MI319: Adulting is Easy w/ Lauren Keen Aumond

25:02But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors, and now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with. With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more.

25:41To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. I wanted to get into a little bit about the importance of finding and picking the right strategy in terms of real estate. It sounded like you did a couple of different investments. How did you go about picking the right strategy that worked for you? I think there's a natural journey that real estate investors go on. A lot of us start, like I did with the single family home.

26:21That's what we know. I mean, if we didn't grow up in single family home, we probably know people that did. And so we sort of start there. It doesn't take too long where if you take that kind of seriously, you start realizing, man, duplexes, triplexes, quads here in the United States, they have great financing options for those. Maybe I should trade up into those. And then a lot of people move on from there to larger commercial properties, big, big apartment buildings or true commercial with developing or office buildings or something like that. And I've sort of stopped along the way there at the small multifamily.

26:52I've got four small multifamily properties right now. So I like this level that I'm at. I'm kind of at what I think is the highest level that a quote unquote mom and pop investor can be with the four properties, the 12 units, eight short-term, four long-term rentals, managing yourself. I mean, this is really about the most, I think, one person or one couple can do, especially with all the other stuff that we have going on. So I like the small multifamilies. There's a lot of efficiencies there and things like that. And I don't feel like I'm quite ready to buy syndicate or just buy a large building for myself.

27:28But then the question other than what kind of property are you going to buy once you even settle on what your strategy there is going to be like a small multi. You've got to decide for me, it was long-term or short-term. There's also midterm rentals and student rentals. And there's all these different kinds of strategies within the actual type of property that you're buying. And there's no really way to know, I don't think what's right for you unless you do them, unless you try these different things. And I knew single family homes weren't for me. I know long-term rentals really aren't for me.

27:57You know, short-term rentals, especially, you know, I'm in Florida, so I have a natural, I think, leg up from a lot of people because a lot of people want to come here. So it's easier to have them and profit from them. But people are happy for the most part. I mean, the amount of people I see from Montana that walk out and I'll be like, oh, it's a little cold today. It's like 50. They're like, it's four at my house. Right. Oh, okay. Well, great. You know what I mean? They're happy and they're grateful. They're like, wow, you did a really good job on this place. Thank you for what you do. And you get so rewarded for keeping the properties up, making them beautiful.

28:28You get to use them sometimes. There's a lot of good stuff about short-term rentals versus long-term rentals. And I don't like having tenants that much. I mean, they really have a lot of power over you. They have, I mean, they can really do a ton of financial damage to you. And if you're talking to a tenant, it's not usually because they're happy. And so I just knew that my personality and my location suited short-term rentals. But I don't think you can know that about yourself unless maybe you just really know yourself really well. But I think probably you kind of have to get started and just know that it's okay to change once you're in.

29:06I mean, nobody's going to be like, wow, Lauren said, Lauren, when she introduced herself, said she was a single family home investor. Now she's got Maltese. I don't like her anymore. That's just not going to happen. I wanted to hear about your real estate educational journey. How did you go about learning? What were some of the books, podcasts, things that made a big impact on you along the way? Yeah. So when I bought that golf course community house, the one good thing I did was I kept my first house as a rental. And really the reason I think I did that, my parents had one rental property my whole life.

29:37So in my brain, I'm like, one rental property, good, living the dream. And so I did keep that one. And that is when I really got into Bigger Pockets, the Bigger Pockets podcast, and read a bunch of different books, a bunch of Bigger Pockets books, but other books as well, learning about real estate. I'm like, okay, now I don't just have a roommate that pays me anymore. Now I'm a landlord there. I have to think about leases, landlord tenant law, and systematizing, and how to vet tenants and what's the rules for giving notice and what do I want the rent to be and all of these things. And so that's when I really started reading all of those books.

