The Calculated “Risk” They Took When Paying Debt With Jen Hatzung | HMM 29

EPISODE 29

[00:00:09] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Her Money Matters Podcast, the podcast to help you take control of your finances. Join your host, motivational money coach, Jen Hemphill as she shares with you practical, simple money insights into real life stories by women like you.

Let’s get to it!

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:26] JH: Hey hey there, this is Jen Hemphill and if you are tuning in the day this goes live, which is the day of Christmas eve. I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, happy holidays and really thank you for taking time out of your holiday to tune in and listen to this podcast. If you’re listening to this podcast another day outside of the Christmas eve day, I want to thank you as well because it means so much that you even take some time out of your busily schedule to tune in to this podcast, to listen to what I have to say, sometimes my rants, sometimes things that I saw or listening to my amazing guest that I have on this podcast.

I figured that for this particular episode, I really swam with a guest just to make it light and fun and I really couldn't think of a better person to make it light and super fun other than Jen Hatzung. Let me tell you just some highlights from my conversation with Jen. In this episode you’re going to learn the impact that the candid family conversations about money growing up what impact they had on Jen. You’re also going to hear Jen’s take on who should be the money manager in the household.

You’re going to learn on why Jen and her husband did not do their dream honeymoon in Europe and what resulted instead? Also, what calculated risk they took to pay off a good chunk of their debt and why they did it. I’m going to give you a little more details, a little bio on Jen Hatzung. Jen Hatzung has a BA in political science and has a background on social media, brand marketing, working with military families and nonprofit communications.

Jen is the cofounder of the podcast She Percolates where they believe success is an ever evolving concept, it is different for everyone and each iteration is valid and worth celebrating. Their mission is to introduce their audience to interesting and inspiring women who live all different versions of success. They strive to encourage women to live out their own version of success.

Let’s not delay anymore and because I really want you to meet Jen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:56] JH1: Welcome Jen to the Her Money Matters podcast. I’m excited to have you here and to have another Jen to talk to today.

[0:03:03] JH2: Yay, thank you so much for having me, I’m so excited to be on this show. I’m a little bit nervous to share my money experience, the good and the bad but I’m excited to be here.

[0:03:15] JH1: I’m excited to have you, let me tell you all, I’ve already told you about the professional Jen but she is also a military spouse like myself. She is an amazing Instagrammer, I’ve learned so much from her.

[0:03:31] JH2: Oh, thank you!

[0:03:33] JH1: There’s just so much to learn, she’s just so creative and I’ve already told you about the She Percolates Podcast but it’s an awesome fun show to listen to. Just wanted to plug that in, you ready to dive in?

[0:03:48] JH2: Yes, I am, thank you.

[0:03:49] JH1: Okay, perfect. Well Jen, we know about you the professional, we know you’re a rock star, that’s not to question. I just wanted to know and of our listeners to know more about you. Jen, the woman, the soon to be mom because you’re expecting. The wife, the sister, the aunt, all that. Tell us something more about you that maybe you’ve never shared and you’re willing to share, I’d love to know.

[0:04:15] JH2: Okay cool. Yeah, like you said, I’m the co-host of She Percolates, my husband is a maintenance officer in the Navy so I’ve moved around a lot. My dad was also in the navy for 32 years. He retired just a few years ago. So I grew up in the Navy, I feel like it just kind of — I always joke, like if you were to cut me, I wouldn’t bleed red, I would bleed blue for the Navy.

So something about me, well some people might know but I thought that I was going to go to college and become a doctor. I applied to all of the colleges as a premed microbiology major. Then as senior year really gotten full swing and came to an end, I was like, “I don’t want to do that,” and then I changed my major three times in college and I went from being the gal that everyone thought would graduate in three years and be crazy and I took some extra time and I feel like I really focused on finding myself and being okay with everything not being perfect or going the way according to plan.

Then also, I do have a background in finance that was my first job out of college. I worked for a large financial institution and I had to wear para suits, panty hose and pearls for like, in my early to mid-20. I’ve been on both the corporate side and then on this more of entrepreneurial side.

[0:05:51] JH1: That is interesting and I’m with you about the changing, I also changed majors in college and then got on to get degrees that I know basically, I can’t say I’m not using them but not specifically in that focus. Of course I’ve taken away from them and applied to what I do today. I definitely hear you on that.

