21. The Year That Changed the Trajectory of Our Lives (with Jesse Paine)

By cpaine | February 19, 2019

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Guess what? Thanks to popular demand, Jesse is back on today’s episode! And this time, he’s joining me for the entire episode. We didn’t really plan it… he was just sitting across from me when I went live and his mic was turned on. As you’ll hear… he jumped right in! 😉

We disagree about the weather, we talk about our new shower filter and how it’s made such a difference in our lives, and I ask Jesse to share about the books he’s been reading.

And then we pick up right where we left off in our story last time. If you remember back to our last episode, we told you about a hard place that we were in, both personally and financially.

Jesse had just lost his job, our second daughter had just been born, I was suffering from postpartum depression, and our marriage was on the rocks. That’s the point where we pick up the story today. In this episode, we share about how Jesse’s struggle to find a job and our desperate place of needing to pay the bills actually inspired us to do some outside-the-box things.

Little did we dream that what we would experiment with and set up during that dark time in our lives would end up changing the entire trajectory of our lives. In fact, there is a very good chance I wouldn’t have this podcast or run MoneySavingMom.com or be living in TN or have the opportunity to help and impact millions around the world or have the wonderful friendships here we do if it weren’t for that dark season of our lives.

You never know what how God might use a really difficult season in your life to prepare you for something bigger and greater than you could ever dream or imagine!

In This Episode:

[01:48] – Jesse’s mic is live — surprise! (I didn’t even realize it when we went live. I thought he was just going to wait to go live until later on in the show. But nope… that’s not his style if he’s sitting in front of a live mic! And I loved that he got to jump in at various parts to share!)

[02:24] – My hair had been looking icky ever since we moved into our new house… I finally figured out what the problem was and share in this episode the inexpensive solution we came up with!

[06:39] – I asked Jesse to share what he’s reading right now. And we explain why I don’t ask him this question every month, unlike my other guests. I love how honest he is and how we are so different when it comes to books and reading.

[08:11] – Jesse and I talk about why we love You Need a Budget, this episode’s amazing sponsor, and Jesse shares more about how it works for him.

[11:09] – We recount the time in our lives when Jesse was unemployed and I ask Jesse to share more how it was for him to walk through that dark time.

[16:05] – I share about how that time in our lives propelled me to start MoneySavingMom.com — and how I envisioned it was just going to be this little extra thing I did on the side.

[18:02] – Jesse got a contract position at a big law firm right around the time I started MoneySavingMom.com and he shares more about that and how he grew so much from the various audiobooks and podcasts he listened to while doing pretty mindless document review at the law firm.

[18:56] – MoneySavingMom.com took off from the get-go and far exceeded our wildest expectations. Within a year, we were making a full-time income from it. 

[22:34] – Jesse and I open up about how so many people expected us to buy a house right out of law school and how people thought we were kind of nuts to keep renting. But we look back and are so glad that we did.

[25:15:] – We share more about our crazy goal to pay cash for a house in 5 years and how this motivated us to continue to live as frugally as possible. 

[26:08] – In hindsight, we can see so clearly how God used that difficult year to humble us, shape us, strengthen our marriage, and teach us to dream bigger. And to lead us on this journey we never anticipated… we’ll share more about that in our next episode!

Links and Resources:

How to Listen to The Crystal Paine Show

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Ready to dive in and listen? Hit the player above or search for “The Crystal Paine Show” on your favorite podcast app.

Sponsor Spotlight

This episode is sponsored by YouNeedaBudget.com — the budgeting software we have personally used for the past two years and absolutely love.

We were introduced to this budgeting software by my brother-in-law, Justin, a few years ago. He and my husband, Jesse, are both what I would lovingly refer to as “nerds”.

You know the kind of people… those people who think spreadsheets are fun. And who geek out over features in Excel. Yup, those kinds of people.

You might as well poke my eyeballs out with a hot iron rod than get to me be giddy over creating spreadsheets. But nevertheless, I love Spreadsheet Nerds because they help keep people like me in line and on track! 

Anyway, it was around Christmas time and Justin started telling Jesse about YouNeedaBudget — what we call YNAB for short. Jesse and I had both heard of this software before, but we had been using Quicken for so long that we’d not considered changing to anything else.

Well, when Jesse saw the features of YNAB, he was intrigued enough to sign up for the free trial. And it was pretty much love at first sight.

Truthfully, I can’t even begin to tell you how often I’ve heard him exclaiming to me, to friends, or just to himself something about, “How cool and helpful YNAB is!”

I’m such a pen and paper and cash girl, but after all his raving reviews, I finally gave in and downloaded it on my phone and had him show me how it works. It’s really, really impressive. I love how we can see exactly how we’re doing in every budget in just one glance.

And since we have multiple budgets for our businesses and personal, it allows us to track them all in one app. Which is so handy!

They usually only offer a 30-day trial, but they are giving you all a FREE 60-day trial so you can really get a feel for it and see how well it works. 

Go here to sign up for your FREE 60-Day YNAB trial.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission — at no additional cost to you. Thank you so much for your support!

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