. Enabling both
voices is so critical.
Rebecca: Yes. And that's a big part of what we do. When we sit down with
couples, there's always one who's going to really grab the bull by the horns
and just be like, this is everything. This is what we're working through, blah,
blah, blah. And the next person is going to kind of take the back seat just
naturally. So my job as a coach is to say, okay, now how do you see it? How
do you see your finances? And it just really forces that voicing of their
opinion.
Dylan: Right. Yeah. It's just helping people facilitate the conversations that
they know they want to have, but just haven't figured out how to do them
quite yet.
Laura Lynch: Yeah. It's so good. I think if you can tackle money challenges
in a relationship right, you're just really overcoming a lot of the future
problems that you might have. I mean, so much about splitting up is often
rooted in those money pieces. So I applaud the work that you're doing. It's
so important for people.
Rebecca: Thank you.
Laura Lynch: So I wanted to kind of dig a little bit more into what you were
talking about when you were really focused on becoming financially free and
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
debt-free. How did you rank housing in terms of your different priorities in
life?
Rebecca: I think for us … what, well. Actually, yeah - what do you think for,
I don't know if we ever voiced it that way, but what's your perspective?
Dylan: Well, it was immediate as soon as I proposed to Rebecca and we
realized that our finances were also a very important thing during that time.
And so immediately we started to say, “Okay, let's not make money get in
the way of the relationship.” And the house just stood out so much because
we were renting and it was $1,400 a month andRebecca: $1,500.
Dylan: $1,500 a month. So it was a decent chunk of change. And so we
decided, let's go negotiate with our landlord and see if they'll do anything.
Rebecca: Yeah, especially for where we were at in our careers. I mean, we
were still really young, right? 24, 26.
Dylan: Yeah, just mid-20s though. And so yeah, we had just made a move
across the country. We'd spent all of our money to get there. So we're just
looking for any way to squeeze money so that we could do the things we
wanted to do.
And like Rebecca said at the beginning, we just saw the house as a landing
pad to sleep and rest and eat, in between work and traveling - because we
moved out west and we wanted to see all the national parks and we love
backpacking and camping and climbing. So how can we do more of that?
And so housing didn't seem that much of a priority to us.
And so we ended up looking for a new house and saving about half of our
rent. We cut it down to $700 a month and moved to - we originally lived at
this nice place. Beautiful, by a lake, really quiet neighborhood. Hardly, you
could hardly even call it a neighborhood. And then we moved into kind of a
noisier part of town. Smaller location.
Rebecca: Less desirable.
Dylan: Definitely less desirable.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Rebecca: Definitely less desirable, yeah, for sure. But, I don't think until after
we had done it, did we really think about housing as being something that
super motivated us, you know? Had like, home ownership, as we discovered,
as we talked about our money stories and really started to have these
conversations that couples need to have about what are our goals. I was like,
well, I would like to own a house one day.
And at the same time that we were starting to pay off debt and Dylan's like,
there's no way I could buy a house. I have $30,000 of debt. And so like
housing was interesting, like I knew I wanted it, but it wasn't a huge driver for
me. Not at all for a driver for Dylan.
Dylan: I just couldn't see that far ahead in the future at the time. It was just,
it seemed like, Oh, there's this debt. I need to take care of this first because
it's killing how much money I can put into savings or investing, or even
thinking about buying a house.
Rebecca: Yeah. So I think what we realized just through the process, just
kind of naturally, it was easy for us to see the payoff of saying, yeah, we're
going to reduce the quality of living at our home. But our quality of living
outside of it is going to actually expand and increase. And then the future
payoff of not having debt is going to be so much more important than living
in a house by the lake.
Laura Lynch: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think we all kind of come into our
adulthood having some preconceived notions about what our goals are
supposed to be. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast as kind of,
summed up in the American dream of buying the most house you can afford,
upgrading, upgrading, upgrading throughout your career. Two and a half
kids, corporate ladder - we just have this preconceived set of goals that we
never necessarily intentionally choose, but we just sort of take them on
because we sort of mirror the goals that have been shown to us.
