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- [00:00]
Joel
This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. They can help you dominate Debt with a 0% intro APR on credit card balance transfers for 12 months and $250 when you spend $2,500 on a cash rewards or cash rewards plus card.
- [00:15]
Matt
Visit navy federal.org Navy Federal Credit Union members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. After the intra rate expires, variable APRs are 15.15% to 18% based on creditworthiness. Rates are subject to change. ATM fees for cash advances are up to $1 at non Navy Federal ATMs.
- [00:35]
Joel
This podcast is sponsored by Capital One in households. We subscribe to everything, music, TV, even dog food. And it rocks until you have to manage it all, which is where Capital One comes in. Capital One credit card holders can easily track, block or cancel recurring charges right from the Capital One Mobile app at no additional cost. With one sign in, you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at Capital1.comsubscriptions Terms and Conditions apply.
- [01:07]
Matt
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- [01:11]
Bernadette Joy
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Matt
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- [01:28]
Joel
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- [01:35]
Matt
Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [01:38]
Joel
Welcome to how to money. I'm Joel. I'm Matt and today we're talking about crushing your money goals with Bernadette Jo.
- [02:03]
Matt
Yeah, Joel. So we're joined today by expert money coach Bernadette Joy, who we actually met for the first time last year at this nerdy personal finance and media conference that we often go to. We actually gave a talk while Bernadette was the host for the entire conference. And I've got to admit, I don't know if I've ever met someone who was more enthusiastic about personal finance. So we're pumped to be talking with Bernadette today. Her new book, Crush you Money Goals, it came out last month. We're excited to dig into a ton of topics today, like her $1 rule, why she hates the term emergency fund. Of course we're going to cover her crush strategy for goal setting as well and hopefully we'll have time to maybe we'll dig into her history as well, because she has an incredible debt payoff story as well. But, Bernadette, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
- [02:55]
Bernadette Joy
Thank you so much for having me. And that was the best intro I've had in a long time.
- [02:59]
Joel
Okay, I mean, who's introducing you then? Come on, you just got to get better.
- [03:02]
Bernadette Joy
Oh, great.
- [03:03]
Matt
Okay, so the enthusiasm for personal finance, is that more of like you're stepping into the role of being host at a conference, or is this like a deep seated desire of yours to spread the personal finance gospel?
- [03:15]
Bernadette Joy
I think it was both. I definitely have a deep seated passion. The biggest word that people often use for me is energy, but I think it was probably times 10, because at the time that you and I met, we were at the end of the conference, I was like, woo hoo. We're gonna go to happy hour after this.
- [03:31]
Joel
That'll motivate anyone, right? Well, the first question we gotta ask you, Bernadette, what do you like to splurge on? Matt and I, we call it our craft beer equivalent because we spend decent chunks of change on good craft beer. But hey, it's okay because we're still being smart, saving and investing for our future. What's that thing for you?
- [03:46]
Bernadette Joy
So my craft beer equivalent is K pop, and it comes in a lot of different forms. It's going to concerts, it's buying merch, it's supporting the artists. It's something I spend a lot of money on that a lot of people may not understand.
- [04:01]
Matt
All right, so is bts, Are they still the biggest.
- [04:05]
Bernadette Joy
Oh, good. Yeah.
- [04:07]
Matt
Band out there?
- [04:07]
Bernadette Joy
So K pop, because I feel like.
- [04:09]
Matt
They disbanded because some of them had to serve in the South. So I'm half Korean, by the way, so I have some familiarity with K pop and all things K. Basically, you're.
- [04:17]
Bernadette Joy
Half K. Okay, so BTS has not disbanded because people get very upset if you tell them that they disbanded. They're just basically on hiatus right now while they serve in the military. They will be back in 2026, they said, with a new album and concert tickets. I follow a lot of different groups in K pop. BTS is my favorite. I've spent a lot of money. I've seen them in concert four times. And those tickets are not cheap. And as a K pop fan, I mentioned to you earlier, I actually do go to Atlanta quite a bit because K pop never comes to Charlotte. They usually stop in Atlanta. So if you add up all of the Money that you have to spend to just get to these concerts. It can add up to a lot. But I can't tell you where else in the world or where else in history have I felt more joy than being at a BTS concert.
- [05:05]
Joel
Yeah. I mean, when you know that it's worth ponying up the money and. Yeah, it's not like you're going into debt for it, so it's totally fine. Right.
- [05:12]
Matt
Would it be so sad if the guys come back in 2026 and it's, like, so much more serious because of their exposure to the military, the Drama album?
- [05:23]
Bernadette Joy
Well, it's funny because they're actually. They've all done solo albums, and there's already been some of that happening, so I think we're a little more prepared for when they all come back.
- [05:30]
Matt
All right. Okay, man. I know who to go to if I'm looking for some behind the scenes. Bernadette, let's kind of dig into your. Your past a little bit. What happened back in 2016, because it sounds like that that was the year that, you know, maybe you start taking personal finance a little bit more seriously.
- [05:46]
Bernadette Joy
Yes. So 2016 was the year that I was set to graduate from my master's in business. I went to the Kenan Flagler School and expensive degree. It was over $120,000 when I look back on it. I didn't realize it was that much when I signed up for it. And I was in my last semester of my program in January, and I had 10 weeks left, and I said to myself, I should probably go check out how much I owe in student loans, but it can't be that much because I have been paying for it some along the way. I did get a little bit of a scholarship, so how much could it possibly be? Not realizing it was $72,000. And I essentially had what I called my quarter life crisis, where I literally dropped to the floor and started crying about how I had gotten into so much debt.
- [06:31]
Joel
Yeah, you're not alone in that. Right. I think that's a common experience for people. And especially, hopefully, we're more cognizant of student loan debt on the front end. Now, maybe there's a little bit more education around it, but there's still a lot of 17, 18 year olds going to college, not thinking about the cost. And then four years later, they're like, oh, my gosh, what have I done? You had, what, $300,000 in debt overall? And I believe you said your plan was just to work hard, maybe take some of the nose to the grindstone mentality. How did that work out?
- [07:03]
Bernadette Joy
It worked for a little while until I got completely burned out and started rethinking all of my life choices. And I'm first generation Filipino American. My father had nine kids. I'm the eighth of the nine kids. And there was just always this mentality that you have to work hard and that money is scarce and that it's actually hard to make money. And so I thought that the solution to this was, okay, after I graduate from this prestigious program, I'm going to get a really great paying job and then just work on paying off the student loans and work off paying all of these other debts, and then everything will be fine, right? Except when I was planning to graduate, I had no desire to go back to a corporate job. And I was actually thinking about becoming an entrepreneur someday. And that's where I realized that working hard, especially working hard for another employer, might not be the right path for me.
