Queer Financial Wellness with David and John

Britt East [00:00:02] Welcome to Not Going Quietly the podcast where we inspire growth, beat down biases and get into all sorts of good trouble with your host Britt East. No topic is off limits as we explore ways to help everyone leap into life with a greater sense of clarity, passion, purpose and joy. So get ready to join us for some courageous conversation, because not going quietly starts right now.

Britt East [00:00:30] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Not Going Quietly, The podcast for outraged optimists and heartbroken healers all over the world where we surface life searing truths in the name of radical togetherness. I'm your host, Britt East, and I have such a fantastic featured guest today. Let's just dive right in. David and John Auten-Schneider, the dynamic duo behind the Queer Money Podcast and founders of Debt Free Guys empower Queer individuals and allies to live fabulously without going fabulously broke. They're also now the hosts of Yahoo! Finance's newest show, Living Not So Fabulously. As trailblazers, they were the first LGBTQ+ personal finance contributors to Forbes with their insights featured on CNBC and Good Morning America. Their influential partnership spanned major companies like Capital One and Orbitz, leading LGBTQ+ nonprofits such as the Trevor Project and corporate giants like Prudential and Verizon. Recently, they coauthored groundbreaking LGBTQ+ money studies with The Motley Fool. Such an awesome resume. I'm so glad you guys are here today. Welcome to the show. How the hell are you?

John Auten-Schneider [00:01:41] Thank you very much for having us. We're excited to be here. We're amazing. Yeah, it's.

David Auten-Schneider [00:01:45] Awesome. I, I always I always whenever I hear our bio, I kind of shrink a little bit because I'm like, who is that person?

John Auten-Schneider [00:01:53] Are our assistant really talks us up. So we have to give her credit.

Britt East [00:01:58] You know, You know what? We're going to pause right there because this is one of my favorite things to do is to make my featured guests cringe and blush and embarrassment at all their amazing accomplishments, but is so critical that we bask in your glory so that, you know, we've got to see it to be it. So I want to know your successes. I want to know your triumphs so that way you can inspire folks all over all over the world. But let's dive right in. I want to know, here we are recording in the fall of 2024. With this election in the US looming over us, we have people worldwide, but obviously the US election for the president's important globally and one of the major topics that is on the forefront, I think of most people's mind is income inequality and that widening wealth gap that's been burgeoning for four decades. How you guys are experts, How does this income inequality impact queer people qualitatively, differently, quantitatively, differently than the rest of society?

John Auten-Schneider [00:03:01] Absolutely. Do you wanna go first?

David Auten-Schneider [00:03:02] Yeah, I that's just like a bowlful. There's just. There's just so.

John Auten-Schneider [00:03:06] Much stuff we.

David Auten-Schneider [00:03:07] Could talk about here. But I think one of the things that's really important for a lot of folks is to to go back in the history and really when did we start to see this widening gap and what caused that? And I don't want to necessarily point fingers, but it is pretty easy to point fingers, Right? But the reality is, is that that the political climate in the United States has really pushed the economic climate in the United States for such a long time. Back in the 70s, the the Conservative Party really clamped down on this idea of trickle down economics and that we will make everybody wealthy if we make the top really wealthy. And I have posted this on social media several times over the last couple of years. Can we all just agree that trickle down economics has been a colossal failure? But the problem is, as with many of us, what we do is we get this idea in our head and we think this is going to work. And we keep on pushing it and pushing and pushing and pushing and trying to make it work and trying to make it work and trying to make it work. And we saw that in the 80s with what Ronald Reagan did with tax cuts, especially focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and tax cuts for corporations. And then we saw that happen again in the in the early 2000s with George Bush and the tax cuts for the wealthy and the tax cuts for corporations. And then we fast forward to 2016 and and we have another president who tax cuts for the wealthy and tax cuts for corporations because it's going to trickle down. And and I saw a very interesting meme the other day and it was kind of this idea of what trickle down economics is really supposed to look like. And they had on one side, they had this image of like the champagne bottles, right? You see that are champagne glasses. And you see this pyramid of champagne glasses and somebody is at the top and they're pouring it in. And it just it. All trickles down, right? And everybody's glass is the same size and everybody's glass fills up. But what we don't realize is that. The people at the top have massive glasses and the people at the bottom have like a quarter of a teaspoon. And so at the top, all of them, all of the money is going in and then some trickles over and then it fills up the the larger glasses and then some trickles over and then it fills up the medium glasses and then some trickles over and then it's fills up the small glasses and some and go all, you know. And what, what we really see happening is that the amount of money that actually trickles down larger and larger and larger pieces are being taken at the top and the middle levels that the rest of us are no longer getting or getting a part of. And what's what really has happened, the tax cuts that have happened there, the the incentivizing of corporations to pay dividends and and buy back shares has really just made those glasses at the top even bigger. Every single time we see that happen. And so what's what was really happening is that that there are literally millions hundreds of millions of tiny. TS a quarter teaspoons of ice sitting there hoping that we're going to get something that trickles down to us. And it just hasn't happened. And that's why we have seen wages based firm, for the most part, stagnant, not keep up with the rate of inflation over the last 50, 55 years. And what that has really done for so many of us is that it has made it much more difficult for us to not only live sustainably, but also plan for sustainability in the future. Sorry, that was a really long answer, but I hope it was. It was graphic enough for people who are listening to understand that.

