The Wife loves her TikTok. The algorithm fed her up a guy named Caleb Hammer, who is kind of like a foul-mouthed, very confrontational Dave Ramsey. Not my cup of tea, but i can see why he would be popular.

Anywhoo, it led to a discussion between The Wife and me about how glad we are that we agreed early on money, spending, and budgeting. It also got me thinking on some of the financial reps – the financial muscles I had to build.

The beginning exercise was to pay cash for stuff. I really believe this was such a foundational financial rep. Because when I got used to paying cash for everything, I learned to pay for only what I could afford and budgeted to spend. This was the strength I needed to go to using a debit card. I could spend in more areas, but I still was doing the financial reps of staying within budget and keeping with what was in my account. This meant I had that discipline when The Wife and I went to a credit card. We already had those financial reps to treat the credit card like cash.