So as you're working with clients, how many folks would you say that having
a typical American dream house experience is an authentic goal for them, or
how much of it is just sort of the default path that they assume that they're
supposed to want because they've never really thought about it.
Rebecca: That's a great question.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Dylan: Yeah. I know all of my clients have wanted to move into a home if
they were renting. But if it was a default dream, like goal because that's what
everybody says versus this is really what they want, that's hard to actually
answer. That's a great question.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think that kind of similar to even like my own path, what
I've discovered working with - my clients in particular, at least - is that home
ownership, it is just like a box that they want to check. They know that they
want to own a home, but I don't know how much it's necessarily tied to having
the biggest house possible, et cetera. Like it's pretty vague for how most
people come into it, but it is just kind of there. Right? And so we do a lot of
exploring of what does that really look like and why, and is it worth it?
And I have a ton of clients in LA, so we dig real deep of like. “You sure you
want to stay here?” It's just so darn expensive. And so we explore
alternatives and trade-offs, and things of that nature. But I think it is just kind
of a default box that we have there in our life of, this is kind of the progression.
But people come to it for a lot of different reasons as well.
I know for myself, it was really more about like self-sufficiency and resilience
and independence for being my motivation for owning a home. More so land,
but not status, or I want somebody else to know that I've made it, or
something like that. Like that was really never part of it for me. It was the
ability to like build my own garden and nobody can tell me not to.
Dylan: Yeah. And I would say, as I've had a little bit more time to think about
it, as Rebecca's going here, I've really thought: a lot of my clients' goals aren't
just about the house, but they want the freedom to travel. Travel always
seems to be the big thing for a lot of folks.
So it is a reminder of saying, how much house do you need? If you get
qualified for so much, you can not take all that money and use that extra
cashflow that you'll have each and every month, because you don't have
such a big payment, to do other things to save for the future or for the next
trip that you want to take.
So we always have those discussions of how to balance that goal and - let
me rephrase that so it makes sense, because I have a couple of thoughts
here together. So how they can balance that goal of becoming a homeowner,
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
but also to travel or invest for the future so that they don't feel as though that
they're locked into one thing and they have the “golden handcuffs”?
Laura Lynch: Yeah, that's so good. And I think that's why I write about tiny
living. For me, it is really not about square foot. It's really about just being
intentional with what your space is doing for you and how you rank it in your
priorities. So certainly home ownership and just having a home where you
don't have a landlord certainly provides some layer of, “Okay, I feel safe here
and this is my place”. Frankly, if you're in an HOA, you don't have a lot of
freedom.
Rebecca: Yeah. HOAs are the plague.
Dylan: Although I will say: that one house that we were renting, and there
was no HOA - you could tell there was no HOA, so there could be some
benefits. It's just like, how much does that HOA cost?
Laura Lynch: But even so, for most people - I don't think - actually sit down
and analyze, because they're kind of in a system that's always selling them
on the notion of: buy as much house as you can afford. What is being built
today is not designed around two or three people households. Houses have
historically been much smaller and families much larger.
And now houses are much larger and families are much smaller. So, just the
options that you have make it challenging to fit your priorities with the size of
your roof, but anytime that someone's thinking about, “How much house do
I need based on what the goals that I want to achieve?” I think that that is
just steps, like huge steps in the right direction.
Rebecca: Yeah, completely agree. When you start having those sorts of
conversations with people, when we start having those conversations with
clients, it's really amazing how they start to just look at it completely different
versus it being just kind of this vague goal and looking at - like you're saying
- the houses that are currently being built versus what's on Instagram and
feeling like they need to keep up or compare themselves. It's just like, let's
unplug from that and just focus on what do you truly want and need, and
that's when it really becomes very obvious to them of what they truly want
and need.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Dylan: Right. And when we talk about how can we create more cashflow so
you have more flexibility in your life, it's easy to point the finger at the latte or
these simple pleasures that we have in life. But looking at your home as this
opportunity that - if you save just a little bit, you don't have to be as drastic
as Rebecca and I and cut your rent or your mortgage in half - but even if you
just downsize just slightly, that creates so much more savings. And you can
keep those little things that you love, which is an approach that we just took
and we loved it. It was awesome.