- [07:53]
Matt
Did any of the fact that you being a first gen immigrant, I guess, how much did that impact maybe how you viewed the world, how you viewed your debt, how you viewed your career, and maybe sort of the path that you might pursue?
- [08:05]
Bernadette Joy
It was a huge part of how I view not just the world, but finances in general and specifically personal finance. My father was actually an accountant by trade. My mom was a bookkeeper, and then my younger brother ended up becoming an accountant also. And so there's this whole idea that, oh, well, if you're good with money kind of academically, that it should be fine personally. But it turned out that my father was not great with money personally for a lot of different reasons. He had a ton of debt actually throughout his lifetime also. And. And he was someone who was supposed to be good with money because he did finances for a company. So when I realized specifically that there's also these kind of cultural values in Filipino culture where you don't talk about how much money you have, but you show people by your nice car and your nice house and your nice clothes, but you are never allowed to tell people that you're struggling. I really had a hard time reconciling my cultural values with what was actually happening to me personally.
- [09:05]
Joel
What did your debt payoff strategy look like? What were you tapping into and what sort of route were you trying to take when you realized? Because that can be an overwhelming amount to be like, I've got $300,000 in debt racked up. Where do I even start? Some people get just completely frazzled, upended in the beginning and they just kind of go ostrich effect and bury their head in the sand. What were the practical steps for you when it came to kind of getting rid of that debt, going down that path?
- [09:32]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah, well, if I'm being totally honest, I did bury my head in the sand for a good 48 hours. First, I let myself feel my feelings about what kind of decisions I had to make and really thinking about what I wanted to do next. But once I got my head out of my butt, I would say I started first looking at just the student loans, which was $72,000 of the $300,000. And I went and looked at what that total amount was broken up to, and it was actually broke into several smaller loans. A couple of them were $20,000, a couple of them were 10,000, a couple of them Were $5,000. And I decided to go with the snowball approach because, truth be told, back then, all I did was Google what was out there. And at the time, the. The guy with the most advertising dollars was Dave Ramsey. And so I just listened a lot to his podcast and I tried this snowball method, which felt. Felt like it resonated with me in the sense of I am the type of person who, if I don't see progress in a short amount of time, I. I will just go home and not keep going.
- [10:34]
Joel
I think most people know what the snowball method is, but will you just quickly explain what and why you went with that and kind of the thinking behind why that's superior?
- [10:42]
Bernadette Joy
Sure. So the snowball method simply says that regardless of interest rate, you go for tackling your debts from smallest amount to biggest amount. So in the case of my student loans, I decided to tackle these smaller $5,000 loans first before I tried to tackle these $20,000 loans. And I broke it up into these different segments versus thinking, oh, I have $72,000 alt. I don't know where to start with that, but can I figure out how to just pay off this first $5,000 to get some momentum? And that was hugely helpful for me to actually see these loans, say, closed, have zero balance on them before I moved on to the bigger ones. And. But I will say that I did that snowball method in the sense of you have to pair that with, well, how are you actually going to get money to pay towards the debt? And I did what everyone else said in the beginning. I just, I hustled a lot. I got my husband to hustle a lot. I mean, we were doing all sorts of stuff. We were ext. On tv. We were. I mean, he was driving Uber. I was selling jewelry. I mean, I started. I actually started charging people to help review their resumes because back then I was in hr and that eventually turned into my financial education program. I never knew that that was going to turn into my next career. But we tried a lot of different things of. Okay. Instead of trying to figure out new skill sets, like, what skill sets do we already have and how could we make even a little bit of money towards it? Better than trying to waste time trying to figure out something new.
- [12:08]
Joel
Okay. I'm curious. I want to dig just a little bit on the side hustle thing. Driving for Uber is one thing. I think that's like the easy button. But it sounds like you were able to find other ways to make money that were more in line with the skill set that you had that could potentially earn you more than just like the lowest common denominator. Side hustle. Yeah.
- [12:27]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah. I had two side hustles back then. Both of them ended up turning into full time businesses later down the road, and they were completely unrelated. One of them was to help people review their resumes. I would literally either just give them feedback on their resume, or I would edit their resumes for them. Obviously, editing them would cost them more money, and I started charging $19 for that. And then I eventually, over time, was able to charge $400. Wow. For that.
- [12:54]
Matt
Pretty big increase.
- [12:55]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah, pretty big increase. It was little by little, but I actually had a really great client one day who told me he was the nicest person. He told me, you severely undercharged me for this. That's good for you. You did a really good job. Yeah, I thought that was really nice. I'll always remember that. And then my other side hustle was actually helping women get dressed for special occasions. And so I collected all of these dresses from different women who weren't using at the time. I said, let me borrow these dresses and lend them to other women and help them get dressed for these events. And that turned into another side hustle that I actually found to be really fun, but also started helping me think about personal finance because I saw how much women were spending on these dresses that they were only wearing one time. Wow.
- [13:39]
Joel
That's like. That's like Rent the Runway, but on a very individual level.
- [13:42]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah, I was actually. I billed it as the local Rent the Runway in Charlotte. I was the only game in town, Belk, at the time. I used to have people who would come to me and they would say, oh, I went to Belk to go look for a dress there and they told me to come here. And so that was pretty fun. People did that.
- [13:58]
Matt
That's amazing. And so you eliminated all that debt. And at this point, you know, it seems like you're set to retire, like in your 40s because of all this hard work and the smart money moves that you've made. But I've heard you say too that you don't have any desire to actually retire early. Maybe that has something to do with the energy that you bring to life. Why then have you worked so dang hard and invested in the way that you have been over the past few years?
- [14:22]
Bernadette Joy
You know, I'm still unraveling what that might mean for me. I turn 40 this year and I never imagined that I would have enough invested that I could retire if I wanted to. So I spent so much time in the last couple of years and I think this is some of the downside I think of being very enamored with personal finance is that you can get wrapped up in it so much so that you don't really think about what you would do once you actually complete the goal later on. And so I'm unraveling that right now. And I've had really interesting conversations with other financial experts in their 50s and 60s. I had another financial expert who told me, he said, you know what, bs? I bet you you're going to be back in three years if you decided to retire now because you're not going to be able to sit still. And I said to him, you know what, that might be true.
