[speaker001:] now are we off and running
[speaker002:] that you were saying sorry
[speaker001:] oh I was just saying I guess old age has a few compensations I don't have to plan as carefully as I used to but uh
[speaker002:] do you feel like you you took the steps that you you were glad that you took um earlier I mean would you have done anything differently
[speaker001:] no I don't think so uh we have three children and we were able to put all three of them through college and um
[speaker002:] that's that's quite a feat in today's economic situation
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] that's wonderful um I'm sort of beginning in that score um we have a two year old daughter and hope to have another child soon so
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] it's it's not easy putting enough aside but we're doing a um our best to try and have fairly regular meetings to discuss at least where our goals are sometimes um it is less consistent than than it could be in terms of our ability to put money aside but um I'm I'm curious about the things that you did that that seemed to work best for you that you'd pass on to somebody else
[speaker001:] uh well
[speaker002:] as as advice
[speaker001:] the only way if if you spend all you take in every month you're uh living beyond your means
[speaker002:] that's right
[speaker001:] and emergencies or what we could would consider an emergency uh always come up
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] I I I don't care how how you how closely you think you figured and then planned something always comes up so uh when I I guess we started by necessity because we went to uh law school on my husband's GI Bill
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] back in the days when uh the government paid uh the student's tuition and and bought books up to a certain amount plus uh gave the veteran a stipend we started off with ninety dollars a month and then a little bit later got up to a hundred and five dollars a month
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so there was no way that we could do except when we cashed our monthly stipend was to put twenty dollars a week in an envelope
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] deciding that it was better to go without one day a week than for four days at the end of the month
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] and then uh later on when we got out of school my husband got recalled into the Air Force when the Korean mess came up and uh so we had already established the envelope habit and uh
[speaker002:] and the envelope is your savings
[speaker001:] no no no this was our weekly budget
[speaker002:] oh okay
[speaker001:] but uh we realized very early on that if we were going to have money to buy cars and that sort of thing that we would have to save up beforehand
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] so uh we uh uh began uh in nineteen fifty uh to pay cash for everything we bought a car in nineteen fifty and paid it off in three months so since then except for a house houses we've paid cash for everything and uh to illustrate how well that works so that you have the opportunity to take care of special pricing
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh our headquarters was transferred from South Carolina to Texas one time and because Texas gas was much much cheaper to cook with than electricity this one couple that we were transferred with uh bought a gas stove a very simplified gas stove for a hundred and forty some odd dollars
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] we had uh in storage and used uh just a little teeny gas stove but after we got to Waco we saw an ad in the paper one day where a lady who had uh was moving into a house with a built in oven had the very best stove that Sears made at the time with two ovens a grill in the middle on top clock all the fancy amenities
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] and we were able to buy it for a hundred dollars because we had the cash
[speaker002:] yes yeah
[speaker001:] and uh uh
[speaker002:] that's that's been the case for us with with uh cars and our preference recently has been used cars so it's been nice to be able to negotiate when you have cash when you're buying a car
[speaker001:] the yeah uh-huh yeah
[speaker002:] well that's a that's a an important lesson do you feel like you've passed that along to your three kids given how different the economy's been in their lives
[speaker001:] no unfortunately we have not except for one daughter-in-law and uh rise up and call her blessed every day uh for some reason or other my husband didn't see fit to give the boys a meaningful allowance he just felt he had to keep control control of the purse strings
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and uh when they went off to college they had never really budgeted
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and uh that that was a big mistake so even though you know your children are going to make mistakes uh I don't I don't know how to tell you