Because I think sometimes we graduate high school and for a lot of us, we know the next thing is college right? We don’t really have the time, we think we know what we’re going to do but we’re young. To really decide right away for all of us maybe, there’s only a few that know right away what they want to do right?

[0:06:35] JH2: Yeah, totally. Yeah!

[0:06:37] JH1: I know for me, goodness. I was going to be a dentist.

[0:06:41] JH2: Yeah, see? We went from this medical type world to here we are now podcasting.

[0:06:47] JH1: Yes, then I realize one day I’m like, “Oh,” I know this sounds silly but I was thinking, “Oh, I’m going to have to look at people’s teeth which means not all mouths are the same so they’re not all going to be pretty and I might be disgusted and I have a really sensitive stomach.” That made me change my mind. Silly as it is.

But anyways, let’s get back to you. Tell us how you grew up around money, conversations you had with your parents or your parents had conversations with you or maybe things that you saw and experienced. We’d love to know more about that.

[0:07:23] JH2: Yeah. So growing up, I would say we were totally middle class, the middle of middle class. We definitely, I don’t think we were poor, I don’t think we were super well off and wealthy. I never went without things that I needed, maybe sometimes there were things that I wanted that I didn’t get to have but everything we needed was always there, we were always able to do things. Thankfully my dad was stationed in some really amazing places. I spent most of my life living in San Diego and Hawaii.

[0:07:58] JH1: Oh so beautiful.

[0:08:00] JH2: Places where you could just go to the beach and go camping and do stuff like that. I was really lucky in that sense but my parents were really candid and open and honest about money. It wasn’t something to where they were saying they were worried or stressed about money and that kind of trickled down to us or anything. They talked about it. It was a conversation that was had in our home.

I feel like from a pretty young age, I would have a lot of conversations with my dad about that and that really transitioned into high school and college and even especially now, I call my dad a lot and we talk about financial things like decisions and things to do and just sharing an excitement of goals that my husband and I have hit or when we were buying our first house, I reached out to him a lot just to kind of understand how things are going.

To just get his opinion and his advice on it. Also too I think it was great because we had that conversation so much when I was young and I just knew that talking about money was okay, it really helped me to, I think it’s helpful for my dad because I reach out to him, he doesn’t feel like he’s lecturing me because I’m saying, “Hey, I want to know about this. Yeah, I want to share this with you where I want your insight.”

We have conversations like very candidly now that I’ll say, “This is what I’m thinking,” he’ll say, “Well this is what I would do,” and we’ll just kind of be like, “Okay, they’re different.” Even with my husband, my dad and my husband talk about finances and stuff like that. It’s a conversation that we always had and I can’t think of a better word than struggle but there were some struggles, my parents had financially growing up and I saw them in a good way.

In the sense that I think I learned from them and again it was never, we didn’t have food on the table or electricity or something. Just trying to make things work and get to do those extra things is where they were trying to make that happen. I also think, as I got older and got out of the house and my siblings were still home. I think for them, my parent’s financial situation changed a lot to where I would say I grew up more like middle, middle class and I think my siblings grew up in more of a upper middle class.

[0:10:33]JH1: Okay.

[0:10:34] JH2: Yeah.

[0:10:35]JH1: That’s awesome. I love that because money can be such a taboo subject, where we don’t want to necessarily speak about it. The fact that you and your father just speak about it candidly that you’re able to call, he’s able to call, you even mentioned your husband and him talking candidly about money. I think that’s just amazing and just because like I said, money can be such a taboo subject. So for you all to be able to do that, that is a beautiful thing because that was definitely helpful.

[0:11:07] JH2: It is. Also too I think translated as well because some of my closest girlfriends that I’ve been friends with since middle school and we still talk, text regularly or I was texting with them this morning. We are open about it too. It’s just one of those things where I feel like, it’s a conversation that’s okay to have with people, not with everyone but I’m okay talking about that.

[0:11:31] JH1: That is great because you don’t see that that often at all. So I love that. Of course you’re married, are you the money manager in your home?