- [15:11]
Joel
Three years. More like three months.
- [15:14]
Bernadette Joy
I said, that could be true. But you know what? I have never had an extended period of time in my 40 years on Earth where I just did whatever I wanted and I didn't think about money and so I just want to try it. So this year I'm planning to travel a ton more than I have before. My husband and I are actually going to do that whole full time digital nomad. We were kind of part time at this point and I also decided that I want to just focus on some of the things that I have been interested in but have been scared to do. So I mentioned to you before we got on here that I am taking improv classes and I'm excited for that. I just signed up for swimming lessons. Here's a fun fact. I don't know how to swim.
- [15:54]
Matt
Oh.
- [15:55]
Bernadette Joy
I have never carved out the time to go learn how to swim and it's kind of embarrassing to go look for adult swimming Lessons, because all of the swimming lessons are for kids. But I found one yesterday and I'm really excited to agree.
- [16:07]
Matt
From what I understand, full, full immersion swimming is evidently what it's all about.
- [16:11]
Joel
Oh, really?
- [16:11]
Matt
Oh, yeah.
- [16:12]
Bernadette Joy
What does that mean?
- [16:12]
Joel
I remember jumping in the deep end.
- [16:13]
Matt
I guess I was talking about it like a decade ago, but like, basically, like there's the natural instinct to like keep your face above water, but it's sort of like the exact opposite of the natural inclination and just literally maybe forcing your face into the water because that's how you're able to essentially streamline and that's how you swim and not only swim, but swim fast. But aside from that. Oh, you said something about y'all doing like the full nomad thing. Like you've done sort of like maybe the part time digital nomad life. I think a part of maybe what allows you to do that is the fact that you don't own your own home. Is that right? Is that still the case? From what I understand, you rent, and is that flexibility a big part of what factored in into that for y'all?
- [16:49]
Bernadette Joy
Yes. So my husband and I, part of some of that debt that we had paid off was also mortgage debt. And we decided one day to sell all of our real estate that we had and we decided to go back to renting. And people around us really thought we were crazy. They were like, I don't understand why you would have a paid off home and then sell it. And my husband and I, one day we realized, and unfortunately, it wasn't a kind of happy scenario. But my father passed away suddenly in 2021, and it was still when the pandemic wasn't allowing people to have, you know, these mass gatherings. And so my husband and I had to fly to Las Vegas, where my mom and my father live, to help take care of things. And I had to take some time off of work, which I was so grateful by that point that we had saved a few up enough money that if I needed to take time, an extended period of time off of work, I could do that. But when we came back and we had done the whole Airbnb situation, we were like, okay, well, we still need to make money off of this property. Let's try to Airbnb it. And I had this Airbnb guest who was complaining about she didn't know where to put the soap in the shower. And at the time I was thinking, okay, my father just passed away. Like, this is really not a problem that I care about right now. And, and so I thought about, well, if we're going to travel like this for extended periods of time, either we leave the house empty or we're going to rent it out. But have potential scenarios like this where people are reaching out to us for things that we need to do for property management. So we said, you know what? Let's. Let's see what it looks like to not have real estate. And we also wanted to live closer to where we wanted to be. We had lived out in the suburbs, and there's no shade against the suburbs. I really enjoyed living there. But for us, at this moment in our lives, we were more interested in being closer to the arts and closer to where my clients were. And so we decided to rent. But now it's afforded us the ability to not only travel more frequently, but I've taken the amount of money that we took from real estate and started practicing other types of investment.
- [18:56]
Joel
I think you're pointing out something here. This is like a perpetual debate in personal finance, right? Is the rent versus buy conundrum. And there are brilliant points on both sides of the equation. There was somebody the other day in our Facebook group who lambasted us for offering any sort of nuanced take about buying versus renting. And he was basically saying, buying is always the right decision. Buy now before prices continue to go up. That's just not taking into account people's different individual situations, their hopes, their dreams, their desires, their desired level of flexibility. I don't know. How do you help people think through whether they should be buyers or renters?
- [19:35]
Bernadette Joy
I do this frequently with all of my coaching clients. And one of the first things I do when I take them on as a coaching client is I do this exercise with them. It's called it would be cool if. And for five minutes, I just have them do this stream of consciousness. Just keep answering this question. It would be cool if XYZ and almost always travel comes up. It would be cool if I could travel the world. It could be cool if I travel to Europe, or it would be cool if I could, you know, spend more time in these other places. It has never come up on anyone's it would be cool list to say, it would be cool if I, you know, had chores and mowed the lawn and had to fix the roof. Like, no one ever says that on there. It would be cool if. But they do say, it would be cool if I owned a home. But then when I asked them, well, what does it mean to be a homeowner to you? Maybe it's because some of the clients that I work with tend to be kind of older millennials or Gen Xers. But their immediate reaction is quite surprised because they've never been questioned on why they even want to own a home in the first place.
- [20:41]
Joel
It's almost like they've been indoctrinated and that our culture has told them, hey, once you reach a certain age, that's what you're supposed to do. And essentially the economics, the facts be damned, because it doesn't matter if it's like fifteen hundred dollars a month cheaper to rent and you could massively increase your investments and fast track your financial success and continue to grow your net worth. It's like, well, that's the thing I'm supposed to do. So I guess that's the direction I'm going in.
- [21:08]
Bernadette Joy
That's literally what they say. They've said to me. I had one person in particular, she said, what do you mean? I said, why do you want to own a home? And she said to me, aren't I supposed to want to? I said, well, are you? Then she said, oh my God, no one has ever asked me this question before. My whole world is turned upside down. And. And so before you decide that you want to buy a home, I do think it's important to weigh the pros and cons of owning a home. I was a homeowner, so don't get me wrong, I. I do think there's value in owning a home, but I also think that there's value in owning home homes at certain stages of your life. And I also think that there is always a trade off when you decide to put most of your money or most of your wealth building kind of energy towards real estate. Versus for me, as a trade off, I decided to take a money, as I mentioned, and put it towards other investments, particularly looking towards becoming an angel investor for other underrepresented companies, but then also to invest into my own business, which just for me personally, I get a lot more joy out of running this membership that I have writing this book than I ever did on painting my bathroom and planting every. I don't know if you guys have this in Atlanta too, but in Charlotte, Clay is such a thing where it's really hard to plant things. And so I would constantly fighting with my yard and I finally just decided I don't want to fight with my yard anymore.
