Partners in Fire: Recent Episodes
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On episode 13 of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money, Brian and I discuss the financial impacts of addiction. It’s an interesting topic, and one that I’ve mentioned before in my blog post “The Worst Financial Mistake of my Life“. But Brian has dealt with addiction as well. I don’t think that’s shocking – I think every person on this planet at least knows someone who has been affected by addiction. But our experiences with it are very different.
The Financial Impacts of Addiction on the Enabler Yep, that’s me. I was an enabler. I had an addict boyfriend and I enabled him to drink for over 5 years. Overall, I think I spent between ten and twenty thousand dollars on this guy. And yes, in the beginning I would even buy him the booze! I know now how messed up that situation was, but when you are in the situation, it’s hard to see how damaging it is (to both of you).
The Financial Impacts of Addiction on the Addict Brian’s viewpoint comes from that of the addict. He was addicted to an illegal substance for over 10 years. He estimates that he spent between 50 and 100 thousand dollars on just getting a fix. That doesn’t include the lost jobs and lost opportunities due to addiction. We are both extremely thankful that he was able to dig himself out and get clean.
Listen to episode 13 to hear all the juicy details!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Eps-13.mp3 Podcast Notes This was a difficult podcast for me. Talking about my issues with my ex made me relive some of them, and I realized that I’m not entirely healed from that ordeal. But listening to Brian’s take on what the addict really is responsible for helped add some clarity.
We still struggle with not talking over one another, hopefully someday we will get better with that. The animals also continue to be an issue -I can’t wait until we get our studio built so we don’t have to pause every time one of them gets up or wants attention!
Overall, I think it was a great podcast on a very sensitive topic, I hope you enjoy it!
Listen to My Boyfriend Sucks with Money on Itunes!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Welcome to episode 12 of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money! We have to apologize for the lateness of this episode – although we want to record at least one a week for our awesome listeners, sometimes our work schedules just don’t allow it!
But, to make up for that, you get an extended episode this week! Today, we decided to talk about something a little different. Don’t worry, we still have a recap of Brian’s budget and discuss how he did! We know you finance voyeurs love hearing about the money fails of others! After the recap though, we discuss a hot button political topic that has been a little more front and center since Andrew Yang announced his candidacy for president: Universal Basic Income.
Universal Basic Income Discussion Although Brian and I both agree that Universal Basic Income would be an amazing program, we have differing ideas of how to pay for it. His conservative roots make him highly resistant to any new taxes, while my liberal upbringing gives me no qualms about additional taxes on businesses. It’s fun to talk about our different opinions, and it really goes to show that you can still love and respect someone who has a completely different world view than you do. I think we need more of that in this country. Give it a listen and let us know who you agree with! Or, if you hate the idea of basic income, tell us why!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/episode-12.mp3 Podcast Notes We had a rough time recording this podcast. We were a little all over the place in the beginning, and Brian had a really hard time not interrupting me. I called him out on it numerous times, and almost renamed this episode “Brian can’t stop interrupting Melanie”.
We recording this episode over two days, and I think we did a much better job on day 2. I think we were so excited about actually seeing each other for the first time in a week that we just got a little over into recording! I did enjoy the energy that came with that though.
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Welcome to episode 11 of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money! Today, we are talking about bad money decisions that have haunted Brian for most of his life.
Bad Money Decisions The really bad money decisions that Brian made throughout his life all come down to him sticking his head in the sand. He ignored some of his problems in the hopes that things would just work themselves out. Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way. Ignoring problems tend to make them worse. Brian had an experience this week that really hammered this lesson home (we hope!).
This experience also helped Brian understand how important it really is to have an emergency fund. If I didn’t have an emergency fund and if I wasn’t willing to help him out, he would be really screwed. He is now putting aside money every pay check in an emergency fund to make sure he will be able to take care of himself.