Britt East [00:07:27] That was wonderful. I mean, it was very graphic, very vivid. And I got the exact image that you're describing. In fact, I think you even inadvertently address the looming issue with artificial intelligence, where it's like we're trying to take the time to allow the wealthy to empower themselves with more skills while we're simultaneously preventing the skills from skilled people from adding more wealth. But I don't want to take us down a crazy rabbit hole. I you know, you started your answer by creating space in a really beautiful way about not casting aspersions. And maybe a little saltier than than you guys. But let's turn the mirror on ourselves then. So what then, are some reasons that we as queer people might not be being financially honest with ourselves? And how can we start to get real?

John Auten-Schneider [00:08:24] Yeah. So this is John. I'll see if I can tackle that. Maybe I can be as eloquent as my husband. I don't know if I can do that this early in the morning, but there are a couple of unique factors that affect the LGBTQ plus community and specifically gay men. And one of those factors is, is that David and I believe that we're still dealing with the hangover from the HIV Aids crisis very well tied to Ronald Reagan as well, in that there were gay men and other LGBTQ plus folks in their teens, 20s and 30s who were pretty certain that they were going to die by the before they hit 40 or 50. And that was happening. And so people were selling their life insurance policies using whatever money that they had, and they were living large, right? They adopted a very carpe diem effect and more power to them. Right? That was that was the best they could do at that time. They made the most of it. But that sort of set the standard of what what it means to live and an approved or ideal life specifically for gay men. Right. We have to have our designer clothing. We need to have our fancy cars. We we have to have amazing travel. I mean, I have to travel a lot, right? Go out all the fancy dinners, make sure we have the best tuxedos when we go to all the galas and give away money to all the nonprofits. And we've had a lot of advancements in HIV and Aids. And so it's not the death sentence that it used to be. And right now, Sage is currently dealing with a whole community of LGBTQ plus folks who are in their 60s and 70s who didn't die in their 30s and they didn't plan to live twice as long as they had originally expected. And unfortunately, David and I see from our community is that many of us are sort of still trying to live up to the ideal gay man archetype or the perfect little boy in the world, or the best little boy in the world. And so we're still spending as if we're going to die in our 30s or 40s, but we just haven't kept up with inflation. Everything has gotten exponentially harder to save for and afford, and we're still spending like we're going to die early. And unfortunately we haven't seen a market shift in how we live our lives specifically financially on top of that, especially for our age group. I'm I just turned 51 the other day. I'm dealing with that right now. Is that. Many of us grew up in a time and a place when it wasn't okay to be gay. We had our churches, politicians, school teachers, communities, our parents families telling us that who we were. Even before many of us even understood who we were, but who we were was not right. And then many of us were bullied and picked on in grade school and high school. And then so when we finally get out into the adult world, when we break out on our own, we finally received some paychecks. What is the best way to prove to everybody else in the world that, hey, I matter? I'm not as as much I'm not the garbage that you thought I was. I'm not the loser that you thought I was. Well, the best way to do that in this consumer culture is to have all the fancy genes, the amazing travel, the beautiful house. Right. And so many of us are sort of trying to make up for the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy when we were children. And then on top of that. There's, like I said, this archetype of what it means to be a successful gay man. And so a lot of us are still trying to live up to that expectation so that when we're hanging out with other LGBTQ folks, other gay men, we can understand where we are in the pecking order. Right. The higher I am, the better things are. So. He's got bigger arms. And I do. He's got a nicer shirt than I do. I have fancier shoes than everybody has. Right. So I'm understanding where I am in the pecking order. We're all trying to see who can be on the top because we're all sort of dealing with a level of even unconscious insecurity.

Britt East [00:12:19] So beautiful. I just love that. And, you know, I think there's some additional complicated social dynamics even above and beyond what you describe. And you guys let me know what you think. Even those folks who maybe never contracted HIV are not living with HIV today might still have grown up with that sense of nihilism If everyone they knew was contracting it and there was no cure, there could be residual traumatic effects from those adverse experiences. And you alluded to bullying and people pleasing. And I also can't help but think about opportunity cost, which is something we discuss on this podcast frequently, which is basically all that we might have done had something else gone just a little differently. For instance, if I never received the kitchen table wisdom, the intergenerational wisdom or education around finances, savings, etc. from my family, I might have been starting with from a place of lack a leg down just in terms of the education, just in terms of the information, not only in terms of the culture of money, not only in terms of the wisdom around that the Y, the moral values, but also just in terms of the information as well. Am I on the right track there? Is that something that you've witnessed with your clients and in your audiences?