- [22:33]
Joel
Make the landlord do that.
- [22:34]
Matt
Let's just go ahead and zero scape it. Just nothing but rocks.
- [22:36]
Bernadette Joy
Exactly, exactly.
- [22:39]
Matt
No, I think that's so true. And oftentimes folks aren't taking the time necessary to self examine and to figure out. And it takes time. You can't just decide what it is that you're drawn to. It takes some exploration and oftentimes we are not giving ourselves the space to be able to do that. That But Bernadette, we've got more to get to. Of course we're going to talk about your crush framework to attacking your goals. We'll get to that and more right after this Debt payoff is the number one financial goal that Americans have for 2025. I love seeing that because debt, especially consumer debt, it can be such a bummer. It not only puts you in a precarious financial situation, the stress that it creates, it can be overwhelming. It impacts every other aspect of your life. That's why Navy Federal Credit Union is here to help you. They have all the financial tools and resources you need to dominate debt right now. They offer a 0% intro APR on credit card balance transfers for 12 months.
- [23:38]
Joel
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- [24:09]
Matt
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- [24:36]
Joel
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- [24:58]
Matt
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- [25:55]
Joel
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- [26:34]
Matt
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- [26:50]
Joel
All right, we're back. We're still talking with Bernadette Joy. We're talking about crushing your money goals. So much fun information already and great conversation. But let's specifically get to goal setting. Bernadette and this is the time of year still where people are really thinking about their goals and what they want to accomplish in a new year. And we've all heard of, I think at this point, Smart goals. But you say that your crush approach is superior. What is your crush approach to goal setting and why?
- [27:20]
Bernadette Joy
Okay, so I do have a beef with smart goals because I was an HR professional that used to teach smart goals. The corporate world.
- [27:28]
Joel
That sounds demoralizing.
- [27:29]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah. And actually that's really what my beef with it was, was that, you know, one of the things that smart goals teaches is about being realistic or relevant, which I understand the concept of it in the R, but what I found is that people end up making goals that are too small and then really not being able to reach financial freedom. And that's really what I teach versus financial literacy. And so crush is my kind of antidote to the smart goals, where if you want to be more than just financially literate, but you. But you actually, to reach financial independence, you can use this framework that spells out the word crush.
- [28:03]
Joel
And it's fun, by the way. The goal setting inside of a company, you want to make it really easy to attain.
- [28:10]
Bernadette Joy
That's right.
- [28:11]
Joel
So that you look good to your boss at the goal review time. Whereas when we're talking about setting goals for your personal life, you can be a lot more ambitious and audacious.
- [28:19]
Bernadette Joy
You know what? That is a great distinction. I never thought about that until you said it, so thank you. That is so true.
- [28:25]
Joel
And I mean, I remember setting mine back in the day and I was like, I'm not going to this too hard.
- [28:30]
Bernadette Joy
That's exactly right. You just want it. You want to put stuff that you know you can achieve. So when you come at year end review, you're like, oh, I did all that stuff. And oddly, what I train people to do, and it's not for everyone, but I train people to reach financial independence, which is a very lofty goal for the vast majority of us. And so the thought process is to really train more like an Olympian and say, all right, I'm going to go for the gold medal, but you know what? If I end up only reaching silver or bronze or not even making the podium or not even making it to the Olympics, I think I'm going to still be better off if give it a go. And I really like that mentality for financial freedom, but it takes a lot of rewiring for people because we're so used to, like you said, setting the bar low for ourselves so we can feel like we checked it off a list versus setting the bar high. And even failing would still be better than where we are now.
- [29:15]
Matt
I totally get that. But I guess thinking back to your story, like, there's something to be said about checking things off your list, right? Like for you, you mentioned the snowball method to paying down your debt. And like, when you get those little wins, like, that's so encouraging to have that wind at your back. But maybe, maybe the idea is to be able to transfer that into something, something bigger, something more audacious. But we want you to unpack this crush approach. And the C stands for curating our accounts. Can you explain that? Why is that? Why is that the first thing you want folks to do?
- [29:45]
Bernadette Joy
Yes. So to your point, I realized I used to have people start off with a big, lofty goal first, and then people would get really deflated and not do anything. And so the circle stands for getting a quick win fast, which is just to figure out where all your accounts are, get them into one tool that you can see everything that goes in and out of your assets and liabilities and having a clear picture of what you have. What I found with most people is that they have no idea where all their stuff is. For example, I mean, everyone doesn't know where their 401k from their old company is sitting. They have no idea how much it is. They don't know exactly how much their debt is. And so curating your account simply says to act like a curator and not a hoarder and make sure that every account that you own actually has a very clear purpose and is accounted for. And I like to use the tool Monarch Money. It's not something I'm sponsored on or anything. I just really like the tool where I can see every single account that I own in one space versus just looking at my checking account or my savings account.
- [30:44]
Joel
One of the. One of the accounts that a lot of people have and that a lot of personal finance experts, us included. So you're treading on some toes over here. Bernadette is having an emergency fund. We talk about that. You don't like that term, so let's battle it out.
- [30:57]
Bernadette Joy
So I call it my keep calm fund. What I found, I had a. I had a specific client. This is why I changed it is she was so excited. She never had an emergency fund before. And so when we. She finally saved up her emergency fund, two months later, her basement legit flooded. And. And I'm talking about, you know, up to your knees kind of flood. And she ended up putting it back on a credit card card. And I, when she, when she and I met, she said, oh, yeah, my basement flooded. And so now I have to pay off this credit card. And I said, wait, why did you put it on the credit card? Why didn't you use the cash that you had on hand? And she was just like, I thought that was for emergencies. I said, what other emergency is there other than your basement flooding? And so I realized that a lot of people literally think of emergency as life or death. And so that framing wasn't working for a lot of my clients. But I also reframed it to say it's a keep calm fund, as in, this is a fund that you can tap into not even when there's just emergencies, but when you need to stay calm and you need to just get through something versus, you know, trying to save every bit of money. So as a prime example, this is. I hope my in laws don't hear this, but sometimes my in laws will just like magically appear. And for some people, their in laws showing up unexpectedly can be a little bit anxiety inducing. But it's not an emergency. Right. So I tried to tell people, here's this, this fund that you can use for anything that's unexpected, not just in an emergency fund, but for a lot of people, it still serves that similar purpose. The other reason that I kind of strayed away from the emergency fund because the age old advice of three to six months, which is a great intent, but the vast majority of people that I worked with were still very riddled with debt and were oftentimes living paycheck to paycheck. So three to six months felt very overwhelming. Ye so I tell people to start off with a one month keep calm fun and just focus on getting that one month first and then we can figure out 36 months down the road.
