Margo Clayson on Learning to Budget the Hard Way

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1:01Before you begin your road trip, ask yourself, do you really need five full suitcases? With the 2026 Kia Sportage X Pro's class-leading cargo space, you'll have room for what you need. Find out more at your local Kia dealer today. Keep the adventure going. Kia, movement that inspires. Call 800-333-34 Kia for details. Always drive safely and obey all traffic laws, comparison space on second-row legroom and cargo space behind second-row seats in the subcompact SUV class according to Kia's segmentation as of October 2025. Hi, Maya Lau here. I just want to say that if you love or even moderately like other people's pockets, it would really mean a lot to me if you would leave us a rating or review on your platform of choice. If you're listening to the audio version and you're curious to see the video, find me at It's Maya Money on YouTube. You can also use that same handle. It's Maya Money to find me on TikTok or Instagram. And all of my socials are also on my website at MayaLau.com.

2:06There's two things you should always talk about before you get married or get into a relationship. One is children and the other is money. For anyone out there who's thinking of living with someone else and if that other person does not want to talk about money. A flag. Huge red flag. Absolutely a hundred percent red flag because one of the biggest breakers of a marriage is money. My guest today is Margot Clayson. Founder of the Mighty Microgreen, an organization that helps educators create interactive STEM and nutrition lessons using microgreens. She's also an educator, long-time student, mom, grandmother, wife, and Canadian now living in rural Idaho, who about 10 years ago in her late 50s learned how to budget. I talked to her about the unusual way this financial reckoning came about, how she discovered that she and her husband were in debt, how they got out of it, and what budgeting looks like

3:06when you're living off social security. I'm MayaLau and this is other people's pockets. The show where I ask people how much money they make and how their finances work, so that the questions we all have about money can be a little bit less of a mystery. And now here's my interview with Margot Clayson. Margot, welcome to other people's pockets. Thank you, it's good to be here. How are things looking today in income Idaho? Well, you know, I think you can see a little a little sunshine on my face here. We have sunshine. It's, uh, it's still 28 degrees, but we have sunshine, so I'm happy. Nice. And do I see some plants behind you? What are those? Yeah, those are actually microgreens. So that's what I do in my spare time is I teach nutrition through microgreens. And I've got a class tomorrow, so I've got a bunch of microgreens ready to bring in. Let people share. So wait, tell me more about that. How do you teach nutrition through microgreens?

4:08I am glad you asked. So microgreens, do you know what microgreens are? First I should ask. Small greens like salad greens close, but so much more so. So microgreens, they're tiny plants. You plant them and they go from seed to harvest in 10 days. But here's the great thing. And the reason why I use them for teaching nutrition is they have up to 40 times more nutrients for ounce than a full grown vegetable. You know, with children, right, rather than trying to get them to eat a half a cup of broccoli, you can take a little handful of microgreens and mix them in any other food and hide them and get all the nutrients you need. So that's why I use microgreens. And yes, I teach because teaching is what I love to do. So let's just back up a little bit to learn more. So you're a small business owner. You've had several different careers.

5:09You've also raised children. Now you have grandchildren. Tell me a bit about your journey. So I grew up in California, although I'm Canadian, but we immigrated to California when I was young. Beautiful place to grow up back in the 60s and 70s. But I met my husband there and we moved to Idaho. And so now we, you know, we have a family. We have four children together. And I raised them, of course, as sometimes as homeschooled children when they needed to come out of school, other times in school. And I taught at the same time. And then of course they grew up. And I decided to go back to school. I just wanted to learn more. And during this process, I re-discovered microgreens. I had grown microgreens as the kids were growing up. I had grown them just to add to our own food. And that was before they were called microgreens.

