If you’ve found us, you’re probably looking for advice on how to get your shit together, financially speaking. Welcome. But before we start talking about said shit, please allow us to introduce ourselves. Kind of.
We are not experts on investing or how to get rich quick or how to barter your way from a single red paperclip to a house. We are experts in what not to do. We have made a fuck ton of mistakes over the past 2 decades. We learned all of these lessons the hard way (and we’re still learning). After talking to some friends, family and coworkers recently, and watching them make many of the same mistakes we made, we thought maybe it was time we started talking about it.
But money seems to be a touchy subject for most people. Talking about how much you make is taboo. Talking about how much you have saved is as well. And talking about how much you owe…well, there can be a lot of shame associated with that (and we’re speaking from experience on that one). But we need to talk about it in order to learn and, hopefully, change.
Our goal in this blog is to be as honest and transparent about everything as we can be. And in order to do that, there is one thing that we are not going to be honest about (but we’re being honest about not being honest). Names. Ours, and anyone else we discuss in this blog (unless they are a public figure). On everything else, we will be open. How much we owe, how much we spent in the past, how much we spend today, if a product or service we link to gives us a kickback if you buy or sign up for it (we will also never link to anything we don’t personally use – except for the Google ads in the corner, we don’t control what shows up there).
Scott here, I would like to take a moment to talk to you about a service we love and use called You Need A Budget.
We tried a lot of different personal finance software options and none of them seemed to do what we needed. You Need A Budget really allows you to see where your money is going and most importantly it helps you develop and stick to a budget. They offer a 34 day trial so you can take your time and see if you really like it before paying.
Click here to try it out for free!
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…a little about us.
We’re in our early 40s. We live in a small town in New England. We both have some college education, but neither of us have degrees. Kat works in manufacturing (yes, some of it does still exist in the US) and Scott is an entrepreneur who has owned several businesses (some more successful than others), and currently develops software in the SaaS field. We have no human children, but have several of the 4 legged variety, which is probably just as well, because Kat has the mouth of a sailor (as you may have noticed).
And we’ve just gotten out from under a massive amount of debt that’s been hanging over our heads for more than a decade. That debt has taught us a lot. We both wish we’d learned the lessons much earlier in life, but better late than never (especially considering some people never learn them at all).
We’re still in the process of learning. We read and watch videos and listen to podcasts and talk about financial shit every day. There are still some aspects of our financial life in the fucked up category that we are working on. It’s a process. We hope that sharing that process with you will help you start your own.
2 former financial fuckups who pulled their heads out of their asses,
Kat & Scott Gennero
(not our real names)
(Scott’s 1st choice was Holly Gennero and John McClane)