- [33:00]
Matt
I like it. No, it sounds like your in law showing up as a social emergency. Are you using some of that money to put them up in a hotel or is it to go ahead and order takeout because you're not going to cook for them?
- [33:10]
Bernadette Joy
It's the latter. Order takeout. And then I usually get it. I usually get a massage after a.
- [33:16]
Matt
Little bit of self care thrown in there as well. All right, so that's C. Talk to us about R, which for you, that's reversing into financial independence. Why is it important to start with fi and then kind of backing into it?
- [33:31]
Bernadette Joy
Yes. So going back to what I said earlier, I just taught an investing class for women and I asked the group, there's 100 women on the call, and I asked them, how much money do you need to save up for you to be able to retire? And no one knew the answer. So I said to them, this is not the, the hard and fast. Absolutely correct. But it's a good, you know, back of the napkin kind of math that you can do. And it's the, the 4% rule, which I'm sure you may have talked about in the past. But essentially it says that if you save 25 times your annual expenses, if you invest that money, you theoretically would not run out of money. And so immediately a lot of people will go into, what about inflation? What about interest rates? What if I put into the wrong investment? And I always have to tell people, hey, hey, let's just have this number first and then let's just back into the simple steps you can take today that might get you closer to that number. For me, that goes back to some of the story I told you earlier of, okay, once I calculated that number for myself at the time it was $900,000, then it became very clear to me that I had to pay off my debt versus thinking of debt as just a separate goal. Debt was actually a smaller milestone in this, in this quest for financial independence. And I was able to do that because I said, well, if I pay off this, these student loans, even though they have low interest rates, I would save, you know, X amount of money and that can go towards my investments instead. And so I really like this idea of reversing into independence, meaning that you actually calculate that number and for everyone it's overwhelming because it's likely over a million dollars, especially if you live in the US but at least now you know, and then you can say, well, am I really going to reach that number or even have a shot at it if I don't make some changes today.
- [35:15]
Joel
I remember starting off and being so overwhelmed at some of the things that people were suggesting, whether it was like, max out your 401k. And I was like, who does that? How is that possible? And I get, I think especially for younger listeners who are, you know, have student loan debt or a car payment on top of a student loan debt and they, they haven't progressed very far in their career, those things do seem completely unattainable. And yeah, breaking it down into bite sized pieces that allow you to make small but significant moves over time, like continually in the right direction, it pays off. And then you find yourself 10, 12, 15 years later and you're like, wait a second. I'm like, I've made a lot of progress towards this thing. It's just one of those slow moving things. I think we're used to get rich quick. It sounds so good on the surface, but then underneath it's pretty rotten to the core. But the opposite is true. It doesn't sound very sexy on the surface, but deep down it's pure gold. And that's actually how you get to where you want to go. One of the things you talk about is budgeting with other people. You call it positive peer pressure. And you're not just speaking to married folks. You're not even just talking to people who have a spouse or a long term partner. What are you advocating in terms of budgeting but doing it with your peers.
- [36:24]
Bernadette Joy
So I first advocate for finding two peers specifically just in case one of them is busy, then you have a backup person. And every month, at the beginning of the month at least running some ideas by them or things that you are considering for things that you want to potentially accomplish during that month or just want accountability and say it to someone out loud. So I have a client who I just worked with recently. She was like star student client. And one of the biggest challenges that she had was up until this point she had nobody to talk to about these finances. And so one, she was just going around with a lot of preconceived notions that just actually were not materially accurate. But two, she always felt like she was worse off than she actually was. And so she came for coaching with me. And in her last session she had all of these updates. There was nothing for us to even talk about in terms of next steps. She. She just said, I just want to share with you all these things that I did. I just paid off this credit card. I actually have my one month's worth contingency fund. And I told my parents about what I was doing. They were actually really supportive. I thought they were going to be mad at me. And I say that to anyone who's listening here is that a lot of what we catastrophize about our finances is in our. In our heads a lot worse than they actually are. And when I talk about the you and crush, which is understanding your net worth, it is really helpful to have at least one other person other than yourself, whether it be a spouse or a friend or whoever who actually knows what your net worth is so that they can make some recommendations that are based off of realistic numbers or the reality of what your situation is versus oh, just max out your 401k. Well, if. If my net worth is negative 300,000, that's probably not the first thing I'm doing today.
- [38:05]
Matt
Yeah, yeah. So you just touched on understanding your net worth, like you talk about pretty early on in the book too, just how your self worth combined with your net worth, like that is what you need. So you've worked with a lot of folks and you've come across a lot of different, just individual scenarios and life stages that folks are in. How debilitating have you seen that this lack of self belief, belief is for most folks? Like have you found that that has led to just slower progress with folks? Has that led to just continued poor decisions? Talk to us about that self worth, that self belief aspect of it.
- [38:39]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah, yeah. So when I talk about understanding your worth, I talk about both your net worth and to your point, your self worth. And I can genuinely say that the everyone that I've worked with as a client, their, their picture of self worth was not accurate. It just literally was not true. They were. So in doing this exercise of self worth, I forced my clients lovingly to actually calculate what their net worth is. As of today, I have never had a client who actually was accurate about what their net worth was. They always thought it was worse than it actually was. Even the ones who both had a lot of money and who didn't have much money at all, the ones who didn't have much money at all, all they thought they were, you know, just completely hopeless. And then the ones who had a lot of money just couldn't believe they had that much money. And so tying, while I say, you know, your net worth is not your self worth, it should at least be based off of some accuracy of the data. But to your question of, you know, how debilitating it is, I have found the, the area that where it's most debilitating for people is in fact in investing. Because. Because I have to consistently convince women in particular that they are already investors. And they always say, oh, I'm not smart enough or I just don't know enough, or I'm not a math person, I'm not a numbers person. And I have to consistently have these conversations and messages to say, hey, if you had student loan debt, guess what? You're an investor. If you have ever bought any sort of property, you are already an investor. If you've ever spent any money on something, whether or not you made money or not on it, you are already an investor. And, and having those conversations combined with the self worth aspect and also the reality of what it requires to become financially independent, you cannot become financially independent if you don't ever invest is really critically important. And a lot of it is based off what you said, this debilitating idea that I'm less than what I actually am.