6:11And before we actually knew how nutritious they were. But in the process of my schooling, I ended up having to start an online business for three months. And one of my, one of my sons suggested, why don't you do a microgreens? So I started a three month long microgreens process. And guess what? I was the only one in class that actually sold anything. Wow. And so this really just started as a school project. You didn't have any intention of really running a business. No, I didn't. At all. 100% did not. But you know, it just snowballed. I started taking them to the local farmers markets. And then about and did very well. My entire time, every market was teaching people what are microgreens? Why should you eat them? And then giving them to them. And then one, one winter, because here in Idaho,

7:12you don't grow things outside during the winter. And there's no farmers markets in the winter. So when in the middle of the winter, I had a customer come up to me in a grocery store and said, I miss your microgreens so much. And just without even thinking, I said, well, why don't you grow your own? And then I said, I'll teach you. And so that just kind of snowballed into instead of growing them for people, I began to teach people to grow. And that really changed my whole focus to instead of just teaching those that come up to me at the market to going nationwide and saying, we need to make a change for our youth. I love that. And so we're here to talk about your personal finances. When did you first become serious about understanding your personal finances? Well, I'm going to have to say that was only about 10 years ago.

8:15And how old are you? I am now 68. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So we went a long ways without really focusing on it's never too late. Exactly. You know what? And that's the whole thing. It isn't too late. But boy, you know what? If I had learned these lessons 40 years ago, so let me tell you, when Ron and I were first married, he was self-employed. He was a concrete contractor. And Ron is, he can build anything. He was doing beautiful work, but his employers were taken advantage of him. And the first year of our marriage, I think it was like six months into our marriage, we got audited by the IRS. So, you know, the auditors, they actually, I don't know how they do it now, but back then they came into your home. Well, they came into our 10 by 20-foot trailer that we lived in. We just lived in a camping trailer, because you know, newlyweds and

9:15and he kind of looked around and then said, started going through the numbers. And that was the first time we both realized that Ron was not making any money. You know, of course, this is back in, this is back in the early 80s. But we were maybe bringing in on top of my, at that point, I was just working in a health food store of all things between what I brought in and he brought in. It was probably less than $500 a month. And how did you not realize that he wasn't bringing in any money? Because we have all, right from the beginning, we were very frugal. We never had big needs. And we knew we didn't have any money, but it was always, well, we have to wait till the next check comes in from the next, from the next, but that check would come in, and 90% of it would go to pay off the subcontractors or the concrete or... Expenses, basically. The expenses, correct.

10:17So there was a lot of money going through the account. Literally, I mean, there were thousands of dollars going through the account. And we didn't realize that we weren't pulling it out. Now, fortunately, that was only, you know, a few months into our, into our marriage. But that was really... Thank you to the auditor. It really was. It really was. It was a good, it was a good thing. So my husband went into a different career. He started, he decided to go into insurance. And he did very well once he quit being self-employed. So that was our first issue, really, with money. But here's the thing. We didn't learn our lesson. Even back then, when we knew, oh gosh, you know, we could have known this. If we had been living on a budget, if we'd been actually tracking money, we would have known that before the auditor got there. But we didn't. And we didn't change that. So fast forward, gosh, 20 years.

11:17And we ended up in a very similar situation. Because again, being self-employed, well then the recession hit. And all of a sudden, his clients, which are mainly large companies, were folding. And we got into big trouble then, because we were not tracking our money. Again, we were not living on a budget. We were frugal. Again, we're always, we've always been frugal. In fact, my kids, I asked my kids, what do you remember on that time? About that time, money-wise. And their response, and I wrote this down that they, they knew that we never had excess money, but they never felt deprived. So, you know, it was, you know, we were just like normal. We just watched our money. But during that recession area, the money ended up gone. We just had a new car. We had, you know, we were renting at that point. I can't remember what, oh, we had no health insurance at that point.