Rebecca: Well, and in Danish culture, like hygge and stuff like that, they talk
about like those little daily pleasures are actually the things that make us the
happiest, not this vacant house that now we feel like we have to fill up with
stuff. And again, all of this is financial obligation, right? So it's really just a
matter of simplifying things and noticing what are the things that do truly bring
me joy. And so I think people's attachment to the latte is valid.
It's just that - and like I said, we talk about all the time - it's just about the
trade-offs. It's not that you can't afford the latte. It's that you can't afford the
latte and, or the house and the latte. And so you have to really do that
introspection of what truly brings me the most value in my life.
Dylan: Yeah actually, Laura, do you mind if I throw a question at you? We're
going the reverse here, but have you seen those heat maps of houses and
how much footprint people actually use?
Laura Lynch: I haven't, probably. Tell me about it.
Dylan: Oh, it's pretty fascinating. There's a bunch of studies. And when
Rebecca said she was talking to you, I was like: I know there's something
about this online. You can look at a heat map of people's houses and there's
only a few key areas that get the most use. And let's say I'm - no one quote
me here, but go do the research for yourself - maybe 50% of the house has
no heat at all in it. There's like the formal dining room, absolutely bare. The
formal sitting room, absolutely bare.
It's like hanging out by the TV around the kitchen table in the kitchen and in
the bedroom at night. But anything else is kind of like the fluffy stuff that
you're just wasting money on, in my opinion. Like if it isn't utilized space, it's
just a missed opportunity to use that money for something else.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Rebecca: Yeah. You're spending $200 a square foot for empty space. Yeah.
Laura Lynch: Love it. Yes. I talk about, so this house I'm staying in right
now, we have this on the market. We're moving to the tiny house in three
months and the tiny house is those heat map spots, right? It is the kitchen
where I spend a lot of time. It is the bedroom where I sleep at night - and it
is a living room, right? And obviously a bathroom and all of the appliances
that we need. But in this house that I'm standing in, I hardly am ever in the
living room, because I'm running around doing chores all the time. I'm either
working or I'm reading, like I'm never in there just lounging around that. That's
the largest space in the house, and that is the largest electric bill to heat and
cool that huge space, right?
So I am all about that idea of like designing your living space around what is
practically useful for you. And maybe that isn't just a small, tiny house. Maybe
that is a smaller space of some other kind or having, like in our case, we're
building multiple roofs on our property. And one of them is going to be my
work studio.
But design the space around or buy space that is going to fit how you're
going to use it, and don't have stuff that you're not going to use because it's
just a waste. And to your point, Dylan, housing is a much bigger lever to pull
than the latte, and conventional financial services really likes to beat up on
the latte. But $8 on your way to work can bring you maybe a lot of pleasure,
whereas the hundreds of dollars that you're having to spend on all that extra
square footage is significant. It's kind of like the elephant in the room.
Rebecca: But nobody wants to talk about it. Because they know it's such a
controversial topic. Right? And it's such a big radical change that you'd have
to make to your lifestyle that nobody wants to bring it up. But, we look at
every single line on people's budgets and we're like, is there any other
option?
Roommate, parents, house hack? Are you willing to do any of these things,
because it's just gonna, it's really going to transform your life, even if you just
do it for a season. And that's what I think that people don't really recognize,
is that you don't have to even do this forever. It can just be something that
you do for a little while to change your overall trajectory.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Laura Lynch: Yeah, for sure. Dylan, did you want to add something?
Dylan: Well, I love the idea of seasons. It just helps so much to think I was
just kind of bouncing off of what Rebecca says that our decisions don't have
to be final and that it can be short term and I'm going through this so I can
reach this goal. And once that goal is reached, it's going to create a lot of
flexibility in my life and I can move on.
So if we think on a longer time horizon than just the current life that we're
living, then it gets a lot easier to think, Oh, I can have a roommate for six
months to a year. If that meant that I was financially free at the end of that
six to twelve months, that would be awesome. And then after that, I can move
on and I can have a lot more flexibility, and no roommate. Great!