- [40:35]
Joel
What do you think it is that fuels that? Is it that we see other people out there touting, maybe faux examples of wealth? Or we just assume that everyone knows more than we do and how do we maybe like counterpart, interact, whatever negative thing is in our brain? I was just thinking that Matt and I, I just started running like a year ago and Matt's always like, you're a runner. And I have not thought of myself as a runner literally until like a week ago. I was like, wait, I think I'm a runner now. And I don't know why, because I've been doing it long enough and consistently enough. But really I was probably a runner like 9 months ago or 10 months ago or something like that. Why do we always, like, think less of ourselves than we actually should? And it does seem like the less inclined we are to think of ourselves in a positive light, the less inclined we are to actually like, continue doing the thing and continue rocking it.
- [41:21]
Bernadette Joy
Yeah, I mean, we could have an entire other episode about the reasons why we all think that we're less than. I mean, the patriarchy, like systematic, you know, exclusion of certain groups, also culture, also just, you know, good old fashioned media. But I think in particular, like right now in this moment, I honestly believe social media is the biggest contributor to this because just like you, I don't consider myself a dancer. Right. Because in my head I'm thinking, oh, a dancer is someone who is a backup dancer for Justin Timberlake or who's a dancer on music videos or can actually memorize a dance after just half an hour. I'm not any of those things, obviously, but I love dancing. And I think same thing goes with personal finance. Oh, I'm not, not rich, for example, in the US I find this so fascinating as someone who, again, who grew up with immigrant parents, anyone in the US is by far richer than the vast majority of people in the Philippines, where my parents are from. But social media keeps trying to convince us that our life isn't enough and that you need this extra thing in order to then become the dancer or the runner or whatever it is. And so one of the things that I really advocate for is what I call screenless Sundays, where I literally lock up my phone in my glove compartment in my car, and then I, along with my family members, if my family members are with me, we are not allowed to look on our phones, we're not allowed to look on a television, and we're not allowed to look at laptops and we just have to talk to each other. I know, it's a wild concept. You're so old school Martinet wild concept. We go analog for the day. We play board games and we listen to records and we go take walks in the park and we meal prep. We do all these other things and just one day of not constantly being hit in the face with you're not enough. You're not good enough. Your house is not nice enough enough. Your car is not fancy enough. It actually does a lot for. It doesn't completely solve the problem, but at least for me, it helps me reset my expectations.
- [43:19]
Joel
I think it's great advice. And I saw, I've read that about your screenless Sundays and it's just, it's like this old. It's like a version of a Sabbath, right? Like there's certain religious practices that institute a Sabbath of sorts and sometimes that is like typically the more conservative that sect is, the more likely they are to make the Sabbath even stricter, including no screens or potentially no lights or you can't flip on the lights with. And we might think of that as antiquated in this day and age. But there are significant benefits and psychological benefits, especially given kind of the society we're in right now, the always connected society that can be derived from it. So I think that's really good advice and something that's well worth considering. It's something that I need to consider more for my family. Family. Bernadette, we've got more to get to with you, including we want to talk about the $1 rule and why you say eating out is good for our budgets. Oh, hot take. We'll talk about that right after this.
- [44:17]
Matt
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- [44:47]
Joel
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- [45:18]
Matt
So here on the podcast I know listeners have heard me talk about how I like to always have a big annual finance meeting with Case right as we've wrapped up a great year as we are kicking off a new one. We are nerdy like that and each year is an opportunity to reflect and to plan for the future, like setting career goals or making financial moves. And most importantly, ensuring your family is always taken care of no matter what happens. Make this the year that you check life insurance off your list and protect your family's future. With Policygenius you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams.
- [46:00]
Joel
Matt I just double checked our life insurance policies to make sure we're adequately covered. We are thankful for that.
- [46:06]
Matt
Nice.
- [46:07]
Joel
It's a good idea for everyone out there to do that, particularly if your family needs have changed recently, right? You want to ensure that you have life insurance to cover loved ones expenses if something happens to you and policygenius makes a potentially onerous task easy as pie.
- [46:22]
Matt
Secure your families tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today. Head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes. See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com do you want to understand.
- [46:35]
D
An invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Velocian, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.
- [46:45]
Joel
And I'm Cara Price, the other new host and I'm ready to adopt early.
- [46:49]
D
And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [47:00]
Matt
One of the kind of tricks for.
- [47:01]
Joel
Surviving Mars is to live there long.
- [47:04]
Matt
Enough so that people evolve into Martians.
- [47:06]
Bernadette Joy
Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.
- [47:10]
Matt
How is it possible that the world.
- [47:13]
Bernadette Joy
New energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?
- [47:18]
Joel
Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations.
- [47:21]
Bernadette Joy
And deep dives that will help you.
- [47:23]
Joel
Understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the Singularity. So join us.
- [47:29]
D
Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [47:36]
Matt
We are back from the break talking about how we can all crush our money goals this year with Bernadette Joy. And you talk about choice overload when it comes to all the different decisions we have to make. Do you have any just practical tips for folks when it comes to simplifying in order to reduce all of the decisions that we have to make on not even just a daily basis, but like I don't on the hour kind of basis?
- [48:01]
Bernadette Joy
Yes, yes. I am not an advocate for tracking at all. And so when people hear that the S in crush stands for spend intentionally, their automatic assumption is that I have to track every single penny that goes out of my bud. And what I actually advocate for people is not to track, but to spend more time planning at the beginning of the month and using what I call the dollar rule, which I absolutely love. I get questions about it all the time where it's very simple. It basically is a just a slight twist on the cost per use idea. And it just says that if you are going to buy something and this works with material goods, so clothes and accessories and tech gadgets and furniture. If you're going to buy something thing and it comes out to a dollar per use, just go ahead and buy it. Don't make it a big deal, don't make it a thing. You're going to get a good use out of it and it's going to actually be worth it. And what I found is that helps a lot of people actually feel relieved about not feeling so guilty about spending things that they don't quote unquote need. And also not spending all of this time trying to find the best deal ever if it's going to be an inordinate amount of time. I'll give you a prime example. One of my best friends, he has hated his couch for years and it's because he just keeps saying, well, I can't spend more than this amount of money on a couch. But I said to him the other day, this was literally over Thanksgiving, I said, hey, had you just employed the dollar roll back then, it would have paid off by now for a couch that you actually really liked.
- [49:28]
Joel
And so, Ralph, you sit your butt in it once a day because you.