12:20We ended up in a bankruptcy. And then here's the thing again. We still did not learn. We didn't learn the lessons again. We still did not live on a budget. Again, we were frugal. We don't go out to dinner. We don't go on expensive vacations. You know, we don't buy expensive cars. You know, we shop at thrift stores. Yeah, and also you have kids and life keeps going and you don't really have time to sit down and reflect on things. Yeah, yeah, you know, as long as needs are met and that's the thing is our needs have always been met. Not our wants, but our needs. So, we've never really been concerned about it. What is it like to come out of bankruptcy? Um, it was actually a big relief. At that point, we were, I can't, I don't even remember the numbers, but we were deep enough in debt that I was getting phone calls

13:23on a daily basis from creditors. And oh, my goodness, that is so I had never, because I had never been called by creditors. I had no idea we had so many creditors. So the bankruptcy itself was a relief, but it was also an embarrassment. You know, the fact that we had gotten into that situation. And that is when I started going back to work again, even though my kids were fairly young, but they were in school. So I just worked during their, their school hours. And that, that really helped. So that changed our lifestyle a little bit. But as far as finances go, we didn't make too many changes because again, there was not a whole lot going up that didn't need to. And then was there a moment when you did look at the numbers and go, okay, I'm actually going to track the spreadsheet now. I'm going to get a handle on my finances. How did that happen?

14:24That's a very good question. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And our church is very invested in education. I had the opportunity to test out a fairly new program called Pathways. And one thing they were, they began was a program that you could basically relearn how to go to school. Each semester was a different class. So about the third semester, it was a math class. And I'll tell you, I was dreading math because math has never been my priority or my strong point. But it turns out that the math class, what they call a math class, was actually a personal finance class. I love that idea. That's so smart for a math class. So many more people would be interested in math. Yep, because you see the reason for math. And it's more personal. It's like your money. Yep. And that was exactly it.

15:25It was our money. So one of the very first things we had to do was fill out a form that listed every penny we owned, every debt we had, every piece of collateral, everything. So that we truly understood our financial situation. Well, this was a moment of truth. And had you ever done that before? Never. I really didn't worry about the money. If the money was in the account, then I used what I needed and there was always leftover. What I didn't know was our debts. We're not coming out of that money that we had. And because my husband again was still self-employed, we had gone into debt. And I didn't know because I was not invested. And it wasn't that it was hidden. I mean, I was on all the accounts,

16:27but I wasn't interested enough to see where the money was going or coming from. And that's the key right there is where was the money coming from? Going through everything as a result of this class, I realized we were $40,000 in debt. Now, I have to tell you that our home, we were only $8,000 away from paying off our house. So we were doing pretty in our, in our, house payment was very low. It was like $600 a month. But to find out that we were deeply in debt that I had no idea, absolutely zero idea, was that my husband's fault? No, he never hid anything. But I was never interested enough to find out what was going on financially. Did your husband know that you guys were in debt? Oh, yeah, he did.

17:28And that is like, this is not a surprise to me. Well, he knew, yeah, he knew, but it also explained a lot that I had never, we had never communicated enough to say, why are you working so much? I was raising my kids as a single parent because he was always working. Always, I mean, it was. And he was trying to pay off the debt with that extra work. Yes, he was just working as hard as he could. And, you know, doing the best he could, but it wasn't enough, not with, you know, when the recession hit. What was the debt from? You know, that's a good question. I don't know. I know it, it had to have been living expenses, our, and I'm going to have to say, I don't know. I mean, it can add up, it can add up quickly, just putting things on a card. Yeah, a few, yeah, a few hundred dollars a month,

18:31you know, needed extra to pay insurance. Oh, insurance was one of the things, you know, you have house insurance and health insurance and car insurance. And then we had teenagers. So we had more car insurance. Um, we had to get another car. That's what we had to get another car because of the teenagers. We live way out of town. So, and all we had were teenagers, sounds scary and expensive. I have a six year old, so I'm not ready. You're not ready. You will be. You will be. They are wonderful. Teenagers are absolutely wonderful, but they come with challenges. And what's the, what's the saying? Little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. Yes. And I just can't, I know. Okay. Yeah. So you have this reckoning. You realize that your tens of thousands of dollars in debt, what do you do then? I throw a holy terror fit. Todd yourself toward the situation, toward your husband.

19:34And I'm terrible. I say it was towards my husband. Yeah. And that was, you know, and that's a thing is, at the time, I blamed him. When there was no blame, it was not his, he was, he was doing his darned us. We came up with a plan because I realized my responsibility. And that was part of the class is helping, helping us realize our responsibility in personal finances. I believe we talked to an accountant, actually, at that point. And what we ended up doing was put a second on our house. So we get a mortgage, a mortgage, yeah, which was absolutely heartbreaking because we were, we were only a year, I think a year and a half away from paying off our house that we'd been paying on for 30 years. And so by taking out a second mortgage, you could pay off the credit card debt.