David Auten-Schneider [00:13:56] Absolutely. What what you're talking about is something that John and I refer to as legacy financial exclusion. And the the the ones we typically talk about are the ones that are the actual tangible ones, the the actual transfer of money, of property, that kind of thing. But the transfer of knowledge is also really your make. It is a really, really, really important. Right. How many of us as gay men left home? Either we were kicked out of home, we left home early and we kind of built up a barrier between ourselves and our family because of not being either not being accepted or fear of not being accepted. So we built up this barrier. We spent less time with our family. We shared less of our lives with our family. So even the kind of, like you said, kitchen table or Thanksgiving table kind of conversational coaching that may have happened, you know, with your your mom and dad telling you, well, you know, you could probably do it this way. Or how about, you know, if we could help you out, we could we could share this with you or all of those kinds of things. Those are hap that's happening less frequently in our community than it is in that in the general population. And so we start off with maybe a knowledge barrier there, but then we move into the actual tangible ones. So we're moving out. We're moving out of an unwelcoming home. How likely is it that your parents are going to give you money for the down payment on that first apartment or the set of towels or the rug for the bathroom or a set of sheets or a bed or all those kinds of things? They don't really, you know, a set of towels is maybe $20, right? That's not a lot of money. But if you add all of those things up over time, it makes a big difference. You have you have a queer man, a gay man who is going out on his own and he wants to have this nice apartment and he wants everybody to appreciate that he has got a nice place, but he doesn't have any support from his friends or mean sorry from his family. So what does he do? He puts it all on a credit card, Right? I mean, literally, that was my my my first boyfriend. That was what he did. He literally graduated from college and went out and bought a completely furnished apartment on a credit card. And I didn't know that we weren't together at the time, but. About a year after of us being together. One day we worked at the same place and one day he said, I'm not coming to work today. I'm taking the day off. And I was like, Well, why are you taking the day off? And he said, Well, I'm going to court. And I said, Why are you going to court? Said, Well. I'm declaring bankruptcy today because I have so much money on my credit cards and I'm not paying it off and I can't pay it off. And I've just gotten so far behind. So here is this whole money conversation that we never even had, even though we have been together for a year. But it's those kinds of things that force us into this lifestyle of of always having just a little bit less. Right. There's there's those kinds of things. There's, you know, when we get married. I'm going to give another example because I think a lot of a lot of your audience will appreciate this. If your tip if you're typical same sex couple who are who are age 35 decide to get married and you have a same sex couple and they're 35 and they decide to get married, Same sex, Opposite sex. Sorry, Same sex. Opposite sex. Opposite sex couple mom and dad's blessing. They pay for their wedding. The wedding costs $25,000. Right. Actually, I think now the knot says the wedding costs about $35,000. Our average wedding cost about $35,000. Same sex couple. They don't have mom and dad's blessing. They fund that wedding on their own. Right. So you think, well, it's not that big. It's only $35,000. Well, let's say that same that the opposite sex couple puts that $35,000 into a retirement account that will grow to anywhere between 250 and $650,000, depending on how they what they put their portfolio in. Whereas this the same sex couple, they don't have that money to put into their retirement account. That's why one of the just one of the reasons why so many of us are retiring with absolutely nothing or very little, because we have all along our lives receive these kind of legacy financial exclusions, whether it's monetarily or knowledge wise. We are being excluded and it it is to our detriment financially.

Britt East [00:18:37] Yeah, I mean, that's an incredible I love that legacy. Financial exclusions. You know, a couple of other points to piggyback on. What you're saying is that the largest for decades, the largest predictor of intergenerational wealth was the handing down of homes between family members. And you alluded to down payments on a home. And if if we're excluded from that, you know, then we are starting from a leg down again. Also, when it comes to weddings, it may be that we are, quote unquote accepted by our parents, but they don't necessarily feel like paying for the wedding because we're two men or two women. And so there's not that concept of misogyny handing a woman over to a man as a piece of property to to generate patriarchal and patrimonial wealth as well. So it doesn't even have to imply rejection or maybe a different way of saying it as acceptance as a continuum. And one way, one method of accepting a queer person is to give them all the legs up in life you would to their straight siblings or you know you would as if there as if they were were straight. And so I guess where that leads me is okay so you know, we're talking about all of these issues that queer people are facing in the US, if not around the world when it comes to building healthy financial portfolio and planning for a retirement savings. And I think the reason we're talking about them is not to whine, to bitch or moan, but to provide empathy and understanding, because I suspect what you will say is if we address the core emotional and socio sociological issues underneath this building of wealth, it will be much more effective in helping us have the mindset we require to actually go out and do it on the right track.

John Auten-Schneider [00:20:48] You are 100% on the right track. The core of everything that David and I have done for the last nearly decade now is really to get the community talking about its personal finances. Know initially when we started, we would receive a lot of negative pushback from folks on social media saying that talking about money is rude and we shouldn't talk about money, but that's bullshit because you know who you know who is talking about money. Really Wealthy people are talking about money. They're talking about with their friends, their family. They're sharing the knowledge with their children, as you alluded to earlier. So it's sort of this this conspiracy theorist to me kind of thinks that the people at the top kind of don't want us to talk about money because they don't want to empower us or have us empower ourselves. And so whatever we've done the podcast with Yahoo! Wherever we've been, it's all been really to get the community talking about money, because that is the first step to financial security. In 2015, David and I went to a personal finance conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, and there were about 900 other personal finance content creators there from professional media, bloggers, podcasters all across the spectrum. And it was really striking to David and me that there were all these content creators speaking to different niches. You had your military families. So an Army veteran was creating personal finance content for for for other veterans. You had your mommy bloggers and you had the African-American community, especially the women are just they're just killing it with sharing personal finance content with their community.

David Auten-Schneider [00:22:21] And the community is soaking it up, right? It's the reason they're killing it is not because they're content is any different than our content or anybody else's content at the at the base level. Right. It's the it's the the fact that they're actually connecting with their communities. Yeah.

