Scott and Virginia Trench Talk Goal Setting, Spending, Prenups, and Future Plans

0:00Ever wonder what Scott's duplex in his 20s was like? or how frugal he really was. Well, today we are bringing on an expert and pivotal player in Scott's life and Scott's fi journey, his wife, Virginia Trench. I am so excited to talk with both Virginia and Scott about how their money story has evolved over time.

0:26Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my co-host, Mr. Virginia Trent. That's right, Mindy. Super excited to be on BiggerPockets Monday today with my lovely, wonderful wife, Virginia, here. And Virginia is actually going to take it from here with the rest of the intro. BiggerPockets has a goal of creating one million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.

0:57Virginia, I am so excited that you are joining us today. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Mindy. It's great to be here. I've been entrenched in this guy's life for almost 10 years. She has better puns than me. And many times, the puns that we use on the show have actually originated from Virginia without due accreditation. Yeah, due citation. We'll let it slide. And hello to Fred, the cat behind you, who is apparently going to horn in on your show today, Virginia. So Fred, pipe down. Our daughter is at school, but we have Fred, Virginia, and our little one on the way here as well. Almost everybody.

1:36Almost everybody is here. Well, that's awesome. Okay. And quite frankly, the other one is, what, two now? So they're not known for being quiet. No. This would be a short episode. Okay. So let's go back to the beginning of your journey together. Scott was house hacking a duplex. Were you – like, what is your opinion of this? because I saw that duplex that he was living in. So I know where you're coming from. What was your thought when you first met this guy? Well, I thought, well, first of all, what a sweet, wonderful man. And second of all, you know, frugality takes on another level when you don't heat your apartment in January in Denver, which is when we started dating.

2:23That was a red flag for me. But both Scott and Walker, It's funny how getting serious girlfriends timed almost exactly with the decision of, hey, maybe we'll spring for heat here. So I also agree with you. That is a red flag. I would walk in and be like, dude, it's way too cold in here. I'm out. But it's that he chose not to as opposed to his heat got turned off. Oh, yeah. This was not an Oliver Twist situation. This was very much self-inflicted. At what point when you guys were dating, did he bring up this concept of financial independence? Gosh, you know, I don't remember. It's hard to pinpoint an exact moment when you brought it up.

3:03But I think it was just when as we were getting to know each other, and at the time you were creating a lot of content in the Phi universe that you would tell me about articles that you were working on or ideas that you had. So gosh, like probably third or fourth date. I don't know. Yeah, somewhere early on there. Early on. Yeah. It was really near the beginning. Good. I like that. I was married before we discovered financial independence. So he like, he couldn't bring it up on a date. He didn't know what it was. Did you know anything about it before Scott shared it with you? Had you ever heard it?

3:40No, I was so out of the whole world. At the time, I was teaching middle school English, so that was kind of my entire universe. So I was a complete newbie, novice, and still am in so many ways. But I was very impressed by Scott's commitment to it and intrigued when he started telling me about it. Was it a difficult change to make to go from however you were handling your finances before to this like kind, I don't want to say extreme frugality. I don't think Scott was ever extremely frugal, although I say this and then we just had that story about him not turning the heat on in January in Denver.

4:19Scott, you're crazy. But did you make changes over time or was it kind of a, oh, well, I guess I'm just going to like completely change the way that I handle my money? Honestly, I was so frugal just by out of pure necessity, just with my job and what I was trying to accomplish at the time. If anything, it opened up my horizon to think about, oh, are we being frugal to achieve a specific goal down the line as opposed to are we being frugal just to survive on a teacher's salary and my summer side hustle and all that stuff. So I was very, very ready to be made a believer in Scott's philosophy. Did you have any big money disagreements?

5:01Let's call them disagreements. It wasn't a disagreement, but, you know, I remember one, maybe you could talk about how we were like, well, we don't want to live in the basement of the duplex, which then had heat anymore after the second or third year dating. Oh, these weren't disagreements. It was just sometimes, you know, it's remarkable the blind spots that Scott can have sometimes. It's like, well, we're looking to upgrade our living situation slightly. And wouldn't you know, the lease in the upstairs unit is coming due in a couple of months. And, um, I went ahead and connected those dots. And when, you know, we moved into another townhouse after that, but then we were thinking, okay, we could use a little more space.