- [49:30]
Matt
Sit in it all the time.
- [49:32]
Bernadette Joy
And he's a big college football fan, so he's been, he's sitting there all day long, right? He's suffering and suffering and suffering. And so I really like the dollar rule to remove some of that back and forth and over analysis for decisions that are, in the grand scheme of things, not going to be that detrimental to your budget.
- [49:49]
Joel
All right, we've gone through crus. What's the H?
- [49:52]
Bernadette Joy
So the H is my most underrated topic, and I don't think we talk about it enough in personal finance. It's what we call healing your money wounds. And specifically I. I wrote about this because I noticed that a lot of people who do not do well with money, or so they think, they think it's because they don't know enough or because they're not smart, or they're just bad with money. But what I found is that usually I can pinpoint almost an exact incident that caused them to be afraid of making money choices. I will give you a prime example for myself. I am turning 40, like I mentioned earlier. So in my first job in 2007, I was an HR professional in financial services. And then in 2008, I was in New York City laying people off in 2008, and Occupy Wall street was literally outside my door. And I remember realizing, wow, you know, you can do exactly what everyone tells you you're supposed to do, but still end up basically out on the street. Like, people were literally getting walked out. If you remember that people were getting walked out with their boxes that day. And that also led me to realize how many people were on that other side of the table from me. I remember this guy, I'll never forget. There was this one guy who. I was handing him his severance papers, and he said, I've been working at this company longer than you've been alive. Why do you have a job and I don't? And I have encountered so many clients, for example, who were laid off at some point in their career, or maybe they saw their parents fighting about money, or maybe they made a bad investment choice one time and now they're afraid to make other investment choices. And that's actually what's holding them back, not lack of knowledge.
- [51:37]
Matt
Like, where. What's the balance, I guess, between. Because you want to address those wounds, some of the events that happened in your past, in your history. But at the same time, man, you don't want to dwell too much on some of those things that happened in the past. Like, how do you recommend to your clients to address those things without having them, like, totally consume their thoughts and everything about them?
- [51:59]
Bernadette Joy
Well, one thing is therapy, of course, and I don't bill myself at all as a therapist, so I actually require Most of my clients, clients to also have a therapist on hand while they are working with me, because sometimes we uncover things and they're like, wow, I didn't realize that was hurting me as bad as I thought. And I said, okay, great, now go talk to your therapist and come back to me. Come back to me later.
- [52:17]
Matt
No, that's true.
- [52:18]
Bernadette Joy
But I also. The reason I say healing your money wounds is because I really do think of it as a wound. If you think about a wound on your body, if you keep scratching it, then it'll just keep staying open and it'll keep stinging and it'll never heal. But if you acknowledge that it's a wound and you actually treat it as in, you try to talk about it. You to have conversations with people. You try to find some. You try to, in my case, find some other people who have overcome it and get some ideas on how you might be able to heal from it, then it might not ever go away, and you still might have a scar, but at least you're not scratching it open every single time you make a money choice.
- [52:56]
Joel
All right, One of the pieces, one of the things you suggest in your book is that eating out is good for your budget, which. Never heard that one before, Bernadette. That's usually. It's the opposite. Like, cook at home to say money. You know, you can do it for, like, two to three dollars per person, per meal, right? Whereas you go out to eat, and it'sthat adds up quickly, especially given what's happened over the past few years and how expensive it is to eat out. So I don't know. Can you explain that one for me?
- [53:22]
Bernadette Joy
Yes. So one of my clients, who's Latina, she said, when I told her this, I said, hey, you can actually go eat out. She said, bernadette, in Spanish, we say, you know, ay, comida en casa, right? There's food at home. You're not. You're literally not supposed to do that. And so she was just baffled as to why I was saying that she could eat out. And I said to her in particular, I think it'd be good for you to go eat out once a week because all you do is work and you don't talk to any of your friends. And I think you should go out to eat if you're going to go hang out with one of your friends, because I think you're a little lonely right now. And I think that's where we've gotten so far away with personal finance advice to say, at all costs, we should save every penny at the sacrifice of cultural experience, community, and actually having some healthier choices at times. Now, I know most times, especially again, in the US that the food that you're eating out isn't going to be that healthy. But at least where I live in Charlotte and I know where you guys are, that there are definitely places that you can go and get relatively affordable choices for if you're smart about it. So what I say in the book is one, we know that American portions are out of control. They're usually two and a half times the size of what you should be eating. So if you can take that same meal and split it up into two or three meals, you're saving money there.
- [54:43]
Joel
Just ate my leftover Chinese food for.
- [54:44]
Bernadette Joy
Lunch, Bernadette, and there you go. See, you're making good choices on that. And for me in particular, food is very much part of how I experience other cultures. And so, no. Do I think that eating Uber out and eating McDonald's every day is a good use of your food, food budget or your health choice? No. But do I think. For example, yesterday I went to an Asian festival in Charlotte, and when I tell you there's very few Asian festivals in Charlotte, I was. You sure bet I was going to go there, and I was going to support every business owner there and make sure that they know that, you know, they're appreciated. And so I got so much joy out of going there. And, of course, you know, you're not going to go and spend, you know, frivolous amounts of money on eating out, but when I think you're doing it intentionally for the sake of culture and. And community and connection, then I think it's worth spending the money.
- [55:39]
Matt
I love it. No, I. You know, this kind of takes me back to the second letter in your acronym, the R, which is reversing into financial independence. Like, then the way you get there, right. You start with the end in mind, essentially, you look at the number that you need. And so in a similar way, we sacrifice the kind of life that we want to lead. We don't envision what we want that end result to look like. But I think we can think about, like you said, the community, the kind of culture that we want to be a part of, and then essentially back into it from there. Like, you start there, plan backwards, and then that can inform the decisions that we're making today, even if they're not the most financially optimized. And I love that you've got that built into your framework as well. But we really Appreciate you sharing your thoughts, just how you approach personal finance, especially with your clients. And on that note, actually, how can folks learn about this, the coaching community that you've put together? And where can folks also learn about about your book?
- [56:31]
Bernadette Joy
Yes, well, you can learn about both of them@CrushYourMoneyGoals.com there you can find how you can buy the book as well as the audiobook. And then we host regular monthly masterclasses if people just want to check it out. And what's really lovely is that once a month we open up our membership to anyone who's interested in joining so you can see what it's actually like to be part of our community. And if you're just interested in hanging out on social media for now, you can check me out. Bernadettejoy primarily on Instagram and on YouTube and then I also write a ton of articles for places like Forbes and CNBC and cnet. So if you just Google my name, you can find articles where we talk about these different topics as well.