20:36But then you have the mortgage on the house. And I'm guessing, is the idea behind that that the interest rate would be lower on the mortgage? So overall, it would be an easier way to get out of that debt. Yes. Yeah, because part of our debt was in credit cards. And as you know, credit cards are absolutely the worst, unless you pay them off every month. And some of them were 15, 20% interest. So we were paying mega bucks in interest. But what we did is we took all the debts, paid it off, we had one payment. And we were, it was, we were very fortunate because at that time, the interest rates were fairly low. And here's the other thing. By doing that, we had one payment. There was nothing to get missed. There is no weaseling out, oh, you know, yes, we have money without paying something off. There was one payment. And as part of that, all accounts were closed.

21:41Everything was closed. I, you know, that was. Everything extraneous, all the hidden places. Yes. But did you have a coming together with your husband to say, look, I know that, you know, we didn't keep track of this and we both played our role in letting this happen. But I need you to be more open if you know about an account that I don't know about or or that I seem to not be paying attention to. Can we please, can we please communicate more? Because it sounds like he kind of knew and, you know, he wasn't trying to hurt anyone. But I would be mad too. Like, I just need you to just tell me because eventually this is going to come out. And I want to reiterate, he was not hiding it. Yeah, he wasn't hiding it, but he wasn't saying, hey, hey, we're in family meeting. Let's talk about this. Exactly. And yes, that was, that was the beginning of our learning how to budget. So the one of the first things we did is, you know, if anybody spends more than $50

22:44on anything, we talk about it first. And, you know, at the end of the month, we talk about what we've done. So there wasn't any, oh, I think I'm going to buy a new horse. Well, I hope not. I don't even know how much a horse costs, but that sounds like an impulse buy problem. Yeah. And did you, did you impulse buy a horse? I did. I thought, how much was that? When was that when you didn't, like, you didn't talk about it? No, we didn't, we didn't talk about it. I know. See, see, this is, this is important because this is not just one person in a marriage. It's two people. Yeah. So when I was homeschooling my kids, my daughter wanted to learn to ride. So I had a friend who had a horse and he was okay with giving it away. So I took the horse. How much was that? And then, oh, he was, it was free. He just, he just, he just didn't spend money on it.

23:45Well, oh, the accessories and the, the accessories, the hay, but here's the other problem. The horse was way too much for my daughter. So I had to buy another horse and that one was not free. I think that one was about $800. And then my son wanted to ride. So we needed three horses. And so we bought this lovely Arabian for him. Wait, so where does a horse live? And how much say a month does it take to house the horse, feed it, keep it maintained, any equipment you need? I mean, what does it cost per month to, to have a horse? You know, for us, it wasn't that much. Other than my husband, bless his heart, had to build a little, had to build a good size shed for them. Because of course, you know, they need a shed. Then he needed a shed. Then we needed a shed for the, for the hay. But we live up on an area where they could eat all through the summer.

24:47And we live up and we've got lots of acreage. So other than we had to buy a fence, of course, to, yeah. So how much do fences cost? You know, it probably was three or four hundred dollars. That's not that much for a huge fence. No, it wasn't. We went, you know, as I said, we went the least expensive route. But, you know, when you don't realize you're in debt, and you're putting out a credit card or, no, we pay, we pay cash. Because at that point, I was teaching. So it just came out of my paycheck. But that paycheck that then couldn't go to pay off bills. So that's where, you know, and the horses, two horses that I, that I actually purchased and saddled us to go along with them. All that came out of my paycheck. So I didn't realize that my paycheck was actually necessary to pay off bills. So instead of putting that into the pot, I said, oh, I've got money. And went and bought my daughter a horse, went and bought my son a horse, went and bought, you know,