[0:11:46] JH2: Actually, I was for the first five and a half years of our marriage and so just in this last couple of months, we’ve transitioned to my husband taking over which was really helpful in the time that it happened. It was when I just found out I was pregnant and I had a really, really bad first trimester which Jen I know you know but I was dead to the world. I was just so sick, I had been to the hospital a few times, I had medication, I was barely functioning.

It was a really good time for us to transition because I was like, “I can’t even take this all, I can’t even do this all right now.” It was really good. I think that my husband’s really good with money, I think he is naturally more of a saver than I am. It was good for me to really be in charge of it for a while but I think it’s really helpful for both sides to get to do it because you really, you see what the other side was doing and I think some of the times where little blenders happened, when I was managing it.

Now that happens for him and I think he sees it better how, “Oh I know Jen was working on this really hard and always keeping things up to date but little things happen.” You both are swept in your car and taking care of things that you forgot to mention to one another. The balance is just less than what you thought it would be because if you both go out and spend the $75 and you just didn’t realize or communicate it that well then you’re missing a big chunk of money that you just kind of thought was going to be there.

[0:13:20]JH1: Absolutely, communication is so big and you are not the only person that have spoken to recently that they’re in the process of transitioning or they’ve transitioned where they’re no longer the money manager but their spouse is. So it’s definitely neat to see and you’re right. One of the things I talk about is to make sure that both, even though obviously one person is going to be the money manager right?

But for both people to know what’s going on. Therefore, something happens, like you said, you found out that you were pregnant and you had already transitioned but if you hadn’t at that time, would he have known what’s going on? And then not feeling well and trying to communicate that that would have been made for a difficult time. It’s always good to be in the loop even though you may not be the “money manager” but always be good to be in the loop about that for sure.

[0:14:18] JH2: yeah, I also think too, I feel like a lot of my friends, the woman does the money managing but I know for a lot of — I don’t know if it’s normal but it seems to me when I did financial counselling, a lot of times the guy really handled that more and I think in the military world, I think it’s really important for the women to know all of that because once deployment happens, they don’t have access to everything. They don’t have internet that works all the time. You need to know what bells are coming in and out and I just think it works well for both to know those things.

For both to have an understanding of these bills come out, this pay period, this bills come out this pay period, here’s how much money we have, extra free frivolous fun money we have each pay period and understand that, I think it helps your spending when you both know what is coming out each month and each pay period.

[0:15:11]JH1: Absolutely. I agree. Jen, what would you say is the best money you’ve spent?

[0:15:17] JH2: Okay, so this is super easy, hands down, the best money we have ever spent was a trip we took to Europe last December and I say that because the trip that we took, we went to Paris and we went to Italy.

[0:15:32] JH1: So fun.

[0:15:34] JH2: I wanted to do that for our honeymoon six years ago but financially we were not at a place to do that and I’m so glad that we waited instead of just putting that all on our credit card and then yeah, we would have been there and had fun but I don’t — I would have been worried, we both would have been worried about, “Oh should we really spend this money?”

This trip we took to Europe was right after my husband got home from deployment, he got home mid-November, we left the day after Christmas so like six weeks. We had saved up, we paid cash for everything, obviously we used our rewards points’ credit card. Every time we made a major purchase like bought the tickets, did this, we transferred the money right over to pay it off. We had saved up that money and it was like the best thing ever.

We did not worry about what we were spending over there because we had saved up a large chunk of money for spending money to go out to eat, to do some shopping, to do all that stuff. It was so worth it and I feel like it is just an experience that I know we’ll never forget and I’m just really — I’m really glad that my husband really pushed us to wait for that trip to be able to save and pay for it in cash.

[0:16:49] JH1: That is beautiful. I’m glad you bring that up because I know, for example, as you know, the family and I took a trip to Spain and we had been wanting to do that for years but at that time our kids were younger or we didn’t’ have kids and then we started having kids and then they’re young. So it’s like, are they going to really appreciate that trip? We wanted to make sure that we had it covered because we’ve been like for example, we went on a cruise and we had saved up for it, no problem.

Then what we didn’t think about was the extra stuff on the cruise. We didn’t have the money to do that. It’s like, “Oh okay, we’ll get off the boat, get something to eat but we can’t go on this snorkelling or do all the other extra fun stuff.” And it’s not that you have to do all that stuff but you want to have that liberty to choose, that freedom to choose whether you want to do it or not. That’s beautiful. I love that.

