[speaker001:] Okay [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] How are you? You want to go ahead and start talking about whether you budget [LAUGHTER]?
[speaker001:] Yes. Yeah. Well i-, I, I, I feel like, uh, I am from Mars. I mean I'm fifty years old and, uh, I've been divorced for, um, eighteen years. But I've two kids and all. But I, uh, I, I've never had a budget and I don't, uh, do any planning and I don't know,
[speaker002:] [Noise].
[speaker001:] I don't, uh, uh, I don't have a long-term financial plan. I don't try to control my expenses.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] But I'm, I'm glad you're a stranger.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER] That sounds kind of like me.
[speaker001:] But, really, I'm, I happy, I, I, well I'm curious how other people live. Uh, so maybe we should start with you [LAUGHTER]. What do you do?
[speaker002:] About the same thing.
[speaker001:] Really?
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Oh. Maybe they're going to arrest us both.
[speaker002:] I'm even in worse shape because I have eight children and, uh, we live from hand to mouth [LAUGHTER]. We hope that there's enough money at the end of the month to pay for the bills and if there's not, then we [LAUGHTER] due for the next month.
[speaker001:] Wow.
[speaker002:] A couple of times we've tried some things and they worked but I'm not disciplined enough [swallowing] to keep doing it.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] The best program we ever had is at the beginning of the month we took and, uh, took my check and divided it out into envelopes
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] and then paid for the expenses out of that envelope and when the envelope was empty [LAUGHTER], then you didn't have any more money to spend in that area.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] And that worked out real well cause we didn't have to keep writing down what we'd spent.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] [Swallowing] It was just that when that was empty, you knew you were out of money. And we did that pretty successfully for about three months and then we started [LAUGHTER] borrowing from one envelope to put it in the other envelope and in about two months we were back to doing the same thing we always do.
[speaker001:] Huh. The, uh, I had a part-time job around, oh gosh, fifteen years ago, seventy-six,
[speaker002:] [Noise].
[speaker001:] and, uh, uh, this was a sort of a career shift at the time and so I was willing to take a half time job to do that. And I actually did, my bank account would, uh, I'd, I, I kept bouncing checks, just at the end of the month but I, I had miscalculated. I, well I didn't keep a balance [LAUGHTER]. It's one of the problems [speaks this very faintly].
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] I never had to in the past.
[speaker002:] [Noise].
[speaker001:] I always kept plenty of money in my checking account, but when you're only earning half the salary. Even though I wasn't spending much money, I sometimes I sometimes would just, things would get to tight. Uh, and sometimes what I would do is keep a piece of paper in my wallet and every time I, uh, I spent money, I mean cash mostly, I would, uh, write it down
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] so I could see at the end of a month how much I spent on food so I could do better planning.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] But I would forget to write the things down and it, that I, I don't know if I ever went as far as three months or not [LAUGHTER] i-, i-, in keeping that kind of data. I certainly haven't done that in sixteen years or whatever.
[speaker002:] I even find now like with the automatic tellers, I'll go take money out of that
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] and then I forget to take that [LAUGHTER] out of my checking account.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] And, uh,
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] So I, I, I leave a little bit of a slush fund in my checking account and I figure that, so the balance showing in the checking account is always somewhat different that what's really there.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] And I figure that gives me room for the mistakes I make.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh. The, uh, I, i-, I have to say that, let's see, at this point on, I don't run out of money. Uh, and it, uh, a-, and I don't, I mean someday, if I were to get remarried I might want to buy a house which requires lots of money which I don't have and I, I, I think my strategy if, if I may, i-, i-, is to, is to not spend money. I mean I don't have expensive tastes. I don't go out. I mean I buy a car, well the last car I got rid of I'd had, it was nineteen years old.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Pe-, people were embarrassed for me. I mean it was, it was a good car and,
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]. But it was still running.
[speaker001:] Oh, it was great. My, my mechanics loved it because it was an old, it was a sixty-five Buick and it just wouldn't stop. Uh, and it, I, I just didn't feel the need for a new car. It isn't like I couldn't afford one.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] Uh, and now, I mean I, I don't, uh, I tend to eat expensive food. I mean I don't mind buying a good steak but for me, I only do that every week or, without even,
[speaker002:] [Child talking].
[speaker001:] I mean, maybe once a month.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] I mean you buy a, a tenderloin steak, it costs outrageous, like twelve dollars a pound. You buy a, a, less than half a pound so it's six or seven dollars. To me, I realize if you have eight kids you're not going to run out and do that.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER] Not very often [NOISE].
[speaker001:] But, but I'm just, I'm just saying as a single person, that's, that's a drop in the bucket. And so if you're extravagant on how you buy food, it doesn't add up. If you're buying, I mean if you're not going to super expensive restaurants, which I don't care to go to.
[speaker002:] That's right.
[speaker001:] So, so that's, I think, one of the reasons I don't need to budget is that I don't have, I don't, I don't have to hold myself back from buying that expensive thing because I can't afford it, because I'm not interested in that expensive thing.
[speaker002:] A lot of,