John Auten-Schneider [00:22:36] Their communities are soaking that up and. As far as David and I know from our own experience and what people told us, we were the only out gay people out of that, those 900 people at that conference. And we all know statistically that that can't be true. But we were the only out gay people there. And several folks told us, you've got to create content for your community because your community is as fucked up as we are. And and you're you have the information that they need. And so that was actually in 2016, we went home and was in 2016. Yeah, that was when we launched the first iteration of the Queer Money podcast. And it's all just to get the community talking about its finances because and it's simple stuff. It doesn't you don't have to be an economic professor to be able to have these conversations. Just simply share who is the banker or financial advisor you went to, who treated you like a regular person and didn't didn't it didn't throw any homophobia your way? Who didn't treat you less than just what coupon did you use to buy your latest, you know, MacBook or laptop or who's the where's the best way for you to get the best service for the cheapest, cheapest cost? Really little things like that. Just having conversations. What did you invest in? How's your portfolio doing? Right take you can even take a little bit further. How did you start your 41K all these basic conversations that we could do it easily a brunch we don't do. And that's kind of what David and I are trying to get the community doing. It kind of alludes to your point.

David Auten-Schneider [00:24:05] And I'm just going to tack on there. You know, you just think about your own self. Think about yourself and the kinds of conversations you have with people more often than not. What are you talking about? You're talking about or you're sharing the things that you've subconsciously been thinking about and the way that those subconscious thoughts get in your mind for you to talk about and think about later is that you put them there consciously, right? And so we put in our brains the travel we put in our brains, the the, the drag race competitors. We put in our brains, the sex positions that everybody loves to talk about. We put in our brains all of the quote unquote, queer stuff, right? We fill our brains full of all the queer stuff and we leave out some of the stuff that can actually help us mentally with our mental health and our physical health, and especially our financial health. And if we don't put that in there, we don't have any you know, it's the whole garbage in, garbage out. Right. You know, I'm not saying that Drag race or sex positions or travel discussions are garbage. I'm just saying that what you put in is what what comes out. And so if we don't make a conscious change to say, I'm going to talk about budgeting with my partner or, you know, there's there's one thing that's going on right now. It's called loud budgeting. And I absolutely love this. Gen-z Millennials are picking up on this, and I don't care how old you are, you need to start practicing this and this. The whole idea behind loud budgeting is being able to look your friends in the face and say, You know what? I'm not going to drop $100 on brunch today because I want that money for something else or I'm using it for a financial goal. It all you're all you have to do is say thanks, but no thanks. I have other you know, I don't want to go to the concert because I want to go to that concert. I don't always need to be a part of every single thing to feel good about myself. I have to do what I want to do to feel good about myself. And that actually helps you out financially because you end up spending less money when you actually feel good about yourself.

John Auten-Schneider [00:26:14] Speaking of sex positions, though, multiple studies have come out and said that couples who talk about their finances report having better sex lives. So if for no other reason, talk about your finances because it's going to lead to better sex, apparently.

Britt East [00:26:29] Yeah. I mean, it's just logical. It's like the number one in every study. It's like the number one fight among, you know, people in relationships is about money. So if we talked about it, our relationship would probably get better and we'd have better sex. I mean, this is just simple math.

David Auten-Schneider [00:26:44] Yeah, I Go ahead. I like to say this. You know, there are two types of families. There are the families that talk about money, and then there's the families that fight about money and the families that fight about money fight because they don't talk about money. Right. And so what kind of family do you want to have? Do you want to have the fight, family or the family? And maybe that's the reason why they have better sex because they don't fight as often.

Britt East [00:27:06] And even if you're not having sex, if you're platonic family, if you're a friend, group, whatever. Talking about money is such a service to the entire community because you're modeling this health and stability about planning for the future and your loved ones. That's grounded sense of clarity as opposed to keeping secrets or crossing your fingers and hoping everything will just work okay, or sweeping it under the rug.

David Auten-Schneider [00:27:32] And the other thing is, is we all inherently believe this at our core. I don't know why we do, but we inherently. We believe that a person who has got their financial shit together is so much more sexy, is so much more husband worthy, is so much more partner worthy, I guess is so much more. And that is the reason why we we dress ourselves up and all this fancy garb is because we want everybody to think that we're wealthy. And it's the people who have the $2,000 purse, but nothing in it are the people who have the $200 purse and have $1,000 in it. Right. Which which one would you rather be? And I think that that that that's something that we need to we need to think about, especially when we're out there in the dating world. Do I want to actually be the person that somebody says, yeah, he's got his financial shit together and that makes me attract that attracts me to him. Or do I want to be the person who. Yeah, he's got his financial shit together, but I'm fucking scared because I'm lying out my ass. Be like because of I don't actually have my financial shit together and then have to have that kind of conversation with the the.

John Auten-Schneider [00:28:43] Reminds me of those underwear that have the padding in the butt. It looks good when you have your jeans on, but when you go home with the guy at night, you're like, Well, I never was going to come up and he's going to see the real deal.

Britt East [00:28:53] Well, you know what? You guys are really describing as closet closet ING behavior. It's not you know, we like to have this little nursery rhyme, this pretend delusion about the closet, like, hey, I told my mom, so now I'm out of the closet, quote unquote. I told my mom I'm gay or queer or whatever. I talked about it once and I'm, quote, quote unquote, out of the closet when really closet thing is something that people of all sexual orientations, gender orientations experience. It's a universal experience coming out as a daily process and a wide variety of topics. We make pragmatic decisions to shield ourselves, hide ourselves from others. And and so I see why, you know, finances is no different. So, of course, just like anything else, coming out of the closet is thrilling and freeing and liberating and serves the entire community because you are now radiating truth.

John Auten-Schneider [00:29:43] A colleague of ours says that a lot of us in the LGBTQ plus community, even though we're not drag queens, a lot of us are showing up every day dressing in some version of drag because we're afraid to show our true selves.