[0:17:48] JH2: Yeah, I think too it was really good because it was a goal of ours, so it was like when we would make big financial purchases or do things, we would factor that in like how will this affect when we get to go. Thankfully, not thankfully but a blessing from my husband being deployed last year was we were able to save a lot of extra money. In addition to paying a lot of things off and putting money in our regular savings, we also were able to say, we’re going to allot this much money each month to go towards our trip. That was kind of our rewards after his nine month deployment was taking this long awaited trip to Europe.

[0:18:30]JH1: That is awesome. I love that. As far as how you do your finances, are you more of a spreadsheet person, are you software or are you more of traditional with the pencil, paper and calculator?

[0:18:47] JH2: It’s funny, my husband and I are the exact same way; we are pencil, paper and calculator. I would do it each month in my big planner just to see that we’re in the right spot. But he does it, he has tons of legal pads that he uses for notes and everything but we’re both very — it’s very similar, we both did the same thing every pay period. We would write down how much money came in, what bills are coming out, even though it was pretty much the same every month but it was like, we needed to do that and factor that all in.

We have it setup pretty well to where we’ve kind of evened out to where different bills come out each pay period, it’s about the same amount but we like to calculate it every two weeks so we know exactly, this is exactly what’s coming out. In this period, we have this much extra money, this pay period we have this much extra money.

We also — my husband is a little bit better at this than I am but he will also factor in like, “Okay, we need to buy this thing that this pay period.” If he needs a new uniform or I need to order new glasses or something. He’s really good at that and then we go over it every pay period, every two weeks, we just kind of just so we both know.

“Hey, here it is,” or some weeks we — some pay periods we have three weekends where we’re living off of our extra money after we’ve done savings and all this stuff. He’ll be like, “Oh I took some of our extra money and I put it towards groceries because we have three weekends we have to get through and stuff.” So yeah, just really good, I think there’s something about writing it out and doing it that way than just kind of plugging numbers and that’s really helpful for both of us.

[0:20:31]JH1: Right, I do a little bit of both, spreadsheets to get like the picture of the money and then I have one of those composition notebooks that I go through and literally write every single month so I can check off because there’s been that some times where I’m like, “Oh.” Sometimes since we do the online bill pay, I input whatever bill that is, how much is due and if you don’t hit enter, maybe I got because, you know, “squirrel!”

That’s me, I get easily distracted and if you don’t enter, you don’t get the confirmation number which means you didn’t pay the bills. I make sure that I check it off, I write down all the stuff when we pay it and then write those confirmation numbers because that way I know it’s been done.

[0:21:23] JH2: Yeah, that’s really good, that’s good. I think another thing that we’ve done that’s really helpful for us is we give ourselves every pay period a certain amount of money to spend eating out. That’s really been helpful because that I feel like was where a lot of our extra fund money was going to was eating out and so now we have a set amount, each pay period and now we kind of double things sometimes when we want to go out on a Tuesday night for dinner.

Sometimes I’m like, “Yeah, let’s go out to dinner,” and then I’m going to think about it more and I’m like, “You know what? I don’t want to spend that 40, $50 tonight, let me just whip something up that’s in the fridge and let’s save that for the weekend or something.” Yeah, we have a set amount and then to just depend on — sometimes that means we go out to two really nice dinners for the two weeks and sometimes we just are like, “You know what? We’re going to just kind of do smaller things and we’ll go out to brunch a couple of times and get a more simple dinner out.” It helps us I think to really think about those spending decisions that we’re making.

[0:22:27]JH1: Right, I like that. So basically you use the traditional pencil, paper, and calculator. You sit down every pay period to look at your finances, you divvy up money depending also on what’s coming up and you really plan as far as eating out, those things that you enjoy doing. Because that was going to be my next question is about how you manage your finances but you pretty much answered that.

[0:22:52] JH2: Good. I do have to say too, it’s not perfect, there are definitely times…

[0:22:57] JH1: It’s never perfect.