30:10And it doesn't take too long before you're also getting into the personal finance space. I mean, there's so many connections there between personal finance and real estate that I then really got into reading the personal finance books and getting more into personal finance at that point as well. You had mentioned maybe on Twitter that Your Money or Your Life was a book that you would recommend. That made a big impact on me too in my financial journey. A huge impact, actually. Were there any other books in the personal finance space that also you'd say anybody needs to check out, read, and learn from?

30:44I love Your Money, Your Life. I love Set for Life, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, The Simple Path to Wealth, Psychology of Money. I like all of those books. Most of those I read to see if I can recommend them for people, even back then. Your Money, Your Life, the big thing with your money or life that they're trying, they're teaching you there is there's more to your job than money. For example, if you spend an hour commuting in an hour, you know, an hour each way commuting, and then you spend an hour complaining about your job when you get home and you're not cooking because of your job, because you spend so much time there.

31:17So you have to go out all the time. There's all these other costs with your job. And there's also this idea of like, what is my net worth? How much money have I made in my life versus how much have I kept. And all of those things, I had sort of accidentally done those exercises in my mid-20s. But if you haven't done those types of exercises and really just taken a high-level overview, a high-level look at your life, then your money or your life is greater or any of those other ones that I recommended. Yeah. Those are all good ones that you mentioned. And I'll put those in the show notes. I want to know, looking back on things, in terms of if you were to start your investing journey over, was there anything that you would change that you wish you had known at the start of things that you would have done differently, that would have maybe accelerated how quickly you could have left your W-2?

32:03So house hacking is when we've talked about it, but we haven't defined it yet. That's when you buy a property, live in part of it and rent other parts of it out. So that's what I was doing. I didn't know. I don't even know. Maybe that term was around then, but I didn't know what it was. When I had a roommate, you can have a roommate or you can buy a duplex, live in one part of it, rent the other out or a quad. There's other things you could do too, like rent out parking spaces, rent out your pool, rent out your yard, things like that. I'm doing that now. I've done that four times, but I took that big detour in the middle where I bought the house on the golf course community and the BMW.

32:36And if I could go back, I would just house hack. I would just keep house hacking and keep the one, right? Buy a duplex, live on one side, rent the other side out. Buy another duplex, move out of that one, keep it, live on one side, rent the other side out and keep repeating over and over. I'm still doing that now, but I would probably go back and not take that detour. So you are still house hacking now, you said? Yeah. So tell me about that. How does that work? How do you like it? Do you think you'll reach a stage where you're like, I'm done house hacking? Well, that's part of the question that I was talking about with lifestyle.

33:08We're house hacking, we're financially dependent, our real estate pays our bills. If we buy for us$1.5 million house in the water, that changes that calculus. But Your lifestyle is really good, right? So here we bought a bedroom breakfast. This is a single family home, three bedroom, two and a half bath, 1600 square feet with two ADUs in the back that are on Airbnb that we rent out. And so it's house hacking, but they are separate from our home and they're on the other side of the backyard. So we see them, but we can go out the front door and not see them. We've done it four times, I guess. So I had the roommates, then we bought this, and then we've also bought two other duplexes.

33:45And we moved into each of those duplexes and then eventually circled around and moved back into here. So if house hacked a total of four times, it's just a question. How much longer does my husband want to work? I'm three years older, so he's 31 right now. He owns his engineering firm. So there's just this question of how long is he going to work? And if he's not going to sell the firm for five or 10 more years, he's really got to work there till that. We might as well go get a house on the water because there's enough cashflow coming in every month that, I mean, how much do you need is the question, So yeah, I think someday we're leaning towards a lifestyle upgrade, but some of that depends on what he decides to do with the engineering firm.

34:26I wanted to get into a little bit about that marriage and relationships and building wealth. Talk to me about how being married has helped or hindered or some of the challenges, like how do you guys make decisions? Just, I wanted to hear a little bit about your experience. I just got married a year ago, so I'm experiencing, it's, you know, I'm used to making my own decisions and now I don't. Being older, being three years older than my husband. And we met when, I mean, he was 22 living with his dad still. I was 25. I was in that sales career. I had my house. It was a very, we met at a, you know, even though we're only three years apart, it was a pretty big gap at the time.