David Auten-Schneider [00:29:57] Yeah. And you know, we just did a podcast episode on on financial finding and financial finding is this idea of if I feel like I have if I feel like I have something, whether it's enough or abundance, I feel like I have to give it away, that I have to share. It needs to go out to everybody, which eventually puts me in a situation where I need to have my hand out or I'm desperate for something or I'm not financially stable. I'll give you an example that we shared in that podcast episode. John and I were at a LGBT gala event, and it got to that point in the night where they start to do the auctioning off of things, and I, I literally felt like I had to raise my hand because I wanted to be a part of that cool in-crowd that was bidding on stuff. And I looked over to John and I said, I'm going to bid on this trip. And he said, Do we have the money? And I said, No, but I still bid anyway because I felt like I, you know, I needed to I needed not only to impress other people, but I felt like, okay, I do have some level of financial stability. I've got a decent job, so I need to give that away. Everybody else needs to be. But I was going to hurt myself financially to do that. That is one of the worst things that we can do for the community is to turn us all into unstable financial masses just so that we can make sure that we're taking care of the community. Take care of yourself. It's the whole air bag dropping on the airplane thing. Take care of yourself, get yourself stable. That doesn't mean that you're the only one's going to survive the air crash. The airplane crash. Right. It just means you're taking care of yourself. You're getting yourself stable, then take care of others. And so I think that's one of the traps that many of us fall into is this idea of I need to I need to take care of other people or I need to use up all of my money to to to help others. And we don't really think that much about how can I be. Stable financially myself, or.

Britt East [00:32:03] If we are treating ourselves in some minor way or some major way, at least we have the clarity and honesty to make a mindful decision and own our choice on the constantly impacts and consequences it will have on our savings account or whatever. Instead of just pretending otherwise, sweeping it under the rug, lying to ourselves, etc.. Which leads me to my next question, like flipping all of this on its head. One of the really wonderful things about being queer is you don't have the same life scripts that we described previously that a lot of straight people feel so constrained by. So then how can we still be fabulous while also being frugal?

John Auten-Schneider [00:32:45] That is a good question. Yeah, that's a good balance too.

David Auten-Schneider [00:32:48] Yeah. And I'll say this, one of the things that John and I are doing right now on Thursdays is we're doing how to retire, how Gays retire that fabulously. It's this new series that we're we're doing. And. John and I have talked about this over and over again about what does it mean to be fabulous. You know, our kind of tagline for our our Debt Free Guys website is live Fabulous. You're not fabulously broke. And every time you say the word fabulous, live fabulously to a person. We all conjure up this in our heads, this own idea, our own idea. But who put that idea of what it means to be fabulous in our heads? And I'll say that 99% of the time, the person that the people that put that idea into our head are either the corporations telling us what we need to have to be fabulous or the consumers who have bought into the corporations idea of what it means to be fabulous. So right there, all of a sudden there, we're like, okay, in order to be fabulous, I need to have I need to have this suit or I need to have this car and I need to. And we all we come up with this whole idea of what it means to be fabulous based on what we think everybody else will think was fat is fabulous. Instead of what's fabulous to me and I kind of alluded to this earlier, if you focus on what really makes you feel fabulous, what really deep down makes you feel fabulous, not fabulous in the moment. Yeah, that Starbucks $7 Frappuccino or the $25 Erewhon smoothie can make you feel fabulous in the moment, especially if you're kind of showing it off to others. But what makes you feel fabulous? Longer term, right? What what would make me feel fabulous? And John and I sat down and we defined that what would make us feel fabulous. This is back when we were we had our $51,000 in credit card debt. And we had been living up to this to the the norms of what it means to be fabulous in the gay community. And we decided these these are the three things, four things that we want that will make us feel fabulous. The rest of it, fuck it. We don't care. I don't care that I wear. I wear basic Levi's jeans. I don't care that I walk in and I'm wearing a Gap T-shirt. You know what? When I go out, if you don't think I look fabulous, fuck you. I feel fabulous because I feel fabulous about all these other things in my life. I don't need you to tell me I am or am not fabulous. Right? And so the more we feel and understand what it makes us, how we feel fabulous, the more we can put our money towards that, our time, towards that or energy towards that. And when we do, we actually spend less. We literally it just naturally we start spending less. Right? When John and I decided that what made us feel fabulous was that we wanted to be able to travel and do it with cash, that we wanted to be able to save for retirement so that we didn't worry of would we have enough money in retirement? Would we be worried like Rose Nylund was on the Golden Girls, that she was going to end up being a bag lady because her husband's pension went bankrupt? So we wanted to to be able to to retire. And I'm missing.

John Auten-Schneider [00:36:16] We want to give back to the community.

David Auten-Schneider [00:36:17] Well, we definitely wanted to give back to the community. And we do that in many ways through our business because we give a lot of free shit away. But I I'm I'm missing one of them.

John Auten-Schneider [00:36:29] Yeah, I just forgot it too. We had we just lost leave goal fairly. Wasn't that important?

David Auten-Schneider [00:36:33] Well, we must anyway.

John Auten-Schneider [00:36:36] Diamond travels are our biggest. Right?

David Auten-Schneider [00:36:38] When it came down to it, we landed on those things. Then we said That's where our money needs to go. That's where our spending needs to go. And so when we decided to buy a condo, everybody was like, you guys, our especially our real estate agent, you can afford way more than this. You could afford way more than this. And we're like, We don't want it. We don't need a, you know, this beautiful the $600,000 condo. We want this affordable place because we want to spend our money on travel. We want to put our money to other things that are that is important to us. And so if we do that, we actually end up spending less money, we feel better about our lives and we disengage from the consumer culture that is driving what makes many of us think we're fabulous because we're we're we're driving our fabulousness based on how we're being judged by other people rather than judged by ourselves. Sorry. I kind of meandered the no prize.