[0:22:58] JH2: Yeah, we go over and then the next pay period, we’re like, “Okay, we used, there’s this much money on the credit card that we didn’t have to pay it off because we like to pay it off each time. We’ll have to kind of take that from next week’s fund money or re-evaluate. We’re definitely not perfect and we’ve come a long way because when we were first married, we fought a lot about money. Not a lot but if there was one thing we were fighting about, it was that.

[0:23:26] JH1: Right. Thanks for sharing that. It’s never perfect. For us, it’s never perfect and that’s one thing that I think holds people back, it’s not that it has to be perfect but one, they’re afraid to start and then if it doesn’t work out, right?

[0:23:43] JH2: Yeah, right.

[0:23:44]JH1: It just know that it’s never perfect, sometimes you’re going to overspend here or there but the important thing is that you know how much it was so you know how to work from there because you can’t work on something unless you know exactly what you’re working with. I’m glad that you brought that up because it’s never perfect and it never will be. That’s just how it is.

[0:24:07] JH2: It is.

[0:24:08] JH1: Life is not stagnant, life is a lot of ups and downs, life happens, things happen and that’s how it is. It is what it is.

[0:24:16] JH2: It is.

[0:24:17]JH1: What would you say is your proudest money moment?

[0:24:21] JH2: So I would have to say, this happened pretty recently, just last month in July. We paid off my student loan.

[0:24:33]JH1: Congratulations.

[0:24:34] JH2: Thank you. We paid it like in the same we paid off my student loan and we had taken out, we had consolidated some debt on this, on a loan, like a five year loan that had a really low interest rate like 2.7% and we paid that off and we paid that off two and a half year’s early.

[0:24:51]JH1: That is awesome.

[0:24:52] JH2: We paid both of those things off and now, the only debt that we have is our mortgage and my husband’s interest free car loan. That was a really big deal to do that.

[0:25:04]JH1: That is, and congratulations for doing that that is exciting because then you have more extra money to reach those other financial goals that you want to work on.

[0:25:17] JH2: Yeah.

[0:25:18]JH1: That’s great.

[0:25:18] JH2: Thank you. We had to rearrange some of our spending obviously but also we made a really big decision that we are going to take some of the money we were putting in investments for this year and we were going to use it to get that stuff paid off because we are going to be having a baby at the end of the year.

It was one of those things that we were like — in the long run, I feel like instead of continuing to pay these off for many years, we just need to do get it paid off, take that investment loss for six or seven months but know that we’re going to be pretty close to debt free. Start back up again at the end of the year putting all of that, the money that we are putting investments is going back there and not to pay off the loan.

[0:26:05] JH1: Right. That is great. Good thinking and it comes from I believe also from you both communicating with each other.

[0:26:14] JH2: Yeah, and that was something that we both had to be okay with it and the time being of everything and stuff. It was very — we talked about it a lot and we used some of our savings money, we had a couple of different parts of savings money, cannot touch, this is emergency fund for the world starts to end and my husband doesn’t have a job or something.

We had other savings funds and you know what? It’s better to take this and get that debt paid off than just to have it sit there and then earn some crazy nothing percent.

[0:26:47]JH1: Right, you touched about something as far as the decision to do that because sometimes yes, I stress that emergency funds are only to be used in emergencies. But if there’s a certain situation that you talked with your spouse and if you also got to think about in terms of is the income that you’re gaining at the moment, is it stable?

If you’re confident that it’s stable. You might consider using that for that debt if that’s something that you are really wanting to get rid of. That is some thought. It’s great that you’re communicating because with communication, even though sometimes it’s stressful and sometimes there might be — your spouse, your significant other is going to have some thought process that you might not think about. And from just you both speaking to each other about it, you can come on with a really great plan.

[0:27:44] JH2: Yes.

[0:27:47]JH1: That is awesome and congrats again.

[0:27:49] JH2: Thank you thanks you!

[0:27:50]JH1: Now, what would you say, we all are guilty of this, what would you say is your worst purchase?

[0:27:59] JH2: This is going to be kind of a tie for two things. I’ll share my earlier, my younger years one and then a more recent one that I’ve recently changed but when I was first out of college, I feel like I struggled with credit card debt but I wasn’t buying huge major purchases so I didn’t think a lot about it. I didn’t think I was really doing anything super bad or super wrong, I was using it to go to happy hour and get a pedicure and stuff like that.