5:43We're looking to grow our family, but we're not ready to commit to our forever home yet. What do we do? It's like, well, the lease is coming due on the, um, four bedroom apartment. I just like, I, I, I do this for a living. Right. And I just couldn't process like, oh, money going into my business is more advantageous than money going out to somebody else as a renter there. I was like, I'm paying rent anyways. Why not go to this other place? And Virginia was like, Scott, you're a moron with this. I protest the use of the word moron. I just gently pointed out that we had options. But to answer your question, Mindy, I think one point of shared frustration we have is now that we track our spending using Monarch is we have really had to come to terms with the amount of like Amazon spending, DoorDash spending, things that we, I think, were we not monitoring it would just balloon and be completely out of control.

6:41And so I think about, what, like a year or two ago, we decided we need to be really meticulous in tracking every dollar. And it was very eye-opening. And I sometimes have to do like a breathing exercise before I sit down to categorize our Amazon spends. Yeah, that's been a problem, I think, for me in the last two, three years specifically as well. Because as, you know, the job with BiggerPockets, like BiggerPockets ballooned over this time period, right? So when Virginia and I started dating, my title was director of operations as an early employee at BiggerPockets. And then I became VP at BP.

7:15I was super proud of that. But BiggerPockets ballooned so much over the course of the following six, seven years after we started dating. And if there's anything that I can get from a convenience standpoint, I'm going to spend it right now. because if I'm not doing that, then I'm either not having time with Virginia and Katie or I'm taking away from the job at BiggerPockets. And that got a little out of control probably like the last, like two years ago, a year or two ago, and it's gotten much more under control now. I think Amazon Prime is the worst, best invention ever because it's so easy to click and I already paid for shipping, so I don't have to pay for shipping.

7:55I have a huge disconnect between buying something online And then it's like, hey, by the way, you have to pay for shipping. I'm like, I don't need that. The indignity. What is this? 2002? Yeah, exactly. And it's always expensive shipping too. Like three or$4. I'm like, no, thank you. I'll just go over to Amazon and get that for free. In fact, I have shared a couple of times, at least on the show, when somebody is having a hard time getting a handle and they're spending, I'm like, cancel Amazon Prime. See what happens. Convenience is a really slippery slope. It really is. And DoorDash is not something I've ever done just because I am so cheap that I can't pay somebody to pick up my food.

8:32I would rather just go there. We don't have that problem, Mindy. Good for you. It's hard to go back once you've, again, the convenient slippery slope. Just beware. So have you two combined your finances? I know you've been married for five years. Yeah, we're coming up on five. I forgot. Four and a half years, yeah. That sounds right. Sure. We'll say that that's right. Yeah, we signed a premarital agreement. I want to say we were talking about this the other day, about six months before our actual wedding. And at that point is when we combined finances. Ah, okay. So you combined before the wedding.

9:08That's interesting. And the prenup, was that your idea or was that Scott's idea? I think it was both around there. Yeah. I love that. So Carl floated the idea when we were getting married a thousand years ago. He's like, hey, we should get a prenup. And I was like, no, if you ask me again, we're not getting married at all. I was so offended that he would say that. In my defense, we didn't have anything at all. Like we had, I don't know, a$0 net worth. And in fact, it turned out I had more money than he did. So I should have signed that prenup. But I think that we had an interview with Aaron Thomas from the prenup prescription.

9:48He wrote a book about prenups. That changed my entire view on prenuptial agreements. And I thought it was, I think it's episode 301. I thought it was such a great episode. I love that you both are young and understanding that a prenup helps you in your marriage, in your, you know, protecting both of your positions, even before you get married. You guys are way more mature than I am. And I think that there's an undue cultural stigma attached to prenuptial agreements. And of course, we want to be married for one, we joke, one lifetime, please. But it was from mostly, you know, how do we be transparent?

10:31How do we make things, I don't know, as equitable as possible? And I don't know, it just seems like a no brainer. Yeah, I think it wasn't approached from the standpoint of these are the things here, this is how it's going to be. It was more just like, let's make sure we understand what the rules are in the event that this ever happens. What's Scott's property? What's Virginia's property? What's marital property there? And then hopefully we never need to review or look at the document again because we're married for one lifetime. I haven't looked at it since somewhere. And I will add that this was also in line with, we did estate planning.