35:01And so we've been together eight years for the first four years before we got married. I kind of called the shots because it was kind of up to me. Like I bought the first house. I bought the second house. I bought the first duplex. I was sort of making these decisions. And then even when we got married and we bought this house, it was, I mean, we used equity from my other projects, some of them right here or my job. And so I sort of made a lot of the calls when it came to this property, even though we were married by that point. And so it was, for us, it was not some, we're not married now we're married.

35:32We make no joint decisions and we make all joint decisions. Even the four years that we've been married, it's been like, we've been slowly becoming more and more integrated, but definitely like it's way better to be able to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, to financially help in some situations. The last place we bought, he did half the down payment and I did half the down payment. That was awesome. I didn't have to do that all by myself. That was so cool. And then I was able to leave my job and he's there. Our bills are paid by the real estate, but he's like, well, I'll take it from here kind of a thing.

36:07You focus on managing the properties, house-mining media, adulting is easy. You do all that and I can do this. That is so cool. A lot of people are not able to do that. That's why I have health insurance. Right. Right. Right. And so there's just a lot of really good things and the sum is greater than its parts. Absolutely. I mean, the biggest challenge is, so he has the engineering firm and my background is in sales. And when you become a business owner versus just being an engineer, there's more sales and kind of business-y thinking involved. So we talk about the firm a lot. We talk about our future a lot.

36:40We talk about our investments a lot. We talk about the rentals a lot. And so it gets to be complicated being romantic partners and business partners at the same time. And we have not dialed that particularly in. And I think if anybody was a fly on the wall, they'd be like, wow, these people talk about money and business a lot. But it also just really interests both of us. But we try to set aside time where like, we're not doing that. Like, let's just watch this sporting event. You know, let's just go on this trip. Let's take a break. Well, you've got so much going on too, that it's just like, that's what you talk about.

37:15My wife and I are the same thing. We've got a lot of different projects and a lot of different things we've got going on. And so money is discussed a lot. It's by necessity. I'm sure, you know, I think about this sometimes where you see couples that were together a really long time, get divorced, especially like maybe they have kids and stuff. It's like, I think they, I assume, I don't know, but I think they just spend so much time raising the kids and thinking about the kids and talking about the kids and not connecting as human beings and as romantic partners anymore. And then the kids leave and they're looking at each other like, oh crap, I don't know you actually.

37:48Now that that's not happening, I don't even know what we talk about. And so my husband and I often say that our real estate is our kids. We talk, we know we're, we're talking about them, but we can't look up in 10 years and be like, dang, we have not connected romantically in a long time. So when this comes out, it'll probably be 2024. Do you guys do like a year in review and like, kind of like sit down and say, what do we want to accomplish this year? Are you, are you those kinds of people? Are you more like, let's just see what happens? In between. I mean, we're not, we're not going to sit down.

38:19We don't have to sit down and talk like we don't have to like set aside time and write stuff down. We pretty much got it. I mean, Our big things for next year are to stabilize the portfolio. We didn't need my money. We didn't have any issues with the real estate portfolio for years. Of course, I leave and everything hits the fan at the same time. And so we had enough emergency fund, but we're getting to the bottom of it. On the bright side, peak season in Florida for the Airbnbs is like January to May. And so that emergency fund is going to be stocked back up. But basically, our main goal for the next year is to stabilize the portfolio and probably sell one of our properties that we just have a lot of equity sitting there at this point.