Britt East [00:37:33] No, I love it because what you're really describing is an alignment of values with lifestyle and not allowing other people to set your values for you, because frequently they have a vested financial interest in steering you in one way or another. Or conversely, like you alluded to, there may be trying to validate their own life choices by projecting, you know, a lack of financial planning onto you. And I see that in friend groups a lot of times, you know, people who are maybe struggling in their own finances and trying to project their issues onto the rest of the friend group. But when you are grounded in clarity in your values, just like you described, you can make rational, mindful choices about what's important to you. Do I want to do I want to be house poor and have this glorious house? Because I what's really meaningful to me is hosting friends and family frequently. Or like me and my husband, we live very simply because maybe like the two of you, we really like to travel in a certain way and go to places around the world. And that's just our values. That's just our flavor of life that that we savor and enjoy. But we've gotten real about it. We're in reality about the participation in our zero sum flavor of capitalism and how we might want to minimize that. We're real about what's important to us and that we don't have unlimited financial resources. We have constraints like a lot of people in life, so we have to plan accordingly or face the consequences. And so then what are some steps that queer people can take to, you know, once we get this clarity, we have this vision and values this almost like a mission statement around our financial health. What are some steps we can take to protect our credit, save our money? I mean, like I said, we're recording this in the fall of 2024. You know, it means the holiday shopping season. I mean, I'm already seeing Christmas stuff, you know, in the stores. So it's soon approaching us. What are some ways we can reduce costs while also still creating the season of abundance?

John Auten-Schneider [00:39:37] Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that we would encourage your viewers and listeners to do is to simply use this show as an excuse to bring up the money conversation with your partner or your friends group to just say, have you ever had this discussion? What are you guys doing with your finances? How are you guys investing and saving all that stuff? But then the second thing we would encourage them to do is one of the first exercises that we did when we realized how much debt that we have. Start with the fun stuff. Start with the enjoyable things. Think with yourself or have a deep discussion with your partner. What is it? You? Really want in life. What is what are your truest, deepest goals? To what you said earlier. How can we align our spending with our values? Motivational Speaker Dr. Demartini says. Show me your spending and I'll show you what you value. But very often, one of the first exercises we do with our clients is we do a spending analysis with them. We have them analyze, itemize all their expenses for the entire 12 months. And it is so it's almost universal that everyone is surprised with where their money is actually going. And it answers the question for most people, not everybody, but answers the question for most people why they never feel like they have enough money and to why they keep spending. So many of us are on that hidden treadmill where, like shopping, buying things is it releases a dopamine rush. It becomes an addiction for a lot of us. But we kind of reach homeostasis very quickly. So we've got to buy again, reach homeostasis very quickly. Again, it got to buy something else. You have to ask yourself, why do you have to keep spending? You probably don't actually have to keep spending other than maybe your food and gas and your utilities. Right. Everything else is, for the most part, is elective. So figure out what is it that you truly, really want in your life. And then after you figure what that out is, and it took us several months to figure it out. Clearly we got some, but then figure out how do we reverse engineer this and how do we start aligning our spending with our goals? I would argue that most of us want to have a comfortable retirement. And the reason I would I would argue that is that is the most common question we get from our listeners and viewers. Typically, it's a gay man between the ages of 50 and 60. They wanted to retire yesterday, but they have zero money saved today. What can I do? There are options, but there are a lot harder and there are a lot fewer. So that's why we think most of us at the very least, want to be able to say, I have a comfortable retirement. I'm not going to run out of my money before I run out of my life. And then but if you focus on those fun things first and then worry about the the budget, the credit score, all the other stuff a bullet can take to get there and you'll be able to get deeper into that conversation and hope once you figure out what those two or 3 or 4 things are that you really want to achieve, that'll be the motivation, the inspiration for you to say, okay, how do we do the hard stuff? How do we build up to this point?

Britt East [00:42:32] So beautiful. I love that term. Like the diminishing returns associated with the had done a treadmill that is really cool. And I'm struck by how much of this work is really like indirect procedures. There's the direct procedures, all the great advice you provide on the nuts and bolts around saving and spending and managing credit card debt and the debt loss method and, you know, stuff I've learned from all of your socials. But then there's also the spiritual, emotional, psychological work that we alluded to earlier. Even the political work around having the conversations, getting grounded in reality and and starting to come out of the closet on this issue with our friends and loved ones. Okay, So now you're debt free. Congratulations. Now.

David Auten-Schneider [00:43:23] I'm going to just take a step back to what you were just address what you just talking about, John. And I like to say that personal finance is an 8020 split. Kind of like the Prato principle, right? If you focus on the 20%, the other 80% will improve as well. Right. And what we like to say with with the personal finances, that 80% is the finance side. That's the same for everybody writes my credit card swipes the same as your credit card. My check pays a bill just like your check pays.

John Auten-Schneider [00:43:56] Off or bounces.

David Auten-Schneider [00:43:57] Right? Yeah, right. But it's the 20% that is the personal side of personal finance. And that personal side is is all of who we are as individuals. That's why personal finance is my personal finance is different than John's personal finance is different than your personal finance. But every single one of us has our own personal story when it comes to money, and everything in our lives has informed that. And as queer people, there's a lot of things informing what our our lives should be and that that then pushes us into taking or not taking certain actions that are beneficial or detrimental towards our finances. So that's I think that was the first thing I wanted to share. And now I've forgotten your question. I'm sorry.