Doing all of those things, I was like, “Well that kind of screwed me over,” in terms of we got married, we had to pay, we use some of my husband’s savings money to pay some of that stuff off and stuff like that and I didn’t set myself up in the best way. I would say, recently, not recently in the last month but in the last few years, I really struggled with the whole mini shopping trips, I would just go out and buy a few 15, $20 tops here or there and it would really add up but I wouldn’t wear them a lot or for a long period of time.

I came to terms with the whole idea of quality over quantity and I think that that has totally changed the way that I spend and I look back and there is a lot of purchases that I — every time you’re at a store and you’re like, “Oh it’s just $15,” that adds up. If you do that once a week, that $60. If you do it two stores once a week, that’s $120 a month and those things add up and then, I think for me, that was it. But just the mini shopping trips in general, I also avoid now as much as it pains me to do it, I avoid the dollar rinse at Target because I don’t need $10 worth of little things and then when I just like…

[0:29:48]JH1: You’ve got a good point.

[0:29:49] JH2: Yeah, when I decide to go walk our dog on Saturday and both get coffee, I don’t feel bad spending 7 or $8 on two coffee because I’ve stopped spending that extra 10, $15 at every store here and there.

[0:30:03]JH1: Right, you mentioned quality over quantity and something that I want to share with the listeners because she mentioned tank tops and quality over quantity. She is such a great styler, if you look on her Instagram, she’s always looking so beautiful and just spot on. I’m like, “I need some advice here.”

[0:30:24] JH2: Thank you. Which actually, that’s a great segue actually because I am going to be launching a second podcast called Style Files.

[0:30:32]JH1: I’m so excited about that. I have already signed up because I’m like, okay, when is she going to start? Because I’m ready.

[0:30:38] JH2: yay, Thank you, what that will be is that is me sharing how I’ve gotten to the place of finding my personal style that I love, doing it affordably and feeling confident in what I’m wearing. I’m not going to be telling you to go out and buy that $4,000 outfit that’s in the fashion magazine because as gorgeous as it might be, that’s a couple months of my mortgage right there. I’m not trying to do that at all but I feel like I’ve really learned the craft of really investing in pieces that you love and I don’t care if I wear this top once or twice a week.

I love it, I feel good in it and I get complements in it and I’m confident in it and it’s worth that value.

[0:31:20] JH1: Right, I love it. Well thanks for sharing that, I’m excited about that. That’s why I was like, I’m going to bring this up, it has nothing — it does have to do with money because you’re going to be sharing about styles that are affordable. I had to put that in. Jen as you know, this podcast is all about making money simple and taking control of it. How would you finish this sentence? Her money matters because?

[0:31:49] JH2: I would say, Her Money Matters because knowing about your finances and being educated about it is empowering. I think that we as women need to empower ourselves in every way that we can. I think you should know where that money is going, you should know how much money is coming in each month, you should know how much you’re paying for water and electric each month and groceries and eating out and all of those things. How much you spend at Target each month, how much you spend on your kids and yourself.

[0:32:17] JH1: Love it. Thank you for sharing that Jen. This has been so much fun, as always, you’re so much fun to talk to. I really appreciate you being here on the podcast. Tell us where is the best place for people to find you and learn more about you?

[0:32:32] JH2: Okay, like you’ve mentioned before, the best place I think to learn more about me and see what’s going on in my daily life is on Instagram and my handle is just my name. It’s @jenhatzung. Also for our podcast, She Percolates, again on Instagram, the handle is @shepercolates and also both of those are our website. Shepercolates.com and then when my other show launches it will be JenHatzung.com. Very easy.

[0:32:58] JH1: Okay, perfect and I’ll be sure to include that in the show notes. Thanks again Jen for sharing all that stuff, it was really a blast talking to you today and I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.

[0:33:10] JH2: Thanks so much for having me.

[0:33:12]JH1: No, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:33:14] JH: Wasn’t that super fun? Jen is just amazing, so I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed chatting with her. I wanted to give you a little update on Jen as this was recorded several months prior to its release. You heard that when we were chatting that she was very pregnant and expecting her first baby with her husband. So I’m happy to report that since our interview, her baby daughter arrived and now the Hatzung family is now a happy family of three. Congratulations Jen to you, to your husband and to your precious baby girl.