Rebecca: Great. Yeah, but I was listening to something recently. Gosh, it
may have been your podcast, I don't know. But that when people will make
these changes, that then all of a sudden when they have the option to maybe
go back, they're actually like, no, I don't want to go back to that old lifestyle.
This simplified life is more intentional. And I didn't actually need that stuff. So
I think that that's a really interesting thing that definitely happened for us as
well. As you make these changes and simplify things, like you really notice,
I mean, genuinely, like how little you need to be happy. And I think that's a
pretty powerful thing.
Dylan: Yeah. And one of the other things about it, like when you get smaller
and you don't have as much space, then you have more money to buy the
higher quality version of stuff to fill your space. And so, I like to knock on
Wayfair all the time, sorry for Wayfair listeners - but there's a lot of cheap
stuff on there.
And imagine you buy a dresser and you have to replace it every other year
because it just falls apart opposed to going to your local craftsman who's
going to build you a beautiful dresser that will last your entire life and become
an heirloom family treasure because you get to pass that down. You buy it
once it lasts forever and you can afford that when you're not spending so
much on extra space.
Rebecca: Yeah. Quality over quantity for sure.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
Laura Lynch: Yeah, I heard a recent statistic and I think I put this on one of
my LinkedIn articles about the billions of pounds of furniture getting sent to
the landfills every year. And it's all because we now have fast furniture, just
like we have fast fashion. So all of that is just creating mountains of waste
for future generations. So now let's talk about debt, because I know that you
all have put so much focus on your debt-free journey. And I'd like you to
share with us a little bit about how you see debt impacting the couple's
relationship, because we know that the American dream house typically
comes with some debt.
And it's great for that moment when you sign your paper and you buy your
first house, right? But then you're committed to that purchase for 30 years
and your relationship has to swim in that river. So let's talk about how you
see debt and couples.
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, even outside of just the mortgage, right? Debt
definitely adds a lot of stress. There's always one couple who's more
bothered by it than the other. and there's a lot to that. But debt in general can
be extremely detrimental to your relationship and just the financial strain that
it puts on you in terms of how obligated you are to those payments and the
lack of flexibility that it gives you within, just your day-to-day spending even,
right?
And so that's how I think it really hurts the relationship the most is when those
payments are so burdensome, whether it's just the mortgage or mortgage
plus, that it limits your ability to do the things that you wanted to do as a
couple, right? So you are house-poor potentially, or you just have so many
student loan payments and credit card payments, et cetera, that you're not
traveling like you thought you would in this point in your relationship, where
you have so much debt that you feel like you can't afford children, different
things like that.
We could probably go on forever for all the ways that that debt can really be
harmful, but mostly because of just that chain that you feel like, you're just
chained to it and you're unable to do the other things that you wanted to do.
Dylan: Yeah. I definitely see how thoughtful the couples were before they
ended up purchasing the home, because a reasonable payment, you start to
see that you're putting money into your own pocket.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
You have your own savings account that you're putting money into, which is
great. But I have, I have an example of a friend of mine during like, was it the
beginning of COVID? He ended up buying a nice house out in the middle of
the country, huge house more than he probably would have bought if it was
any other time, but the student loan payments weren't going, right?
Like student loans payments were paused. And so we were keeping up
during COVID and talking. He's like, man, I'm so glad that student loan
payments aren't going on right now because one thing after another keeps
breaking. And if I had to pay my student loans, I'd have a problem right now.
Rebecca: Plus the mortgage plus all these repairs, right? And he’d be in a
lot of trouble.
Dylan: Right. And so I see, it just depends on how people decide to, How
much do they want to bite off and how much can they actually chew are two
different things. And so if they're taking on too much mortgage and too much
monthly payment, it's just the golden handcuffs and it becomes a stressor in
the relationship.
Or if it's a nice home where they start to build the life that they like together,
then it can be something that they actually really enjoy. It just depends. It has
to be really thoughtful. And if it is thoughtfully done, then it's an advantage
because we're all making payments anyways. We're either paying rent or
paying a mortgage. So you know one is going into your pocket, the other is
going to someone else's pocket, but is thatRebecca: But you can still control how much, exactly how much it is.
