The Debt Free Mom Podcast

If you've ever wondered how long it would take to see results if you switched from budgeting by month to budgeting by pay period, today's episode is for you. Kristina is a mom of four, a pastor's wife, a nurse, and a runner. And today she's here to share her story of switching to budgeting by pay period in January, and the amount of transformation she's seen, not only in her fi...

Are you in a season of waiting when it comes to your money? Where you know some big change is coming in the near future, but it's not there yet. What do you do in the meantime? What do you do while you're waiting? Should you try to grow the gap between your income and expenses? Or should you just be okay with a different timeline than you maybe thought initially? Alexandrea is a single mom...

Today I'm excited to share my conversation with you from my new friends Stacie & Meghan from Didn't I Just Feed You. Didn’t I Just Feed You is a weekly podcast hosted by long-time food professionals, Stacie Billis and Meghan Splawn, all about feeding our families — even for parents who hate to cook. (Because, man, kids need to eat a lot, and all the time too!) Every week, Stacie and Me...

As many of you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early thirties. It was a major learning process for me and still is. On today's episode, Shawn comes on to share his experience having ADHD and learning to manage his finances. Shawn's been married for 23 years, has two kids ages 21 and 15, and he works as a computer programmer. Today we talk about his struggles and successes with learni...

What do you do when you're ready to budget and send money to goals but your spouse isn't? Today's episode is with Rachel Parker who is a wife, a mom of two, and a teacher's assistant. Rachel and her husband realized that they needed to clean up their finances in a big way. Now they're working through building a realistic budget and learning to stick to it. So what can we do whe...

Do you find yourself building budgets that look great on paper, but then once your pay period starts, you struggle to stay consistent? In this episode of the Debt Free Mom podcast, our guest Ali, a social worker, wife, and mom, delves into her personal challenges with creating budgets that work on paper but fail in practice. She discusses the additional struggles of managing finances with ADHD, of...

In today's episode of the Debt Free Mom podcast, we're talking about medical expenses. How do we get ahead with the other goals we have for our money when we constantly feel like we are paying for medical expenses that happened a long time ago? Sarah Gonzalez, a mom of two, comes on to talk about how she is going about paying off past medical expenses and reworking her budget so that she d...

It is so easy to focus on what makes our own finances the exception to the rule. Why other people can budget, but we can't. Why other people can put money in savings, but we can't. Why other people can eat food from home, but we can't . But what if we started challenging ourselves to find the positive side of our financial picture, whatever that may be? Because it is there. Today's...

Since tax season is here, I wanted to answer a very common question I get this time of year: how do I use my tax refund? Everybody has a different response to receiving a tax refund. Some people purely see it as fun money as extra money. They can do whatever they want with it. Other people have been scraping by the past couple of months and feel a sense of relief when they receive a tax refund wan...

What does a professional chef want us home cooks to know about cooking food at home? Today's guest is Sandy Leibowitz of Plantains & Challah. She's a trained chef with experience in restaurants as a personal chef, and now as an educator teaching people like me how to be more efficient and effective in their kitchens. As a note, we had a few technical issues with audio during this episo...

Our Feed the Family mini series continues with a replay of my conversation with Amy Cross - an expert in food storage and preservation. She shares practical approaches to reducing food waste and spending even while accommodating food allergies, sensitivities, picky eaters, and everything in between. Listen to what Amy has to share today about making the most of our grocery budget. You can find Amy...

I talk about grocery spending and feeding my family well on a relatively low budget all the time, but I live in the rural Midwest, the heart of farm country where grocery prices are relatively low. What about when you live somewhere with a high cost of living like San Diego, California? Today's guest, Allie Powell, also known on Instagram as Grocery Getting Girl, is here to share about grocery...

Welcome to the first episode of our mini series, Feed the Family. This episode kicks off a very special month with Debt Free Mom. On the podcast, in the community, and on Instagram, we are taking the entire month of March to talk about feeding the family. In today's episode, I set the stage for the month. What are the ground rules? What are the things we will be focusing on when it comes to fe...

In the previous episode, I talked to Jessi Fearon about sinking funds: how she uses them, why she uses them, and how they are helpful in her budget. I thought it would be helpful to record my own episode talking about why I choose not to use sinking funds. Like I said in the conversation with Jessi, I don't think sinking funds a bad thing. I think that a lot of people could benefit from them,...

When it comes to finding a budget method that works well for you, I always say, if it works well for you, then it works! It doesn't have to work for other people. One thing that doesn't really work well for me is sinking funds, but people ask about them all the time. So I asked Jessi Fearon, who is a mom of three, a finance expert, a CPA, and an author who uses sinking funds to come on tod...

For some people, the fact that their income is variable means goals like paying off debt or saving a full emergency fund will simply always be out of reach. For Samantha and her husband, who are both personal trainers, they decided that their variable income would not stand in the way of their dream of buying a home. Today, Samantha shares her story of paying off $50,000 in consumer debt while man...

In the last episode, I shared my story about switching from set salary based income to a highly variable income, and what that was like both personally and in my budget. Now, I'm opening the conversation to other people in similar boats. Jessica joins me today to talk about how she's managed her variable income budget, and to ask for some advice in handling the pieces that make her feel ov...

On this episode of the Debt Free Mom podcast, I am answering one of your most frequent questions: How the heck am I supposed to budget if my income is variable? I understand how frustrating this can be and why it seems like it would prevent you from being able to budget. About a year and a half ago, our family went from a set salary paycheck to fully self employed with a highly variable income. Th...

You do not have to follow me long to know that my love of libraries runs deep. I grew up going to the library and I'm raising my kids to love the library. Today I have a special guest with me, the director of my local library! Alissa Williams is here to share with us some of the lesser known resources and services available from libraries, because it has so much more to offer than just books....

I want you to notice the first couple of things that come to your mind when I hear the words "frugal living." For some reason, these words tend to carry so much baggage. There are so many negative thoughts around the idea of living frugally. Today on the podcast we have Jen Smith, who is personal finance expert and the co host of Frugal Friends podcast. Since paying off $78,000 worth of de...

Join us for the FREE Know Your Numbers Challenge starting Sunday, January 7th. It's 5 days of email prompts to help you gather your real numbers and reflect on your approach to your finances this upcoming year. Disclaimer: This episode was entirely recorded, edited, and uploaded by Carly while Kyle was sick in bed. This is not the norm. If anything seems off to our tried and true listeners, th...

As we close out 2023 on the Debt Free Mom podcast, we are rebroadcasting one of my favorite conversations from this season with Paige Pritchard from Overcoming Overspending. When we aired her episode originally, we had an issue with pushing it out to some of our providers. And so we want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to listen to it because it's so important. Plus, before we replay...

As parents, we can feel an immense amount of pressure to create memories & joy for our children at all times of year, but especially around the holidays. As we're in the thick of the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we can feel that pressure mounting. Even when we're accomplishing everything on our to-do list, and no matter what we do, we can feel like it's not en...

What kind of pots and pans does a chef use at home? What medicine does a doctor choose for their own cold? How does an accountant manage their personal budget? In today's episode, I sat down with Nicole, who is a certified public accountant, wife, mom, and the money manager of her household. She's here to tell her story of using YNAB for a few years, but consistently finding it lacking the...

Want to know one of the most common budget categories I see with a note that says, "I would love to add this someday!" when I'm building custom budgets? It's giving. Most people want to give to causes and organizations they love, but many struggle to fit it into their budget or think that the amount they can give won't matter. Today, I'm chatting with Nathan Hill from NextA...