39:00The return on equity looked really good when we had $100 ,000 sitting there. And over the last two years, that's gone from$100 ,000 of equity to $300 ,000. And all of a sudden, your return on equity is not as good. And we may want to make some changes, diversify out of Florida. I'm not sure. So the main things are get our emergency fund back up, re-stabilize the portfolio, and then maybe reallocate a little bit from that one property. And there's a chance with the one property that we sell it and maybe we'll put it in the stock market. We sort of used to have a goal back before engineering firm, because that's part of our net worth.

39:30But our goal, we used to want it to be like 50 % stocks and 50 % real estate. And we are way heavy on the real estate side. So there's a chance we rebalance that in there. I know it's not really a sexy answer. It's not like, take over the world next year, man. These are my sparkles. No, this is good. This is really good. You mentioned the engineering firm. Do you get involved in, because you have a sales background, do you get pretty involved in his company or is it kind of, you've got your thing and he's got his thing and you're separate in that regard? I don't think it's business partners. No, I'm involved, but like, you know, we talk about stuff all the time, you know, help him talk through ideas and help him bring ideas to the business.

40:11I doubt when he brings those ideas that he said, Hey, Lauren thought we should do this. I don't think that's what's happening. Yeah. I mean, certainly. And being the wife of someone who owns a business has been interesting. And it makes you realize what Bill Gates or Bezos, what their spouses were doing and how involved they really are. For those divorces and stuff, people are like, why does she get anything? And I'm like, man, she was doing a lot. I mean, And she was holding it down. The whole reason he could start the business and take this risk is because I was making the kind of money I was making.

40:45And I could totally hold it down without him completely. So there's some of that too where, yeah. But I mean, basically, yes, I'm involved. I'm like, I tell him, I'm like kind of like a sales coach, kind of like his business consultant, a sounding board a little bit. I mean, but I doubt the business partners would say, yeah, Lauren's part of this thing. So you've settled on Airbnbs as a strategy. Talk to us a little bit more about the economics of Airbnbs, why you like Airbnbs versus a longer term rental. Talk to me a little bit about that and what it's been like for you. It depends from unit to unit what those numbers are, but I have a six unit apartment building.

41:25Four of those are short term rentals, two are long term rentals. The long term rentals are rented at$950 ,000, whereas the short term rentals bring in over$3 ,000 ,000 each top line. There's more expenses there, but you're getting a lot. Really, the bottom line is a lot more for Airbnb. It's a lot more work. So for my long term rentals, it's like if they... Let's say maybe once a month, I got some old ACs in that building. Maybe once a month, I hear from them about something. Maybe. Maybe once a quarter. Let's say once a quarter. And then if they don't pay rent, I have to call. That's it. And they would never not pay.

42:00They would not pay rent by accident. They're a little bit older. But that's it. For the short-term rentals, yes, am I making two or three times as much? Yes. I'm working more than two or three times more. It's probably like 15, 20 minutes a day versus 15, 20 minutes a week or a month. So would you qualify or classify yourself as a real estate professional? Are you familiar with that term and designation? I had a job till June. And so the answer for 2023 is no. Any plans to change the existing long-term rentals, disco, whole hog, 100 % Airbnb? No, we're not going to do that. I'm not an Airbnb bust person, obviously, but I do believe in some level of diversification and not going all eggs in one basket.

42:48The last duplex that we bought is both long-term rentals. So as we've switched, we had a duplex that was one short-term, one long-term, both of those are short-term. The six unit was three and three. Now it's four and two. As we've gone away from long-term rentals and those properties, we wanted to backfill it with a couple more long-term rentals. So I think the, let's see, eight to four. So I mean, two thirds of the portfolio being short-term rentals, I think that works for us. That allows for enough diversification and kind of level cashflow. Yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk podcasting.

43:24You've been podcasting for over four years. I think you've done over 150 episodes at this point. Wanted to hear a little bit about some of your biggest lessons from your favorite guests, just in terms of like financial independence, people that have made a big impact on you. There's always like a handful of guests that are like, wow, that blew my socks off. Talk to me a little bit about that. What I love about podcasting is meeting all these different people. And a lot of my guests are from Twitter because that's my largest platform. What I love when I talk to them, you can have... My friend Andy is the crypto guy.