Listen to find out what happened:
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/eps11.mp3 Podcast Notes We had a really interesting problem while recording this podcast. Apparently, if your computer doesn’t have a lot of free space, it will stop recording and storing new files. We realized while recording that Audacity, the program we use to record, was swiftly running out of space. We had to to end the podcast rather abruptly – and even then it wouldn’t save! So we had to go through the hard drive to clean it up and get rid of some of the programs we don’t use anymore. So sorry about the abrupt ending!
We are getting better about not talking over each other (though we still make some mistakes). Unfortunately Brian is still a lot louder than I am and we haven’t been able to find the perfect setting to mitigate that. I do think it’s a lot better than it was in the past though – so we are getting there!
Don’t forget, you can listen to every episode on ITunes!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Wow wow wow. Talk about therapeutic! This budgeting episode of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money could double as a couple’s therapy session for us! We get super personal in discussing sacrifices that I make to ensure our financial security, and delve more into Brian’s relationship with money.
Budgeting In this episode, we take an extremely close look at Brian’s budget. We disclose how much money he makes each paycheck and discuss his monthly bills. If you want to know exactly how much money someone makes and exactly what they are spending it on, this is the episode for you! We get extremely personal here, and I admire Brian’s complete honesty and vulnerability.
We also re-visit the importance of having an emergency fund. Brian is terrified of having money left over at the end of each paycheck, which I find incredibly shocking. His relationship with money seems to be “if I have it, it needs to be spent”. There is no paying yourself first, or making sure that you will be able to cover an emergency. There are no thoughts of saving for big purchases either. He’d rather spend his money now on something crappy than wait for three paychecks to pay for something decent that he really wants. That just boggles my mind!
On that note, this week’s stupid money decision is way too similar to last weeks. The best part of this one is that he didn’t even have his paycheck for 12 hours before spending money on stupid stuff. I think you will all really enjoy this episode, give it a listen!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/eps10.mp3 Lessons Learned Brian did a much better job of not interrupting me this time! I think it’s important to acknowledge that recording a podcast isn’t just talking; it’s knowing when to talk and when to let the other person finish. That’s not always an easy thing to do, since conversation flows differently in a natural conversation.
We do think that this was one of the best podcasts yet in regards to our sound quality. We finally found a recording position that doesn’t make it sound like Brian is yelling while I’m whispering! I’m naturally a quieter person, while he’s naturally louder, so getting the sound setting correct has been a constant challenge.
We do know that we still need to set up a better recording studio. The room we are currently working in is still has a bad echo, and the microphone picks up a lot of ambient noise. This time it was the dog barking instead of the cat meowing! You can’t win. Maybe we will use any Patreon donations to help us build a better recording studio!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
My Boyfriend Sucks with Money is Back! We are starting over in our quest to teach Brian how to have a positive relationship with money, and this episode is all about that.
Starting Over When we started this podcast, the goal was to teach my boyfriend, who is terrible with money if you haven’t noticed, how to not suck with money. But unfortunately, we weren’t really able to do that at first. Life just gets in the way sometimes. Brian lost his job, and we decided to move right as he was getting back on track. Those life situations sure did make for some great podcast content though!
But now we are starting over, both with the podcast and with teaching Brian some positive money skills. It’s not going to be easy. He made a really bad money decision this week that made me wonder if he’d learned anything recording these podcasts. But it has been awhile, and it’s super easy to revert to old habits. Being disciplined takes a lot of commitment! I think he’s learning that.
We also talk about what starting over means, and how that will look moving forward. It’s fun play on words too, because we are basically starting the podcast over along with it! Get it? Ok, I’m done now. Starting over means starting from scratch. We are going back to the basics now that we have some stability in our lives! We talked a little bit about budgeting and the importance of emergency funds, things which we will go into detail on in future episodes.
But mostly we talk about his stupid money decision! Have a listen:
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/eps-9.mp3 Lessons Learned Unfortunately, we are starting over in the sense of learning how to podcast too. I can hear a lot of the old habits that we had squashed by episode 3 or 4 coming back into full view during the recording of this podcast! The worst is Brian’s habit of interrupting me. He was getting so much better about it, and in this episode he’s just all over the place again. We’ve also gone back to using some comfort words and stumbling over ourselves a bit. We are clearly a little rusty, and I think if we start recording regularly those things will get better.