Let’s recap some things that we talked about today, we talked about the impact those candid family, money conversations growing up had on Jen. She also shared with us her take on who should be the money manager in the household and she also shares why her and her husband did not do their dream honeymoon when they first got married to Europe but what resulted instead.

Also, what calculated risk they took to pay off a good chunk of their debt and why they did it. Also, before we wrap up, I wanted to give a quick shout out as we got a great awesome review and it comes from the user Alralou, I hope I pronounced that right. She titles a review “Beyond Talking”. It’s a five star review and she says, assuming a she:

[0:35:05] A: “This is a must listen to podcast and a fantastic companion to the website JenHemphill.com. There is so many useful tools and valuable perspectives that are part of the conversations and on the site. I like the tone is positive and that we get to hear from multiple different people. It’s really great to hear something different, that they understand the money advice about budgeting. The discussions make you look forward to dealing with your own money and financial issues instead of putting it off.”

[0:35:39] JH: Thank you so much for those awesome words and just wanted to make sure that I gave her a shout out.

Now, let’s talk about a big take away that I took from the conversation with Jen which I completely agree on and I’m sure if you have listened to some of my other podcast, you have heard me say this. She talks about how both her and her husband are in the know, are in tune with what’s going on with the finances. How they review everything twice a month and there’s various reasons for doing this.

I know sometimes there’s one party that’s in the know and the other one doesn’t and there’s a lack of communication and partly of that is because it’s an uncomfortable conversation to have but it’s one that needs to be had. Reasons for having that conversation for both parties being in the know, there is just various reasons but really I want to highlight some. Life happens. So you heard Jen said that there was a transition and her first trimester was a tough one.

If she had not had that transition of who managed the finances and her husband wasn’t in the know, that would have made things a lot trickier. When life happens and both parties need to know so the other one can pick up where the original money manager left off. Another reason for really, that’s important as to why both parties need to be in the know. It just really gives for a better collaboration. If you think about it, two heads are better than one.

If you’re trying to problem solve on your own, a money issue or some debt that you’re trying to pay off or something! Some challenge you’re having around with money, don’t do it alone! Two heads are better than one, discuss this with your significant other. Definitely give for better collaboration. Besides better communication and you really — it allows you because both are in the know for better money decisions. Let’s say that, let’s give two scenarios. Let’s say your spouse is the money manager in this case right?

You don’t even know what’s going on, you just know that some money is there to do groceries. Let’s say you’re doing groceries and you just know some money is there. What would happen if you knew that if you went — of course you’re not necessarily going to go over the groceries but if you were in the know of everything that was going on like your significant other was putting an extra amount towards some debt? But you didn’t know this, you just know maybe it was being paid off but didn’t know they were working really hard to pay off the debt and they needed an extra hundred dollars a month to go towards the debt.

If you knew that, you would be making some better — chances are higher that you were going to be making some better money decisions when you go grocery shopping, when you go needing to buy some stuff for the kids or whatever the case may be. The chances are higher that you get — you make those better money decisions. Those are really three things that strike out as very important as to why you both need to be in the know.

One, life happens, one person needs to pick up where the other one left off. Two heads are better than one, it’s better collaboration when you’re trying to problem solve and you can make so much better money decisions when you’re in the know and have a clear picture of the whole, of all your finances.

That is a wrap for today, I hope you enjoyed this interview, I want to thank Jen Hatzung for joining us today for sharing her stories, for sharing some great insights and check out the show notes and the transcription on where to find Jen at jenhemphill.com/29 as in episode 29 and that’s jenhemphill.com/29. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to join us in our private Facebook community. It’s a community that I created just for you and it’s called the Her Money Matters Community and you can do so by going to Jenhemphill.com/community.

That way you can connect with me because I know I really want to connect with you and you can also connect with other likeminded women from different parts of the world It will definitely keep you motivated around your finances, so I hope you join us in the group, join us in on the conversation, it’s a lot of fun.

Thank you so much for listening in today and I will talk to you again next Thursday.

[END]