11:14We did our, you know, legal contingency plans for the care of our daughter. Just a lot of things that I think are, you know, nitpicky things that people don't like to think about. We were just, we just thought, why don't we knock this all out at once so we can go on with our lives. I love that. Knock it all out at once. It needs to be planned. And if you don't plan, then you're like, who is it? Aaron Lowry says you already have a prenup agreement. It is the divorce laws of your state. If you want to direct them yourself, then you need to have this in place. All right. Now we got to take a quick ad break.

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13:55Welcome back to the show, joined by Virginia Trent. So Virginia, Scott has shared multiple times on this show that you two have an annual financial planning retreat that you do. What is your take on this? Oh, it's just – it's such a – I don't know. This is going to sound corny. It's one of my favorite things about our relationship, and it's such a nice way to connect on a regular basis to make sure we're on track for living the life that we want to live. I think we did the first one on our honeymoon, and we update it semi-regularly. Yeah, we update it every quarter with few exceptions. Yeah, a handful of times we've missed it in a quarter or done in the middle of it or whatever.

14:35Yeah. And occasionally Scott will bring up, oh, I got another question from a BiggerPockets community member. How do I get my spouse on board with Fi? How do I get my girlfriend to get on board with all these seemingly nutty ideas? And I really think that sitting down and making a vision together is a great way to get on the same page and have a why behind the choices that you're making. And it is, it has been eerie how it has worked out. Like I remember sitting down to do our vision and saying, okay, well, sure, I'm going to try to write a book and maybe have some intellectual property to my name.

15:14And that all seemed like a pipe dream. And my first novel is coming out this summer. It was just wild the other day to finally be able to hold the book in my hands for the first time. and getting back to your question, Mindy, the vision is great, but the habits and the goals are better. They're so much more important. And it's a great, we try to hold each other accountable and it is noticeable when we're off track on our habits. Like, does this habit support what we ultimately want out of life? No. Do we need to be exercising more? Do we need to be checking or spending more? Am I happy at my job?

15:51Do I need to change up my approach to my day-to-day at work and so on and so forth. I could ramble on this just as much as Scott. Well, no, I love that. I love that because we have frequently spoken to guests where he will say, oh, she's not on board. She doesn't want to talk about it. She says, just handle it all. Or she will say, I would love to get him on board. He's not interested. He won't even listen. He won't have these conversations. And having the money conversations, I think is so important because you just said the vision is great, but it's the habits and the goals that are even better.

16:26And you have, and I said annual, it's a quarterly financial check-in. How frequently are you checking in on your habits and goals? Weekly, I'd say, sometimes bi-weekly. Weekly is the goal, is what we try to do. I would say this year, in like the last couple of months, we've been a little less diligent about that. But we've gone through stretches where I'd say we would have gone 20 weeks in a row. And it is noticeable. Those are, I bet you anything if we were to look back at those times, like, oh, wow, that's when we got this, this, this, and this done. And that's when we were really happy and driving and stuff.

17:00Oh, wait. So you're saying frequent check-ins with your partner to help you stay on track to meet your goals is a good thing. What a novel concept. Yeah, it has to be mutual buy-in, though. My advice to anybody who's hesitant to talk about this, or maybe you were raised in a culture where money is a taboo subject, once you rip the Band-Aid off, it will stay scary and unapproachable if you let it stay scary and unapproachable. But if you have honest conversations with your partner, it gets easier and easier and better and better with time. Okay. And you briefly showed us the book and then you put it back down again.

17:41What is the name of this book? It's called Our Secrets Were Safe. It's a sort of a juicy summer thriller comes out July 15. It's about a group of friends who thought they got away with something, but were very, very wrong about that. If you love sort of gone girl type books, it's very much in that vein. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm, I really credit in large part our, our super dorky goal setting process to getting this done and getting another book in the pipeline for 2026. The book will be published by Penguin Random House as well with that. So as part of a two book deal, Virginia will have another book coming out.