Dylan: Yeah, exactly.
Laura Lynch: Yeah, so conversely, when you help couples sort of reduce
their debt load and get to a place where their payments are manageable
within the scope of the mission that they want to accomplish as a couple and
the things that they want to do, how do you see that impacting their
relationship?
Dylan: Well, I see it can totally relieve the stress of that one person in the
relationship that was stressed out. Like Rebecca said, one person is a little
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
bit more comfortable with the debt than the other. And I've seen people just
say, I finally can think about the future.
Rebecca: It gives you a clean slate.
Dylan: I can finally breathe. And it's just like the stress is gone and they know
that they have a plan. And they're going to get to the end of that plan, and
they'll be debt free of the consumer debt or the student loans and everything
else becomes more manageable for them.
So it really does make a huge impact for the relationship. Just having that
idea or having the plan and the strategy to manage it properly, whether
they're going to fast-track this in six months or know that it's a two-year
process. Either way it just feels good.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. I think also just in general, paying off debt, single
or married, it just gives you that opportunity to just feel like you're stepping
into a new chapter of your life, and you get to stop being so bitter about your
student loans for that diploma that you're not using. You just get to say like,
okay, that's back there, whatever.
And you get to stop bemoaning every time you have to make a payment
every single month, because all those things, like they just come with a lot of
baggage. And so you're able to just move on with your life. I think that that
brings a lot of value to the relationship.
And then in terms of making these intentional thoughts with the housing in
particular. I mean, most people are still going to look at a 30-year mortgage,
15-year mortgage. So it's still like a big commitment if they're buying a home
now. But I do think that journey of paying off your debt and getting that
intentional with their money, it absolutely impacts the way that they view that
decision and how they want to do that in the future. Because they've made
the mistakes of taking on too much debt and they don't want to do that again.
So it really gives you this clean slate. And then now we can say, okay, now
what do we want to do? How do we learn from this? And now what's the life
that we run in, really designed together.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
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Dylan: And that can be really big because I see debt as a training ground to
be good at your personal finances. If you have debt and you get out of debt,
you know how to handle money.
Rebecca: Yeah, you're dialed.
Dylan: And then it turns the investing, the buying a house, everything else
becomes easier because you dealt with a problem. Everything else are the
positive sides of the financial journey. So if you get out of debt, you become
so empowered and you know how to use money properly after that moment.
Laura Lynch: So good. Yeah, I think it just opens up the world of choice,
right? Where maybe there's something that you always wanted to do. Maybe
you wanted to start your own coaching business as an example, right? And
you can't do that while you're still having to kind of churn in the system in
order to make sure that you're able to pay off the debt.
But once you get to that place, then you can take some risk and you can.
maybe follow a passion, maybe cut back your working hours in order to
travel. You can really align your life with the experiences and the lifestyle that
you want to have and your impact that you want to make while you're here
on this planet. And you don't have to just kind of stay committed to the paying
off the debt, focus, paying off the debt, focus.
Rebecca: Yeah, or just taking it, month by month and not seeing that there
is a light at that end of the tunnel. You're just continuing in the same habits
that are keeping you right where you're at, which is honestly on a hamster
wheel, you know?
And so the more you consume, the more you have to work. I think that that's
something that people don't think about enough is that everything you buy
means that you have to earn more. When you start to look at it like that, and
most people aren't necessarily fulfilled by their jobs, right?
They're sitting behind a computer clickety-clacking, and they're not
necessarily seeing their direct impact on the world and how what they're
doing day-in-day out is truly helping others. So they struggle with that lack of
purpose. So if your buying habits are keeping you stuck in that reality, then
that deserves examination.
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If the way that you're housing yourself is keeping you stuck in that situation,
that's worth examining - because when you lower your cost of living, be it by
decreasing your mortgage, decreasing your debt, or just simplifying overall,
then that allows you to say, you know what, I've always wanted to start
keeping bees. And that's how I'm going to fund my life.
Or, yeah, like what we did was we completely paid off all of our debt. We
saved up a ton of money and invested a bunch of money. And then we were
able to say, you know what, we can handle a couple of years of low income
- because when you start a business, it takes a while to make some money.