John Auten-Schneider [00:44:45] Jeffrey.

Britt East [00:44:46] Now congratulations.

David Auten-Schneider [00:44:49] Now what? Yeah. So I like to say that what gets you out of debt keeps you out of debt and helps you build wealth. Whether that wealth is building up $1,000 for your emergency savings or enough money for that down payment on that house that you want or the fabulous retirement that you want? Right. You learn. When you learn the habits, those habits start to. The reason they become a habit is because you put them in. We go back to this subconscious conscious thing. You have forced yourself to sit down and do your budget every single month. But the interesting thing is, if you force yourself to sit down and do a budget every single month for about 6 to 8 months after that point, you start to get into this rhythm with how you spend, what you think about when you're spending, what you focus on, you're spending on that. You don't actually have to then sit down every single month. You start to build a financial memory muscle that allows you to live the life that you want. That also says, I'm setting aside money for my future self. I'm setting aside money for my past self while my bills, all of the things I've already said I was going to pay for and then some money for my present self. And if we if we if we do that, if we learn how to build those habits that allow us to set aside money for our future self first. The amount of money we need to save for our future self starts to shrink because we take advantage of compounding interest. The. Then if we if we second focus on our our past self the things that we said we committed to paying our bills like our mortgage, our car payment, our insurance, all that kind of stuff. If we focus on that second, then we don't have things like missed payments that cause us to have an overdraft fee or or a missed payment fee or over one over your credit limit. If those kinds of things don't happen and we start to actually have to spend less money on our past money decisions, which leaves us more money for the thing that we really want, and that is the fund money in the present rate that your present money is the brunch money that it's the money for the new pair of shoes. It's the money for taking that vacation. So when we start to learn these great habits about what it makes, what makes me happy, how do I build this financial life that I want? And we do it in the right order. It all starts to become this natural thing that this is what we do. And then you just have to tweak it every now and then when your life changes.

Britt East [00:47:32] Absolutely beautiful. You said earlier you give a whole bunch of shit away for free. Why don't you tell us about some of it? Sure.

David Auten-Schneider [00:47:39] So on the Debt Free Guys website, our focus really is there is is talking about and helping people do what I just said, and that is pay your debt off. Build those habits so that you can build wealth. That's what we all really want when it comes down to our finances. So there we have our credit card debt slasher tool, which is basically explains the process that we went through and helps you with that process of how we paid paid off our debt.

John Auten-Schneider [00:48:08] Using the debt last the method that we created.

David Auten-Schneider [00:48:10] Yeah. And then on the queer money side, our focus is on helping empower the queer community, especially folks pushing towards retirement. And so we're focused there on talking about those things that we need to do to get ourselves financially stable, but also to focus on paying your future self first. And so we are focused on how to lay the foundation for financial freedom that you would have in retirement. And that's one of the things that we're focusing on on Thursdays on the podcast, as I mentioned, either on either downloading the podcast, the audio version or the YouTube version where we do do have some visuals associated with it, some shining on the on the YouTube.

John Auten-Schneider [00:48:56] Brain shining on the YouTube.

Britt East [00:48:58] We're going to load up the show notes with links to all of this, give the listeners all sorts of goodies so nobody has to scribble down anything in the car or wherever you're listening to this, just come back to the show notes and you'll have everything right at your fingertips. I encourage everyone to check it out is just wonderful. Also wonderful Instagram presents. So it's a great place to start to get acquainted with David and John's work. I'm curious, what gives you guys hope?

John Auten-Schneider [00:49:24] This is a question we've been asking people on our podcast lately. We all and we started asking it because everyone is feeling like all down in the dumps until just a couple of months ago. And we say we're going to continue this at least in through the the to the election. So I will say that I'm just going to be completely honest right now. I'm very hopeful about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz winning this. But I'm hopeful right now because I'll tell you, we were kind of we were one of those couples who were starting to think about what's our exit plan if if if the other side wins. And as much as he's trying to deny that he's not associated with it, he's not a good liar. And he's he's all in for Project 20, 25. And something that your listeners might not know about is that Project 2025 is not the first project that the Heritage Foundation created. There was I believe there was Project eight 1981, and that's I think Ronald Reagan implemented like 61 or 68% of the of the Heritage Foundation's goals and objectives from back then. And we're still dealing with repercussions today. I don't know how the country is going to able to survive if we have that mirror again. So I'm hopeful with the excitement that we're seeing on social media and in the news. Hopefully it's all more truthful than it is lies that Harrison was with.

Britt East [00:50:43] And where do you guys see. Sorry, Go ahead.

David Auten-Schneider [00:50:45] I think that one of the things that I'm hopeful about is, as you mentioned, Jon and I just launched a new show with Yahoo! Finance called Living Not so Fabulously. And it's really the kind of the that that whole idea of that as queer folks, we absolutely do want to live fabulously. But there are some there are some times when we're not living fabulously and there's a lot of lessons that can happen from both living fabulously and not so fabulously. So we want to share those lessons from people that our community want generally want to hear from. So we have. Of us celebrities, tech gurus, individuals within the queer community. Business leaders who are willing to get a little honest, authentic and say, Hey, you know what? I fucked up here in my life with my finances or I did really, really well with my finances here. And they're sharing those stories. And I'm really excited about that because I think that stories are a great way to convey information to people where they were. They can feel it themselves. They can understand what it would be like to be in that situation or they've already been in that situation. Or they can say, I don't ever want to be in that situation. And so they can we can take from these individuals, from their mistakes and from their successes and learn from them. And I think that that is a huge opportunity for the community.