18:25We'll, we'll, uh, in summer 2026 as well. So that was super exciting. Okay. I am very excited about that. I have published two books. They were both with BiggerPockets Publishing. I turned them both in late, way late. One of them was written with Scott and his crazy schedule, my amazing ability, unparalleled ability to procrastinate led both of those books to be published late. So this goal setting and regular checking in is really, really helpful. What are some of the things that you talk about in goal setting? It sounds like there's money. It sounds like there's life stuff, too. But what sort of things are you talking about?

19:05Do you want to pull up the we can consult our latest draft? Oh, do you have a document written down, Scott? We sure do. Mindy, we save each version of it. Oh, and it's so much fun. It's like a little memory book looking back at, you know, previous iterations of this. But usually we start by describing our home environment, what we want that to look like, what our data, what we like our day to day to look like. Well, we start, we start off with gratitudes. So, and we'll, we'll list like 20 things that we're just like, so, so I'm a big, I'm a, I always push for this. Um, but we have to do this work when we're both in a really good mood, which, uh, typically involves a morning kind of like late mid morning weekend or like vacation day where we've both worked out and then are on our first or approaching our second cup of coffee at that point.

19:581 ,000%. And there's got to be a view in the background. That feels really important to us. It can be mountains. It can be a picnic. It doesn't have to be an expensive, lavish thing. It just has to be something that gets our juices going. If you're trying to get your spouse or your significant other on board, think about when they would feel relaxed. If you have young children, maybe it's after the kids are in bed. Or when you can give your undivided attention to something. I have been campaigning for years now to do this with a cocktail, but we've compromised with coffee, but basically a time where clear-minded, remove distractions and potential sources of stress and sit down with your partner.

20:44Well, I would also encourage one cocktail. Yes. Yes. One, not two, or get a bottle of wine and split it over the course of several hours. Well, okay, that's another question. how long do you spend on your weekly check-in and how long do you spend on your quarterly check-in they're about the same probably no way weekly check-in takes 10 minutes the quarterly check-in takes half an hour minimum yeah yeah that's fair i would love to see this document not your actual document but like erase it all the stuff and just see the uh the way that you've set it up i think I think I did create a template version of it that was like with some of the like a lot of the things like that were personal to us removed or whatever.

21:29But yeah, there's no like secret sauce to this. This is not like a like this is a piece of paper. This is a word document that we fill out with gratitudes. And then we start we say here's our for the example, the most recent one. Here's our December 31st, 2030 vision. And here's our December 31st, 2027 vision. So we start with the longer term one and then kind of bridge that to what. So here's what here's what perfect looks like in five years. Right. And then here's what perfect looks like in three years. If you're following, if you're if we're trying to do a step by step, step one. Gratitude list.

22:06That's always really fun to do in a great way to center the conversation. Step two, sort of begin with the end in mind, which is a great habit forming framework. um think i don't know you could do 10 years you could do seven years five years into the future and be as descriptive as possible and um it's always a draft right so there's no there's like none of this is permanent and we actually update it every quarter like that's the that's the ritual so it probably took us maybe an hour the first time um and now it's 30 minutes but then but then we we always make a slight change a tweak here or there hey we want to travel a bunch and that that kind of urge is, is smaller now.

22:46Let's not, let's, let's revise that component of this and do something and replace it with something else. That's awesome. Instead, like, um, a toy that we have. That's so true. Having a, introducing young children into our lives, like we'll get back to the travel one in a few years. Yeah. But, but, and so that that's, and so it probably, it's moved a lot. Like if we were to start with our first one four and a half years ago, uh, we got married under honeymoon. Uh, that would be, that one is very different than the one we have now, but it hasn't moved much in probably the last two years, two and a half years.

23:19They're pretty remarkably consistent now. And we just keep trying to move closer and closer towards them. My dear listeners, we would love to hit 100 ,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel, and we need your help. While we take a quick break, if you could do me a favor and hop on over to youtube.com slash biggerpocketsmoney to make sure you are subscribed to our channel. Stay tuned for more after the break. AutoTrader is powered by auto intelligence, the hyper-personalized way to buy a car. AutoTrader's tools sync with your exact budget and preferences to tailor the online car shopping experience totally to you.

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