Welcome back to the Catholic Money Summit. I'm your host, Amanda Teixeira, and I am joined with me today by Jesse Fearon, author of Getting Good With Money, and over owner over at Jessi. And we are gonna be talking about all things budgeting, but just wanna give you a warm welcome to the Catholic Money Summit Jessi. Thanks for being here.

Well, thank you guys for having me. I always love chatting with you.

Ditto. And this is a about such an important topic. I think that budgeting can oftentimes be seen as kind of a a nice to have, and, you know, I should get around to learning that. But really, it is so key and pivotal and almost like all the other financial things anybody could do, if it doesn't stand on top of budgeting, everything else could fall apart. I'm sure you agree with me on that.

Yes. Absolutely.

That fundamental and foundational. and we are gonna dive into all the nitty gritty and the practicals, but would you be so kind to just give a little bit of your own story of, you know, how you've arrived at this point today and you know, maybe the beginning of your journey of when you were not so great at budgeting and kind of what that process looked like.

yes. So, me and my husband, we, started 2012 pregnant, and we ended 2012 pregnant. wasn't exactly a plan, but, you know, God's plans are always better than our own. and so I had actually graduated from college right before, Actually, like, literally I gave birth to my son, my last semester of college. and so I had an accounting degree. I had been an accountant worked in the corporate world, and then we I can became a stay at home mom after my son was born, because, you know, almost all my paycheck was gonna go to putting him in daycare. And so we decided, oh, I'll be a stay with mom. Well, then we found ourselves pregnant with baby number 2, unexpectedly. And what happened is I was actually in the grocery store, and I had not one card declined. I had 2 cards declined. And had to depend on the kindness of the stranger in line behind me to buy my groceries. And I was very upset. I was mortified at my do I have this accounting degree? And I I'm not even aware of what's going on with our money, and I don't know what's going on. and so It brought about some very difficult conversations with my husband. but ultimately, we decided, you know, we had 2 options. Either I was going back to work, and we were going be paying even more money for day care for 2 kids under the age of two, plus all the expenses that come with that, or we could try to find a way to make my husband's $47,000 a year salary work. And so we chose the latter, and we had so we had to figure out how to budget money, and especially budget money together because, you know, I had done that on my own as a single woman. And I kinda had my own process down packed, and it was fine because I'm more of a saver, little spender anyways, so it wasn't that big of a deal. My husband's the polar opposite. it. He likes to spend money. And so it was, like, really challenging at first to try to budget because, like, my husband would have all these, like, tiny little transactions, like, a $2 can a red bullback for almost

$2

a can. you know, he would buy the gas station or whatever. And so it just drove me nuts. I had all these expenses to try to figure out and -- all these things and, ultimately led us to, paying off our consumer debt and then eventually paying off our health as well. I'm becoming a 100% debt free all on my husband's $47,000 a year salary and welcoming 3 children into our family and and then 2 dogs and a cat as well. So

I love it. I wanna go back to your to your story Jessi a little bit that that card declined moment. you know, I think all of us have had a situation like that or a moment like that, how did what kind of emotions did it bring up in you?