25:50reasonable saddles and bridles and brushes. And then, of course, you have to pay for the fairies every couple of months. And what's a fairier to put shoes on them. So during the summer when you're, when you're riding, they need to have shoes because we live up in a very rocky area. Yeah. So it was not cheap. Yeah. And of course, the hay. And back then, the hay was very inexpensive. I was getting hay for, I can't even remember, like $50 a ton. It's now two and three times that. Why? Or more because of drought for one thing. And then just the prices of gas, the farming, farming has just, oh my goodness, farmers are hurting. Let's just say I live in farming communities. So farmers are hurting even more now with all the tariffs and stuff. And just to situate where you are. So how far away are you from Boise? I'm about a five hour drive. Okay. And what about from Salt Lake City?

26:51Two and a half hours. Okay. Is Salt Lake City your closest big city? Um, big, big city. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So basically if you drive south two hours, you'll get to Salt Lake City. And then if you drive west, five hours, you'll get to Boise, Idaho. Northwest, yeah. Northwest. Okay. Got it. All right. Wait, just going back to this personal finance math class. What else did you learn? What did you, did they teach you like a method for tracking finances? Or what else came out of that? They taught us the basics of budgeting. So after finding out what we had, then we were encouraged and taught how to keep track. And we were encouraged to figure out what was needed and what was not. The difference between needs and wants. Sometimes wants masquerade as needs.

27:54So if I say I, I need a new pair of shoes. For example, yesterday I, I decided to go back to the gym after years away. Realized yesterday you did yesterday. I love that. Yeah, it was a little embarrassing looking around and realizing it's been 10 years and I don't even know where to start. But you know, as part of that going back to the gym, I needed to pair shoes because I had no gym shoes. My first thought was go to Fred Meyers, Fred Meyers here. And that is the most upscale place that we have here, which is a very small town. So it's, and there were very nice shoes. There, you know, probably started in about $45 for a pair. And it briefly crossed my mind that they'll ask me a long time. But it wasn't in the budget. So it went immediately from a need to a want

29:01because I knew that I could get what I needed cheaper. So I actually went to a thrift store. And low and behold, they have had these beautiful leather sneakers, not even used for $4 in your size. So there in my size. Yeah. So that's what I ended up getting. Yeah. And for me, this is always a struggle because I also believe that time is money. And so I might have been like, you know what, I don't want to go on the other side of town. I don't want to sift through a bunch of shoes that aren't, you know, high quality, or maybe they aren't going to have my size or whatever the issue is. I don't have time to do it because I have a doctor's appointment. And so then I might be left with no shoes. And then I can't go to the gym, which is important for my health, and is one of the best money and time investments you can make because your health is so expensive if it goes wrong.

30:02So my mind would go to like, is my time worth the extra $20. And I might say, yeah, I want to just get this done and move on. So I kind of make those decisions. Well, you know, a lot of it is, do I have it? Does it fit in the budget? You know what, if I have $200 in my budget for this week or this month, and I'm not going to use it on, there's nowhere where it needs to go, I've got that extra $20. But yeah, I'm going to use it because it's okay. But if I don't have it in my budget and I'm taking it from somewhere else, then it becomes the want and not the need. So saving time for you, saving time might be a little different than for me. You know, I don't have a six-year-old at home. I don't have, I don't have the same time constraints that you do.

31:04Yes, I'm running a business and I have other responsibilities, but I'm a little more in control of my time. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The month of March is when we celebrate International Women's Day, and it's had me thinking about the strong women in my life, particularly my mom, but also mother figures everywhere, and that specific kind of love that mostly goes unseen. My daughter's actually sick with a cold right now, and last night I was up again and again with her, getting more medicine and trying to calm her down so she could sleep, just being there. And I realized this is what my mom did for me, but both my parents did, awake on a random Tuesday night, rearranging work on a Wednesday so that I could stay home from school. This is the kind of care you don't remember, because you were half asleep for it, or just being a kid. And whether you're a mom or you have a mom, or someone showed up for you in that way, that steady quiet presence, it's a reminder that taking care of people is real work,

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34:06To really augment the podcast partnerships, bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial. So how do you figure out your budget now? Is everything just a system that works? Or are there still times when you're making tough decisions? We are still making tough decisions. And I'm going to have to say it changed. Again, our finances changed again. So the way we've been doing it, the way we've been budgeting for the last, I can't remember whether it's eight or 10 years but number of years has been working very well. We are not in debt. Other than the house, we had no debts. And we made it a point to never get into debt. So I think it was working and we never felt deprived. We went down to Florida to visit our kids. We buy treats for our grandchildren, go out to dinner once a week.