Another limitation right now is that we don’t have a good studio or room to record in. The podcast quality isn’t as great as we’d like it to be because of that. We also have a special guest star making an appearance during this episode, my wonderful cat who wouldn’t stop crying (unless we stopped recording, of course). Unfortunately we don’t have a way to keep him locked out of the living room, or a way to prevent his cries from getting picked up on the microphone. But, as a consolation for that, here’s a picture of the little jerk.
Sorry, he’s needy I hope you enjoy the podcast!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Surprise! Welcome to a brand new episode of “My Boyfriend Sucks with Money”! We’ve been promising to return for a few weeks now, and we never break our promises. We finally got most of our stuff unpacked, and are ready to start recording once again!
The last time we talked about moving, we were only about a quarter into our big move. And we thought moving sucked back then! After all the fun and excitement of the last few months, I can unequivocally say that moving really does suck.
Moving Sucks – Part 2 In this episode of “My Boyfriend Sucks with Money”, we talk about what we’ve been up to for the past few months. We talk about living in a small rented room, house hunting, and all the fun of living in a fixer upper. All I can say about that is poor Brian. He dealt with the brunt of the house issues while I was at work. There were a lot of issues!
We also have a super special guest this episode. I’m not going to spoil it, but I’ll give a small hint: The reason we moved in the first place, and the reason all these headaches and stress was worthwhile. Give it a listen!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Eps-8.mp3 Patreaon
If you are loving “My Boyfriend Sucks with Money”, please check out our Patreon page! Your donations will help is build a better sound studio so that all the podcasts sound super amazing! As always, we appreciate your support!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Hey Partners! Welcome to Episode 7 of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money! Today, we have two special guest stars, my sister who also sucks with money and her boyfriend (who is super quiet).
My Sister Also Sucks with Money My sister has made some horrible financial decisions in her life, and she’s always able to justify these to herself. Her mental gymnastics are fantastic! The best illustration of how much my sister also sucks with money is her crazy truck payment, which we talk about on this week’s episode of My Sister Sucks with Money. Give it a listen and see what I’m dealing with folks!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/eps-7.5.mp3 Lessons Learned Trying to do a podcast with four people in the same room isn’t easy. We have a hard enough time not talking over each other when it was just the two of us! We did tell them about the best practices and lessons learned before we started, and I think going over those rules really helped ensure it went smoothly. There are few instances of us talking over each other- win!
We also learned that we have to work harder with the microphone settings when we have two loud people and two soft spoken people. My sister is even louder than Brian! Did you guys know it was possible for someone to be louder than him? Between that and how echo-y my dad’s house was, the sound quality on this podcast wasn’t the best. We did our best while editing it, but it still sounds a bit airy.
Patreaon Did you love “My Sister Also Sucks with Money”? Do you want to here the exclusive unedited version? Check out our Patreaon page! You can also get access to our discord channel and chat with us! This week, some of our exclusive content includes Brian trying to steal Mindy’s thunder! Entertaining stuff.
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Did we tell you that we are moving? I’m sure we mentioned it once or twice. So today, on My Boyfriend Sucks with Money, we are discussing just how much moving sucks, because moving is basically my life right now.
Moving Sucks Moving is expensive, it’s hard, and its time consuming. Why are we doing this again? Oh that’s right, better jobs and cheaper houses! Tonight we talk about all the things that we’ve been doing this past week to get ready for our big move, and what are plans are for our first few months in Pennsylvania. It’s going to be tough, but we will get through it!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/eps-6.5.mp3 Lessons Learned It was hard to focus on a podcast after six days of not seeing each other. As a result, this podcast is bit more conversational, like our first few podcasts were. That’s just because we missed each other so much and were super happy to be talking to each other. It’s also a little sappier than usual – which I think is an improvement from the grumpiness of last week! It will be hard to mitigate these things, especially with Brian’s work schedule and the fact that we will be doing it long distance in the not too distant future. Hopefully with practice we will get better at it, but if not you will all get to listen to our lovey-dovey sappiness during every podcast! Exciting, right?
