okay I want to address something and talk a little bit about something that
people are often surprised to hear me say and that is that every decision
should not be a financial one and I think that people just assume that
because I talk about money a lot that every decision I make should be a money
decision like that should be the number one factor in the decision you know
should we go on vacation depends on how much it costs should we do this it
depends on how much it costs like and I just don't think that's the proper way
to live life I think there are a lot of lenses through which we should make
decisions and the financial one is just one of them you know this is gonna be
different for every person you know everybody's gonna do this a
little bit different everybody's gonna make different financial decisions in
regular decisions you know because we all have different values that we try to
we're gonna live our lives by and that we want to guide and you know and that's
all fine one of the obvious things I think here is health right yes very
obvious you know so if you need to go on an ambulance to get yourself some yeah
care that go in an ambulance yeah it doesn't matter when our son Alden
was having breathing problems and like having trouble breathing because
something had happened you know we needed to go to the ER and if someone is
in that situation where you need to go to the emergency room and if you are
calling around to a dozen hospitals to see which one is cheaper and like for
the ER visit like it's probably a little bit out balance like you know it's just
one of those things it's an emergency you deal with the financial consequences
later you don't that's not a financial decision so that's kind of like a big
obvious one but another one for us I mean was the house like I wanted to get
our house paid off because I believe the Bible says of our slave to the lender
and that's how I felt when I was in debt and getting rid of that but you know for
you there was a peace aspect that came to not having that mortgage right
absolutely I mean and that's worth something right oh yeah for sure and I
mean talk about the other side of this cuz I didn't realize that this was a
thing but well yeah it's like if you look mathematically paying off your
mortgage early is almost always not the best mathematical thing particularly
when mortgage rates are so low you know so which is the case now and you know
you could argue that you invest that money and make more and you know the
other part is the tax benefit you get for mortgage interest and you know so
there's a lot of reasons why a lot of financial experts will say you shouldn't
pay off your mortgage early my accountant was on me really hard about
this and didn't want me to do it I'm like dude you don't get it like it's not
it's okay I understand this isn't a math problem though you know this is a you
know this is the whole point of this video is that there are many lenses
through which to make a decision mm-hmm and the financial one should be
considered but it's not the only one yes right yes I mean you've we've talked
about this a lot before but another one for us is vacations and kind of getting
away getting a break which you can spend a whole lot of money doing that and of
course what's great is that there are so many ways to travel for less and that's
kind of been one of our secrets of being able to travel as much as we have have a
little video linked above with our secret sauce yeah I'm going to check it
out but but even still I mean the food costs a lot of money even if we can fly
for free and even maybe stay for free or close to free the food costs a lot more
money you know if you're driving the gas money and all that stuff and all of that
has to be factored in but yeah this is one of those things with my parents you
know I grew up we had a good number of years where we struggled financially in
one way or another and my parents we never went on a super fancy vacations
but they made sure that we got a few vacations and even in some of those
really tough financial years and that was a major blessing to me like we
created some memories on those vacations that are priceless and the financial
struggle came and went but some of those memories and some of
those times we get together we're really really valuable and you know you can't
get that time back and so this isn't a license to if you're
in financial trouble to just go crazy and spend money like crazy but the point
is is that sometimes there other factors at play here and you know in who I'm
speaking to with this video like I'm the saver
she's a spender you know most couples it's like you have one or the other and
I'm talking really to other savers like myself I'm not talking to the spenders
like she doesn't need more license to spend and so if you're the spender this
isn't for you it's really for the saver and your you know in your couple in your
marriage but for the savers like myself it's easy to fall into the trap of
thinking you know finances aren't great so we're not gonna go on a vacation for
the next 10 years and I don't know I I don't think that is the only way to make
the decision I think there's more play I think that's also a great way to just
kind of be at odds and kind of be butting heads a little bit if there is a
spender and a saver where I I could tend to feel like you never let me do
anything you know when really I think we both
feel like our needs are being met I'm making not every decision just solely
about the financial aspect yeah for sure yeah I think that's part of the
give-and-take where you know one of the things I remember Dave Ramsey saying
with building a budget with your spouse is let your spouse change something so
saver or money nerd whatever you create the budget give it to your spouse and
say change something you have to change something we are not going to use this
until you change something and the reason is is that you have to have
ownership you have to feel like you're contributing and you're part of this and
that's my decision too yeah right yeah and it's not me just telling you what to
do you know I think another area where we did this that really helped us is
when we were paying off debt we stopped well not stopped we took a minute to go
celebrate the small victories when we got our smallest I think we
might have done the dead snowball did we we got the first credit card paid off
and we went and went to a nice dinner a fancy dinner yeah it'd be easy there's
someone like me to say well no that's a whole bunch of money we could make a
whole bunch of progress on the next credit card but I knew that we needed we
needed to have some milestones we needed to have some celebrations yes to keep us
motivated and especially her to just be like yeah let's celebrate the victory
over come you know and I've been doing more on Enneagram I'm an anagram 3 for
anybody's curious and for people like us it's really easy to just always keep our
head down and just keep running ahead to the next thing and you know and always
reaching for the next goal and not taking any time to sit back and
celebrate and the accomplishments that have been made mm-hmm and so yeah and it
did that really helped me because it was really fun when we it was like oh we're
gonna spend a little bit more than we normally don't I don't think we went
crazy we still were pretty smart about how we did things we split a lot of
meals to skinny people putting meals at restaurants but it was like oh we got to
order our own entree I don't think we did appetizers or you know we still were
drinking water and all that stuff right a lot of sacrifices to get her debt paid
off but like we but yeah what was beautiful but I felt like we'd lived
really nice and so we still got to go out to eat we split meals which is kind
of funny but but we got to know our restaurants because we make meals
yeah and so I mean we probably paid what we pay at a fast-food restaurant at a
nicer restaurant by doing that in just one of many many things that we've done
we've gone into it in many other videos but yeah anyway yeah so anyway that was
really I think fun and I think that creates memories too where they're like
you see this goal and I think that that would be fun to do with kids it's like
you you have this goal you see it and then you get the reward and like showing
them you know what that reward looks like and
yeah for sure all right so just summing all this up for the savers out there I
just want to collectively invite us all to loosen up a little bit when we're a
little bit uptight about some stuff and try to think about the other ways the
other factors that should be involved in any given decision not every decision
should be 100% about the finances so does a reminder for anybody struggle
with that and maybe in the next video we will go after the spenders and we will
address some of their names we'll see some of our needs are so what we should
be doing better I don't know something anyway if you'd like this definitely hit
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