35:08So money has not been an issue because we've been frugal but we've been happy with the way things have turned out. But then four months ago, my husband made a very important decision. He's over 70. He decided it was time to retire. And I 100% supported him and my immediate feeling was, yes, that's right. We hadn't talked about it at all, hadn't even come up in conversation. But both of us felt that inspiration that it was the right time. Well, so now that you're approaching 70, your husband is over 70, he retired. What is different now about your family finances? We are still working on the details, let me say. We have what's called rocket money on our phones. So rocket money is an app that keeps track of all of your accounts and anytime

36:13and you can label everything as to where what budget it's coming out of. So everything we spend now is labeled. So we know where money is coming from. And then the second important part is we got out the old spreadsheet figured exactly how much money we're going to have now. I mean, we have it, we have a pretty good savings. We have 401k, but we don't want to use those because we are older. What if something happens medically? What if a car breaks down? We now have no money for that. We have no budget to get sick. And no budget to buy a new car. So that if something happens has to come out of the savings that we have built up over the last 10 years. So where does your money come from just to go to the grocery store? Just daily living. Social security. We are strictly living off of Social Security now.

37:13Because neither neither my husband or I have a pension. And we've both paid into Social Security, all of our lives. You know, both of us from the time we were 15. Because I didn't work when the when the children were young, I did not build up nearly as many credits as he did because he never stopped working. We yeah, we have no income. Well, I'm going to say very little income because we do have my business. But my business is more of a I really should run it as a as a non-profit. Because there is a non-profit. Exactly. So Social Security, can you say roughly how much you get from Social Security a month? I think it's like about 1,500 total. For the family. And does that amount feel comfortable? Doable.

38:15Let's say it is comfortable. It is doable. Is it comfortable? Not necessarily. You know, what we've decided is we went through everything. We use propane. Now propane, you only feel we've got a 500 gallon tank. So we only fill that tank a couple of times a year. But you have to save money in order to fill that tank. It's a big purchase. Is that to heat your house to cook for everything? Okay, just to heat just to heat. Yeah, we're on electricity for everything out. It's just for heating. You know, we're able to stretch that tank for a long time. And you mentioned you use this app and it tracks every expense. Yeah, does that mean you don't use cash? Because otherwise it wouldn't go through the app. Right. Well, it will go through the app because if we if we withdraw money from an account, that is also also shown.

39:16But we don't we don't use cash other than if we like one of the things we're trying to do is to we've lived in this spot here for 35 years now. And you can imagine the stuff we have gained. And so we're eliminating stuff. We put it on Facebook marketplace and sell it off. I think there was a pump we sold off in a in a treadmill. All sorts of stuff. And so that we get in cash. And so that we don't that we use for things like pigeon feed. And so do you use most but most purchases are with a debit card or do you use credit cards? We use debit cards. Although this has been a bit of a bone of contention with my husband that we're we're working on. He prefers to use the credit card and pay it off each month. He prefers to do that for certain expenses such as we have some household.

40:16We have to finish the basement. And so all those he put on the credit card because for him it's easier to keep track of. I am uncomfortable with that because what has something happened so we can't pay that off at the end of the month? That I don't like. So we're still negotiating on that one. But everything else comes out of one of four accounts. So I have my own personal account. He has his own personal account and we're on both accounts. So it's not like they're not hidden accounts. And it's all accounted in rocket money. Every account is in rocket money. But it just helps us to keep track of, okay, yes, I can pay four dollars for a pair of shoes. And we put $200 each month beginning of the month. We put $200 into there. And that's our into our personal account each. So yeah, so he has 200. I have 200. And I can yesterday my grandson sent me a little fundraiser link.