So we're like, we can deal with that and invest in just ourselves and trying to
figure this out, see if we can do it. And it's been the most rewarding journey
ever for our marriage and just as individuals. But we would not have been
able to do that if it hadn't first started with, “Let's be more intentional with how
we use our money and let's really look at how are we housing ourselves and
how much are we spending on that?” And like, I mean, that really was like
the biggest decision that brought us on this path.
Laura Lynch: So let's talk just a little bit about how you help your clients
design a life of joint purpose and resilience.
Rebecca: Yeah. it really starts with the basics, right? Like if you wanna talk
about the big stuff, then you've gotta start with the small stuff. So we really
start with just the budget and first of all, teaching people how to budget and
their cash flow. And so really focusing on what are their ins and their outs,
and how are they spending their money now, and getting them to start by
just making observations, right? And we're not judging each other about how
we're spending our money.
We're just looking to understand what's going on right now. And so we start
really simple with that. And then we really just move throughout their entire
financial playbook, I guess, so to speak. And we just move through
everything: looking at their debt, looking at their incomes, looking at
opportunities that they have to make lifestyle changes where appropriate.
And also to help them make the most of the opportunities that they have
available to them. And so we'll talk to them about making sure that they are
contributing to their 401k at work. Or considering a Roth and that sort of
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
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thing. So we really walk through everything from budgeting to getting started
investing in the educational sense and helping them understand really how
every decision is truly going to impact their day-to-day life. And that's a really
big part of what we do is helping them understand, like I said, trade-offs and
why they're doing what they're doing.
Dylan: Yeah, and a big part is getting both people at the table, having the
conversation together. Because a lot of times before a couple's come to work
with us, they haven't done that quite yet. One person's hesitant, they're not
really interested or they know they want to be involved in the conversation,
they just don't know how. So a lot of times it's the conversations and the open
ended questions that we ask that help just prompt the conversation that
they've never had before. So that Rebecca knows what my goals and
dreams are, and she knows what my goals and dreams are. And then how
can we align those things and get on the same page together?
Rebecca: You said you twice.
Dylan: Oh, did I?
Rebecca: We only care about Dylan's dreams here.
Dylan: I knew what I meant, but I hope everyone - but yeah, just facilitating
those conversations on the bigger picture, because so many times when it
comes to money in the relationship, we get so caught up on the small details,
but forget where we're actually going. And so it just helped helping people
see the forest through the trees, essentially.
Rebecca: Yeah, and that's what we talk about a lot with folks. The finance
side is so easy for couples to default. That's what they're going to talk about.
They're going to talk about the obvious things. They're going to talk about
how much did they spend eating out?
And how much did they spend on travel or whatever that month, or they'll
just look at the budget or they'll just look at the investments, but they're only
looking at dollars and cents. They don't know the questions to ask to actually
say, how do we start to look at this to make changes? How do we have the
right conversations so that we get to the root of maybe a spending issue or
someone who isn't interested in money, and getting both people to sit at the
table and be willing to have the conversations about investing and not just
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
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be like, “Oh, you're got it. You're so good at it.” And it's like, that sounds great
to divide and conquer. It sounds super efficient.
But as we know, especially women, a lot of times when we're left out of that
conversation, it can be very detrimental to our future. And so it's like, even if
you trust your spouse with everything, you still need to have those hard
conversations. And so we really help them learn how to facilitate those, and
ask the questions that just aren't obvious. And then how to take those
answers and turn it into an actionable step, and actually come to a resolution
of, okay, this is what we're going to do.
Dylan: That's the big thing, right? The actionable step that they both are
excited to do together.
Laura Lynch: Yeah, so good. Just this week, my husband and I were
working on our taxes, which is a yearly thing where you have to sit down and
pull up all the different businesses you got going on and do all the things and
make sure you have all the documents. And so before we got started, I'm
like, okay. Let's have a unity conversation here about how we're on the same
team and we're going to look at the numbers and they don't necessarily come
with any judgment there.