Patreon I’m not going to lie, some parts of this podcast got a bit weird! We cut out the part about Stephen Hawking’s clone, but if you are super interested in Brian’s crazy conspiracy theories, you can find that and all of our other unedited content on our Patreon page! Tier 2 Patreons also get access to our exclusive discord channel!
Did you miss last week’s episode of My Boyfriend Sucks with Money? Listen to it here!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Hey Everyone! Welcome to the fifth episode of “My Boyfriend Sucks with Money”. Today we will be talking about gender and money.
Gender and Money While there is so much that can be said about gender and money, our focus during this podcast was to discuss it in regards to our relationship. We discuss the fact that I am the higher earner, and we talk about how each of us feels about that. During the discussion, Brian may realize that some of the things he does are because of societal expectations of gender roles! You are also going to love Brian’s stupid money decision of the week. Listen to find out more!
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Eps5.55.mp3 Lessons Learned Both of us were a bit grumpy while recording this podcast, could you tell? We would have preferred to wait until we were in better moods, but unfortunately our schedules wouldn’t let us. Sometimes you just have to keep pushing despite a bad mood to get stuff done!
We have improved so much since our first podcast. We are both more comfortable talking to the microphone and we are learning to not talk over each other. Podcast wins! I’m surprised that it only took us a few episodes to start improving. It’s a learning process, but we are getting there.
We also realized that I don’t only have to answer finance questions. People can ask me anything! It’s more fun that way, and a fun way for you awesome listeners to get to know us better. And, if you have a question that you’d like to have featured on My Boyfriend Sucks With Money, feel free to ask in the comment section!
Patreon Are you loving “My Boyfriend Sucks With Money”? If you can’t get enough, we have exclusive content for our Patreons! We publish the raw, unedited podcasts for people who just can’t get enough. Click here to gain access! We hope you love it as much as we love making it.
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.
Hey all and welcome to the fourth episode of “My Boyfriend Sucks With Money”! In this episode, we are discussing making ends meet, and that tied into the importance of an emergency fund.
Making Ends Meet This topic was extremely important considering that Brian (the boyfriend who sucks with money!) has been out of work for a few weeks. How did he get by without a paycheck? What money making opportunities did he explore while looking for full time work? There are plenty of options available to people in this situation, and today we are going over a few of them. Maybe it will give you some ideas!
We also discussed how important it is to have an emergency fund so you don’t have to resort to some of the drastic money making ideas we talk about! When Brian gets his first paycheck, we are going to start one for him!
We added a new segment this episode, called “Stupid money decisions Brian has made”. It was a great week to start with this segment, because he made a horrible horrible money decision earlier this week. Let’s just say I was beyond angry! Listen to find out what it was:
http://partnersinfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/eps-4.5.mp3 Lessons Learned We think we are getting much better at this whole podcasting thing. We only needed to edit a few minutes off of “making ends meet” (sorry Patreons!) . Unfortunately, we do still struggle with talking over each other, but this time we noticed it early on and stopped. We just get too excited!
Another thing that we are learning to do is write out some notes before starting the podcast. This helps us stay focused and ensures that we hit on the major topics that we want to hit on. For “Making Ends Meet”, I wrote out a list of the side hustles that Brian and I discussed over the past few weeks, and I remembered to talk about each one!
If you missed last week’s episode, where we discussed “A Person’s Worth”, check it out here!
Melanie AllenMelanie launched Partners in Fire in 2017 to document her quest for financial independence with a mix of finance, fun, and solving the world’s problems. She’s self educated in personal finance and passionate about fighting systematic problems that prevent others from achieving their own financial goals. She also loves travel, anthropology, gaming and her cats.