41:21And so I could go in there and hit yes, of course I'm going to support my grandson and you know, put 20 bucks in there. And that came out of my personal account. I needed to buy, you know, get my violin bow rehaired. That came out of my personal account. So anything that is strictly for me or optional comes out of my account. For Ron, he likes to go and have a hamburger once in a while. So that comes out of that is $200. So that's an easy way of basically making it not feel like we're having to account for every penny to each other. But everything else we have what we call the main account. And that's where gas and food and like shared expenses, all the household expenses. Yeah, everything comes out of there now. Then we have a fourth account where things like the propane and electricity and insurance

42:21comes from because those are bills that don't are not regular. They're not exactly the same every month and they don't come every month like for our the garbage pickup. That's once every three months. The electricity, it could be 165 this year, this month and it might be 110 next month or might be $70 in the summer. So we have a separate account that we put a certain amount in. We've kind of averaged up all those all those amounts and figured out okay divided by 12. This is how much has to go into that account every month. And hopefully that account is full enough by the time by the time those bills came in because we just started this. But everything is working out so far, so good. But yeah, so we basically have those four accounts. Oh, and then we have a savings account at the savings account. Are you putting money into continually or that it's just...

43:22That is something that we actually are having to figure out because right now there isn't enough money to refill the savings account on what we what we're making. By the time we pay for the propane and the electricity and the life insurance and the health insurance and you know and electricity and the gas because we live a long ways out of town. There isn't much left over to put into back into savings but we're still at the we're still at the beginning stages of of this budget because and it's a it's a work in progress. We have a certain amount like Ron has. I think we decided $200 for him for gas per month for me $100 a month because I have a I have a hybrid but it looks like I'm not spending $100 a month and he's not spending $200 a month on gas.

44:23So rather than say okay that means that we can have extra and our personal accounts know if there's extra it's going in back into savings. Same with our food budget. I think our food budget is about $375 if we don't spend that then back into the into the savings and one of the reasons you know and and you can look at that at $375 that's actually not very much for food for two people. What does enough look like to you? Enough means that we don't worry. Enough means no fear, no worry and enough to share and that's where I feel we're at. We have enough if we're careful and we can still share with our grandson with

45:28I have a personal vow that I will never pass a children's lemonade stand without stopping and supporting them. You know being an entrepreneur. That would just be cruel. Yeah it would be now I don't always drink that lemonade it you know drive a half a mile and dump it out the window so I shouldn't I shouldn't get that. Oh my gosh everyone's going to hear this and know that you don't listen. I always give them a tip too so you know that makes them feel better. Margo this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for talking to me. You're very welcome. What my hope is is that someone will hear and realize how important budgeting is and how important it is for a husband and a wife or partners or whoever you are living in the same same community that you're together that you understand finances

46:28and that you're together on them and the best place to begin is before you become a community or a family. How would you suggest having that initial conversation before you actually become a community? Get with an accountant and talk to them if you don't already know how to budget or find a trusted friend that you know does know how to budget. So final question for anyone out there who's thinking of living with someone else or joining up with them and if that other person does not want to talk about money. Is that a red flag? Red flag. Huge red flag. Absolutely 100% red flag because one of the biggest breakers of a marriage is money and you can love somebody to pieces but if argument start because somebody is spending money that you don't that we don't have and it's ongoing and then

47:33we get division and then we get disrespect and then we get anger it will ruin a relationship. So there's two things you should always talk about before you get married or get into a relationship one is children and the other is money. Well on that note I think that's a great place to end. Margot Clayson thank you so much for being here I really have had a lot of fun talking to you. Thank you it's been it's been a pleasure. Other people's pockets is written hosted and executive produced by me my allow. Kristen Torres edited this episode and provided booking and research. Thank you to Pushkin Industries for past production support. Please follow or subscribe to other people's pockets on your platform of choice check out the video version on YouTube and email me with guest ideas questions or suggestions at other people's pockets at gmail.com. See you next time.

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