43:59My friend David knows a lot about the financial markets and came on and talked about bonds. My friend Brad came on and talked about stocks. And it's so cool to learn these different things from these different people. But also there's always something that I learned about them that is surprising. Because social media, the way the algorithms work, you are rewarded for kind of pounding the same kind of thought. You become kind of not like a three or four dimensional human being. And so that's really some of my favorite part about it. In terms of big overarching personal finance themes, I can't think of any because adulting is easy is so broad.

44:34I mean, it's so broad that the only thing that you are getting reinforced every single week is that personal finance is personal. There's no one approach that works for everybody. I can't tell you, Patrick, that you should invest in bonds. I can't tell you should invest in stocks. I can't tell if you should invest in real estate. And maybe at the beginning of adulting is easy. Maybe I thought that's what everybody was going to get out of it. I'm not sure what they should exactly do, but they are at least getting more information so that they can make their own decisions. The other side of it too is these people are mostly a lot.

45:02There's a lot of content creators. That's how I know these people. And they always wow me with their discipline, their consistency, and their goal setting, and their growth. I mean, that's been a really cool part of this too, is personal finance aside, just learning from these people how to be a consistent, disciplined person. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle.

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48:47All right, back to the show. How did the name Adulting is Easy come about? How did you choose that name? Adulting is Easy is about, we make adulting easier if we make money easier. If you're not worried about where your next meal is going to come from, your life becomes quite a bit easier. Like you get a flat tire. It's a bigger deal if you have zero dollars than if you have a couple thousand, you know, and it just makes your life easier. You know, you're maybe you don't have these big medical emergencies because you have health insurance and you have preventive care and you have preventive medicine.

49:16And so that's the idea of adulting is easy. I hated the word adulting at first. Like when I'm like, oh, adulting is so stupid. But I started thinking about it as it relates to personal finance. And we talk about adulting, it's like, do you know how to put a new button on your pants or hem your pants? And do you call and make your own doctor's appointments? There's that part of it too. But right around 2017, I just had this epiphany where it was like, money is a big part of adulting. And nobody's connecting those two things. And so Adulting is Easy was available on Twitter. I grabbed it in 2017, and then I didn't do anything with it until 2019.

49:53So now you're involved with House Money Media. Tell us about House Money Media, how that came about, what the impetus was, and what you guys have been up to recently. House Money Media started as this idea that every content creator doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. So I knew I was going to be leaving my job in 2023. And I knew, okay, I need to redo my website. I need to collect more emails than I have. I need to get a newsletter going and all that. I was prepared to do that. And then my friend Alan was talking about like, oh, I need to expand to Instagram and YouTube and I have the podcast and I want to write a newsletter about it and have the bandwidth.

50:33And we sort of started talking about what do we like to do? And what if we could make content creating more about doing what we like to do? And we believe again, and this is another partnership, right? The sum is greater than us individually. The pie is greater. There'd be more sponsorship opportunities, a bigger audience, more people to teach about real estate and reach. So that's the idea. That's why we came together. So I run the podcast. He runs a newsletter and the website. I manage our virtual assistant. And so we have the podcast, the newsletter, we have our website, and then we have paid courses and a paid discord with coaching as well.

51:06And so that's really what House Money Media is. We're just getting going, just scratching the surface. And we just did... We're coming out with episode... Probably when this comes out, we'll be around episode 30 of that new podcast. So it's been really fun and it It is really nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Content creating can be such a solo, lonely thing sometimes. 100 % agree with that. So do you have a nice kind of breakdown of job responsibilities? It sounds like he's doing the newsletter, you're doing the podcasting. Do you ever do a podcast together where you're hopping on a call together and talking to a guest?