We're looking at the past. They're just the numbers. but let me tell you what
could trigger me in this conversation. And you talk about how you might like,
and just sort of having a prep conversation, because we know from history
that this can be a triggering event for us every year. So having like, I have
this scarcity mentality around spending, and this is why I'm so frugal.
And so let's talk about the values around how we're treating our money a
little bit, just so that we can make sure that we're on the same page before
we go into this conversation, because I don't want it to ruin our week talking
about money. So I think that those conversations that you're helping clients
through are so valuable.
Rebecca: Well, and that's such a great example, right? Before we had this
challenging conversation, let's just voice our biggest concerns. What are you
not looking forward to dealing with right now? What can I help you through,
right? So what are you most concerned about?
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And what can I help you through? Because the thing is, what really is at the
root of it, is everybody just wants to be heard and understood and they want
to be respected. And so when you can finally have those conversations
where both people feel like they're being heard, they're being understood
and their thoughts are being respected, they're not being shouted down.
They're not being told that they're wrong. They're not being told that they're
stupid, or anything like that, then you can actually work together. So it's really
great to do even just that of prefacing the triggering conversation. We talk a
lot about when you're going to have a money date with your spouse, how to
make it fun.
And it's just a matter of focusing on the right things, which is keeping it
positive and setting up an environment where it's not just doom and gloom
again. Most people, they're like, “Oh yeah, our budget dates are just both of
us on our laptop and just plugging in numbers.” And it's like, there really
should be more conversation than this. And it should be not just about what
went wrong, but what went well and all of those ways that we can find the
opportunity to kind of rewire our brains and our relationship with each other
and with money, so that we're not only talking about finances when it's bad,
but we're talking about it even when it's good.
Especially when it's good, because we have such a negative bias that we
have to overcome. And when we have that negative bias and things aren't
necessarily going well, it's so easy to blame your spouse and just be like,
this is all your fault. Even if that doesn't make sense, but we like to, cause
we want to scapegoat, right? So we shine a light on their flaws and it can just
snowball into such a negative thing.
Dylan: Yeah. I love what you're talking about too, Laura. It's just the idea of
setting the intention before you even have the conversation. And we do this
all the time before we do a podcast or we're working on a big project because
we talk to couples and talk about how to manage money together, but
Rebecca and I are very different and we are very opinionated.
So being able to set the intention and say like relationship first, now let's have
this difficult conversation. It's always helpful because then we can walk away
if we need to, and then just hit the pause button and reset and make sure
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
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that we're being respectful to one another, just like you do with your tax
conversation this past week.
Laura Lynch: Good. Well, Rebecca and Dylan, thank you so much for
sharing all of that. Such a great work that you're doing and such great
wisdom about how you took a hard look at housing when you were first kind
of figuring out what your primary missions were around getting debt free and
having travel in your life. Would you please share with listeners where they
can track you down?
Dylan: So we have a podcast as well, called RADmoney, R-A-D money. It's
all one word actually. And then we're on Instagram and our handle is
radcoaches over there.
Rebecca: Yeah. And our website is radcoaches.com. So you'll find us - really
radcoaches is kind of anywhere. And we put out two episodes a week.
Hopefully soon we'll have you, Laura.
Laura Lynch: Awesome. So we'll make sure that all of those links are in the
show notes, and thank you both so much.
Dylan: Thanks for having us.
Hey, I’m honored that you listened to this episode of Less House More
Moolah. I hope something in it will help you continue to move toward a life
aligned with your values.
Every algorithm out there is trying to tell us what to prioritize, but we get to
choose. If you haven’t ever identified your key values, I have a free
resource on my website to help you.
You just have to go to thetinyhouseadviser.com. It’s the tiny house A-D-V-IS-E-R dot com.
At the bottom of the page, you can grab the tiny life values worksheet.
When we design a life around “what is our core truth?”, we shortcut to deep
fulfillment.
Making Your Home Meet Your Couple Goals with
Rebecca & Dylan Brooks
Less House More Moola with Laura Lynch
https://thetinyhouseadviser.com
See you next Thursday.
Please see the show notes for an important disclosure regarding The Tiny
House Adviser, LLC and this episode.