John Auten-Schneider [00:52:09] Yeah, we have some amazing stories coming out that I think your audiences will really appreciate. Todd Sears is coming out shortly. He's the founder of Out Leadership. Anybody who's in the financial services sector probably knows who he is. But then we also have Ruth Jacks, who's an executive vice president from Wells Fargo. Her story is so compelling. The fact the resiliency that she had to go from being a homeless single mother to becoming an executive vice president at one of the at one of the largest banks in the world is just inspiring. So we definitely encourage our audiences to check that out.

Britt East [00:52:46] It's so beautiful. I cannot wait. It sounds absolutely amazing. And I could not agree with you more that there's something about human design and storytelling that allows us the two to meet ourselves in the eyes of others when we're sharing our stories, but then also conversely, to to emotionally relate to the core of other people's shared or our shared humanity and as they reveal themselves. So I'm wondering, where do you guys seek refuge.

David Auten-Schneider [00:53:16] On our couch.

John Auten-Schneider [00:53:17] Your party? I'll tell you where we see pressure. You've probably where you're kind of going here. Every now and then we have this gigantic beanbag that you open it up and it turns into a queen size bed on the floor. And every once every couple of weeks, we're both like, We need a cuddle puddle with the puppies. And so we'll just put that out. Literally, one.

David Auten-Schneider [00:53:39] Of them heard that their ears just went like that. They heard?

John Auten-Schneider [00:53:42] Yeah, they know. They know a cuddle huddle means and we'll just like rely on that bed with our puppies and watch a movie or whatever. And that's at this probably sanctuary right now. Yeah.

Britt East [00:53:53] It is so good. What is sacred in your lives? What do you guys hold most dear?

John Auten-Schneider [00:53:58] My husband and my puppies.

David Auten-Schneider [00:53:59] Yeah. I think it's our relationship, you know, I'll go back. I just realized what it was. One of the other things John and I went. Well, when we. Because we have this now all the time, one of the reasons why we wanted to get out of debt was we wanted a better financial life for ourselves because every day we were getting up at 6:00 in the morning and we were heading step directions, maybe coming back together at 6 or 7:00 at night, cooking dinner and maybe watching an hour or two of television going to bed and rinse and repeat that. And so we're like. That's not who we are. We want to spend more time together. And I think that that's it, just the two of us. We I mean, literally, we were in Vermont this week, this summer, and we're in our early 50s were walking litter. John and I are literally walking down the street holding hands. We got called Fagots by a car passing by. But that's who we are. Wherever we go, we we are like looking out, is this a safe place for us to hold hands? Because we we are that couple who just really maybe we're codependent, but we are independent. We love being with each other.

John Auten-Schneider [00:55:09] When we were living in Vegas, David came out to look at property for us to buy in Toledo, and at that point we had not spent the night a night apart for at least six years.

David Auten-Schneider [00:55:21] I think it was about ten years. Well, with the exception of one night where you flew to New York and then back because of that.

John Auten-Schneider [00:55:26] To.

David Auten-Schneider [00:55:27] Deliver something. Yeah.

John Auten-Schneider [00:55:28] We just had not spent too much time apart. So maybe we are that.

Britt East [00:55:34] Or just in love?

David Auten-Schneider [00:55:37] Yeah. Well, yeah, every day I, you know, I go into if I.

John Auten-Schneider [00:55:43] Say the whole thing.

David Auten-Schneider [00:55:44] No, I do say every day either with you or at you. I laugh because that's the kind of person he is. He makes me feel really good about myself. Or he's. He says something that I that just makes me laugh. You know, he he's he's got more humor and wit than I do. So that's one of the reasons I think we're really good complements for each other. But every day I've got to give him a hug and a kiss. And we go to bed almost every single night and we spoon, right? It's just that's who we are. We love each other. It's now everybody's about ready to pee.

John Auten-Schneider [00:56:17] Hopefully they're not driving and throwing up.

Britt East [00:56:19] You know, it is so important. I'm going to scold you again. It is so important to share our love with the world as queer people because we are systematically denied it. So I'm so proud of you for for doing that today. And as you as I think the whole audience will agree with me, it's so easy to see why you're so successful. You're so smart, but you're also so articulate, so funny. You share your love. You just radiate joy and acceptance and inclusion. I am just so thrilled to chat with you today to learn more about your services, your shows, your work. I think you're such a shining, bright light beacon for our community and I really hope everybody listening to this checks you out. Thank you so much.

John Auten-Schneider [00:57:01] Thank you very much. We appreciate that. That's very kind of you.

David Auten-Schneider [00:57:03] Yeah. It's been fabulous.

Britt East [00:57:04] Love that. Wonderful. Well, thanks, everyone. You've made it through another hour of Not Going Quietly. I'm so proud of you for sticking with us. We could not do this show without your love and support. Keep those letters coming. Keep tagging us on social media. Keep leaving us comments. We really appreciate it. Until next time. My name's Britt East. I'm your host and I'm not going quietly. Thanks. And bye bye.

Britt East [00:57:28] You've been listening to Not Going Quietly with your host Britt East. Thanks so much for joining us on this wild ride as we explore ways to help everyone leap into life with a greater sense of clarity, passion, purpose and joy. Check out our show notes for links, additional information, and episodes located on your favorite podcast platform.