51:42Yeah, yeah. He's always on the podcast with me. But in terms of like planning it, so there's an interview portion. and we have a guest host. And so I have to obviously record the interview before we record with the guest host, because part of what we do is react to the interview. And so I'm juggling those schedules. And then I also pick the titles, manage the editor and things like that. So I'm in charge of that. Also, we got on a call just before this where he's like, this is my idea for the next blog, which is part of the newsletter. And we're talking through that. And then I've helped him a little bit with, I've given him some content to write blogs about short-term rentals and things like that.

52:20So yeah, we spearhead certain things. There's nobody that's super in charge of our sponsors. He has the sponsors that he's brought into the fold that he invoices and talks to. And I have the sponsors that I talk to. And as far as social media goes, it's a little bit divide and conquer. He's handling Twitter right now. And then I'm handling all of the other ones through our VA. So yeah, we have a pretty good division of duties. And if anything new comes up, we're pretty good about figuring out who should do it. There's really not a lot of strife. We really think alike and we're very aligned on the vision for the business.

52:52And that just makes decision-making really easy. And the newsletter, what is it called and how often does it come out? It's called The Money Drop. It comes out weekly. So that we have a social media post from one of us for the week. We have whatever the podcast was for the week and whatever the blog was for the week in the newsletter. Got it. I wanted to touch on this Twitter post that you had that kind of piqued my interest. You had posted a question on whether 20-somethings should be maxing out their 401ks or not. And Elon Musk responded. Can you tell us about that? What his response was and if you had any further interaction with them?

53:30I wanted to hear about that because that's kind of cool to have Elon respond. It seems like a very basic question, but it's actually a little bit nuanced, right? Because 401ks, you can max them, which is something around$20 ,000,$22 ,000 is the most that you could put in and get the tax benefits is what the US government says. And you could also max the match. Full thing about 401ks is a lot of employers give you a match portion. So for example, you put in 5%, they put in 5%. I believe that 20 something should not max their 401ks. I did. We've talked about that a lot. I wish I didn't. If I could go back, I'd take that money back because I don't need, I'm not going I need it when I'm 59 and a half.

54:09I need it now. So I believe in maxing your match though. If your company's given 5%, you better put 5 % in there. But so the question says, should you max your 401k? I agree with Elon. I think the answer is no. I don't think you should put the full$22 ,000 unless your company's matching that amount. And so no, he didn't reply anymore. I sent that to my parents. Mom's like, but why does he feel that way? He needs to say. I'm like, mom, he's like literally one of the most important people in the whole entire world. Okay. So no, he didn't say anymore, but no, Elon and I both agree that you should not max your 401k if you're in your twenties.

54:41I think you should max your match. I wonder if he would feel that way. The world may never know though. But you didn't respond to him. You didn't say like anything back. Okay. So he sent that at like 4.30 AM and I didn't see that he, it never popped up in my notification. So I didn't even see that he replied for like 10 hours. Interesting. I wanted to hear about like a contrarian personal finance take that you have? Anything that comes to mind? There's people on both sides of every argument, but I'm like pro mortgage and debt. Like some people are like, you should have no debt. And I just wholeheartedly disagree.

55:16Personally in my life, my husband and I are worth two and a half million dollars at 34 and 31 years old. We'd be worth maybe one if we didn't use leverage and I would still be working my job. I mean, it's, it's that big of a deal. Another one that just kind of comes to mind, like Robert Kiyosaki, the rich dad, poor dad guy says that your house is not an asset, but I agree with you. I mean, I've always made money and done well on my personal residences. I've kind of done live in flips with them. So. I mean, an asset is something you own and you either own that outright, like with equity, or you also take a loan on it to own it with liability.