- [57:08]
Joel
Cool. Just do not try to connect with Bernadette on social media on a Sunday. She won't respond.
- [57:13]
Bernadette Joy
I will not respond to you at all.
- [57:15]
Joel
Bernadette, thanks so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
- [57:17]
Bernadette Joy
Thank you so much for having me.
- [57:19]
Matt
All right. Kind of feels like we're chatting with an old friend, even though we've only hung out with Bernadette once or twice now. Do you consider virtual hangs as like real hangs with friends?
- [57:28]
Joel
That's a good question.
- [57:29]
Matt
Probably not, because I'm not typically. I'm never virtual hanging and with my friends that I have in real life.
- [57:34]
Joel
I guess, but texting to set something up, irl, that's, that's how I roll. Yeah.
- [57:38]
Matt
Yeah. But that being said, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And this felt like a treat being able to sit down and chat with with Bernadette. But did you have a big takeaway from our conversation with her today?
- [57:48]
Joel
I did. It came really early on in the conversation when she was talking about her side hustles and how she turned multiple side hustles into legit businesses that were profitable. And this is why we talk about starting your own business, even if it's small and making very little money in the beginning. Like, you can't instantly turn it on and start making money like you can driving for Uber or something like that. But the possibilities are much larger. Right. What it can become is much more grand. So learn from Bernadette. Realize that there are all sorts of little things that you can do to start a business where you live based on your interests and based on the needs you see in your community. Starting that business could be far more lucrative than just kind of going with the tried and true side hustle. That's going to be essentially trading time for money without the ability to build something larger and more scalable.
- [58:39]
Matt
That's true. That's a big vote for entrepreneurship. My big takeaway is going to come from when she was talking about this exercise that she does with her clients as they're sort of looking off into the future and envisioning what life could look like. She called it the it would be.
- [58:53]
Joel
Cool if I love that exercise.
- [58:55]
Matt
And it's just, okay, write down all the things like, brainstorm. It would be cool if I could fill in the blank. And I really, really like that. But at the same time, there's something about it that it doesn't worry me. But I would hate for folks to conflate that, which is cool with that, which is rewarding. And I think a lot of times your mind, like, if I think through, oh, it would be cool if my mind immediately goes to things that are easy, things that are, in the moment, super fun. But there's a difference between that versus something that is hard. That takes a whole lot of work, where there's a lot of sacrifice on the front end. But then at the end of that, or even partway through that, you're able to look back at something and say to yourself, man, that is cool. Right? And I think about just the. It's not easy to start a family and raise kids, but that is something where the older I get, like, and the more I'm able to look at the years I've had with them in particular, I'm like, that is cool. And it just makes me want to do more and more cool things with them. And it's not something that I would have said, well, it would be cool if I could do that, like, on the front end. And so I think there's just a slight delineation between those two things.
- [60:00]
Joel
Basically, when you're saying, wouldn't it be cool if don't just think about going skydiving? Although, like, that can be on your list. Nothing wrong with that. But, like, maybe think about the bigger, more meaningful things that take a lot more effort.
- [60:10]
Matt
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that just thinking through just some of the fun things could be a great way just to spark some creative thought and to cause you to really buckle down and do some of these Things that you've never thought would have been possible. Oftentimes it is travel. But if you only focus on what feels like these, like, sugar rushes, like these quick hits of things that might fill the bucket immediately, I think over the long term, that could potentially leave somebody feeling hollow over the course of years and decades.
- [60:36]
Joel
Yeah, I mean, I think some of those pursuits, if taken to the extreme, can be incredibly self centered. Right. And so we want to say, like, no, push yourself to think about the things that are going to be ultimately gratifying over the years and decades too. So I think that's a good point. All right, well, Matt, let's get back to the beer we had on this episode. This is Asahi. It is a Japanese super dry beer. Although made in Italy. It says product of Italy, so I don't know what that's about.
- [61:00]
Matt
I have no idea.
- [61:01]
Joel
Why aren't they brewing that in Japan?
- [61:02]
Matt
I mean, I thought it was a Japanese brew. No, I think it is. Yeah. Originally was.
- [61:06]
Joel
Yeah.
- [61:06]
Matt
Because it says here that it's brewed under the supervision of Japanese breweries.
- [61:11]
Joel
They flew one dude over to Italy.
- [61:13]
Matt
He'S like, hanging out, living the life in. Wherever they're. In Milan. Wherever they're.
- [61:18]
Joel
Oh, I'm supervising. All right.
- [61:20]
Matt
But I will say I did enjoy this. It was just a easy drinking, light and dry lager. Yeah.
- [61:26]
Joel
Yeah, really dry. Like, it almost evaporates off your tongue. I haven't had many beers that are this dry. There's only like one other beer. I remember it was like a Sierra Nevada collab that it like hit your tongue and it flew right off of it. It was crazy. And. And that was like, I think more of a sour. And there were yeasts in it.
- [61:42]
Matt
But it's hard to explain the lightness.
- [61:44]
Joel
Yeah, it really is. It's hard to explain how. It's like a butterfly.
- [61:47]
Matt
It just barely lands.
- [61:48]
Joel
I know.
- [61:48]
Matt
Before flittering off, which is just kind of.
- [61:50]
Joel
It's a. It's an interesting sensory technique. So I like this one. It's. It's probably something especially probably more of a summer beer in my. Oh, yeah, but.
- [62:01]
Matt
Or if you're just really thirsty in the winter, I guess.
- [62:04]
Joel
Although. Or your beer doesn't satiate your thir. But still, I can see why it's wet, Joel.
- [62:09]
Matt
Isn't it?
- [62:09]
Joel
It might feel like it would.
- [62:10]
Matt
No, in fact, it's dry. But yeah. This is a style that we don't typically have. And it's kind of fun to have some of these more foreign Ish breweries on the show.
- [62:20]
Joel
But hey, Italy's still foreign. Does it?
- [62:21]
Matt
I know exactly. It's like. Well, it is technically foreign, but yeah. Glad you and I got to enjoy it. We will make sure to link to Bernadette Joy's site where it is you can buy her book the Mastermind group that she has all that up on the website@howtomoney.com but buddy, that's going to be it for this episode. So until next time, Best Friends out. Best Friends Out.
- [62:54]
Joel
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Want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join Us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.