This week’s interview is with Mr. BoaS from Budget On a Stick. As the name implies, his site focusing on providing rock solid budgeting advice. Let me in the comments if you enjoyed the interview and check out my previous interviews here.
Fill the readers in on your background.
My name is Mr. BoaS and I write over on the site BudgetOnaStick.com
If you can’t tell from the name I live in the state of Minnesota where we love all sorts of things on a stick at our state fair. I live here with my wife and two boys. To pay the bills I am a software developer. I got into personal finance once my first son was born. He was our catalyst to get our act together and get out of debt.
What’s the most interesting or useful financial advice you’ve ever received?
Rich people aren’t who you think they are. After reading Millionaire Next Door I saw the world in a completely different light. I stopped assuming anyone with a big house and nice car was rich. They were actually more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck even if their paycheck was greater than $4,000 every two weeks.
What’s the best book (can be non-financial) you’ve ever read? Why?
Ready Player One is the coolest book I’ve read in a long time. I am a geek so it speaks to me in so many ways. I can’t wait to see the movie that comes out this year. The story follows a kid named Wade Watts who lives in a dystopian future where everyone spends most of their life in virtual reality. It is crazy full of video game and 1980’s references.
What’s one piece of financial advice you didn’t listen to, but wish you had?
Control your spending. I wish I would have heeded that advice earlier in life, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten into debt and been running negative on our budget every month.
If you could travel to any period throughout history, which would you choose and why?
I think I would go to 1995. It isn’t that far away and that’s kind of the point. Being a computer person I don’t think I would handle living in a world without them. 1995 was around the dawn of the modern computer age. The internet was just starting to take hold and the Goliath companies we know today were just forming in the garages of Silicon Valley. It would be great to invest in those companies then ;).
Plus, I wouldn’t mind going to see Empire Records, Jumanji, or Toy Story in theaters!
What’s one thing people would be surprised to know about you?
I used to drive a motorcycle. In high school, I had a gearhead friend that talked a bunch of us into getting our motorcycle license and subsequently a bike to go with it. I had to sell mine to pay for my study abroad program during college but I miss riding. When I graduated from college I nearly bought one but I backed out at the last minute. I couldn’t justify the cost of the bike and more importantly the safety of the thing.
Now that I am a dad I can’t imagine driving one. Maybe in the future with more self-driving cars on the road I will feel safe enough to ride one again.
You blog a lot about budgeting. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to save money?
I had to defer this question to my wife. She said it was our cash budget. Our spending was so out of hand that I convinced her that we should do a cash budget system. We would pull out the money at the beginning of the month and if we spent off it we were done, game over. This meant we were doing pantry meals and nothing would be purchased until the next month.
What’s one thing about personal finance you wish they taught in schools?
They briefly touched on the idea of maxing a Roth IRA and how it would make you a millionaire early in life but I wish they would have talked more about personal finance in general. We should have talked about making a budget, importance of saving, or the different types of investment accounts.
Even if they had just talked a little bit of all those things it would have been better than nothing.
You regularly share your net worth. Why do you think it’s so important to share these updates with your readers?
For my readers, probably not. They probably don’t care all that much but before I started my site I was reading others who did. I thought it was interesting to watch their net worths grow. They were doing it because it would hold them accountable which is partially the same reason I share my net worth. I think the more important thing I share are my goals. Those are more tangible than numbers going up or down. The goals tell more of a story about what we are trying to accomplish on our journey to financial independence.
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