55:55I mean, There's like, that's the accounting formula. It's not debatable. It's an asset, like period. If you want to split hairs, if you're talking about your statement of net worth, it's a personal use asset, right? And I use this example. Someone's like, I don't count my car and my net worth. I'm like, well, do you own your car outright? Yeah, I own my car. How much is your car? Eh,$15 ,000. Okay. If the crap hit the fan, could you sell that car for$15 ,000 and then buy one maybe for five and use the 10 ,000 for something? Yeah. That's also why it's an asset. Same with your house. Now, I do think your house should go purely in your personal use assets category.

56:28If you're planning on living there your whole life, paying it off, retiring there and dying there, you can't use it. You can't use it as an investment. It doesn't go in your investment assets. But I mean, even if you're going to use half your equity to downsize and retire off of, put half of it in your investment assets on your statement of net worth if you want. I'm cool with that. I wanted to hear a little bit about some of the biggest mistakes that you see 20 and 30 something's making with their finances? What is it that makes you just hit your head and just be like, oh gosh, what are the biggest mistakes?

57:03Well, I don't know what every 20-year-old's financial life looks like, but I know a lot of them buy cars and get car payments, which I'm not necessarily against. I don't think you need to buy beaters, but if you are stretching at all, if you're buying more car than you should buy, if your car payment is$700 a month is the average on a new car? It's crazy. I don't care if you do that, but I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me that it's more important to you than vacations. It's more important to you than your 401k. It's more important to you than your Roth if you're not doing any of those things, because it is implicitly holding you back from doing some of these things that you are probably telling your family and friends that you're going to do that you wish you could do, but you can't.

57:44So the biggest thing is it's just, it's the car. I mean, everybody, so many people graduate from college and they get that car payment right away. And I'm like, can you not like, do you need it? And, or do you just really, really want it more than anything else? One of my favorite guests that I had on, it's been a while. He played a football in the NFL, Devon Kennard. I don't know if you've come across. Oh yeah. I had him on. You had DK on. Yeah. Yeah. He's great. He drove like once he got drafted into the NFL, I forget what round he went in, maybe fifth or something like that. doesn't matter.

58:16He continued to drive his high school car that he drove like his first two seasons in the NFL. He was driving his high school car, which I think is awesome. Yeah. I mean, I drove my first car. I bought my first house before I bought my second car, you know, and that was my Mustang money for the record. I was going to buy a Mustang and bought a house instead. It was a good move. I still don't have a Mustang. Got a bunch of houses, I guess, but you know. Lauren, this has been a lot of fun. I really want to, you know, thank you for your time. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to discuss?

58:50I guess the one other thing I'll say about the genesis of adulting is easy is that it started in 2019 as a podcast to teach my little sister about money. And so in 2019, I would have been 29. So she would have been 16. She was in high school then. And so that's really how it started. And some of that has to do with our brother was, you know, and he was dealing with an addiction at the time. And so our parents really had a split focus. I mean, you're already behind the eight ball. If there's two of you and you have three kids, you can't be at all the places at the time. And then there were times where they were very focused on him.

59:27And so I had always taught her a bunch of things. I was like, you know what? I'm going to teach her personal finance. So that's how it started. I just wanted to get that out there as well. It's now morphed into teaching more than just her, but that is, that's part of it. You know, it's like, uh, I think of myself as a really big sister and I hope that some of my listeners get that vibe too, when they're listening to adulting is easy. That's really cool. That's a great story. I think like having that ideal person that you're, whether you're podcasting or writing or tweeting about, like having that kind of ideal person is like super helpful.

59:58And particularly so if it's a relative, you know, it's just like high motivation there. So really cool stuff. Lauren, this has been a lot of fun. Where can our audience go to learn more about you, learn more about what you're up to, that kind of thing? I am adulting is easy on Twitter and YouTube. I am adulting is easy real on Instagram. If you're interested in the house money media side of things, you can go to housemoneymedia.com, that podcast, blog, newsletter, courses, everything is there. Cool. I'll put all this in the show notes and thanks again for your time, Lauren. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

1:00:30Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.