Family Money Coach Plays Financial Game Show: Quizzed On Debt & Costs for Disneyland | NerdWallet

Which U.S. airport has the most flights daily? Hmm. Find out the answer to this question and more on this week's episode of Reality Check. Every week, we'll talk with internet personalities about what life costs, and hear about their financial journeys along the way. This week's guest is Andy Hill. Andy is a content creator, husband, and father of two who helps families across the country build towards their goals of financial independence. So, what's something surprising or unexpected that people might not know about you? Ooh. Well, I really love karaoke. And that's definitely not something I share on my YouTube channel very much, but I love some karaoke. Absolutely. That's fun. What's your go-to song? I'm a Billy Joel guy. I really like going for some classics and belting it out and embarrassing my kids on Friday when we do our family night. Excellent. Well, we have these ten financial questions that the average American probably should know, but most don't. How are you feeling about this? You know what? I think I have a good chance of flopping, and I'm looking forward to it, actually. I believe in your ability to not flop. I think it's going to be great. All right, well, let's see which of us is right with our predictions. Sounds good. We'll start with question one. How much is the President of the United States' salary? Is it like a roundabout? So, I'm going to say $400,000. That is a spot-on roundabout. It is exactly $400,000. $400,000 taxable, and then he gets a $50,000 expense account that's not taxable. Oh, that's good. And bonuses for good work? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know about that. They don't tell us about that part. Yeah, right. Exactly. All right, well, you're one for one. Those are great numbers so far. All right, as of October 2022, how much does the average American renter pay in monthly rent? Average American as of October 2022, $1,200. It's actually a little bit higher. It's closer to $1,400. $1,371. Close. Close. You were close. I'm sorry, but I live in L.A., and I just can't. I was going to say, you're like, I don't know what you're talking about, brother. That's right, exactly. All right, question three. What is the biggest industry in the world? The biggest industry? The defense industry? It is the financial services industry. Oh, man, I should have known that, huh? $22.5 trillion. Wow. Yeah, and the next closest is only $12.5, and that's the construction industry. Okay, all right, all right. Well, there's more hope for the world then. Well, Andy, you kind of had an interesting segue into the personal finance world. What made it kind of feel like the right move for you to go from event marketing into personal finance? Oh, well, yeah, this all spawned just from a bad day at work for me, really. I was working in event marketing, and I had been doing it for about 10 or 15 years, and I was just kind of tired of it, and I had a day where my management said, okay, you're not on this team anymore that you've built. You're on this team, and you're doing this job, and I just realized that I didn't really have much control of my life, so I wanted to be a little bit more in control of my life and my existence, so I decided to start a hobby that turned into a side hustle, that turned into a full-time business where I got to talk about something that was important to me, which was family finances and trying to create financial independence for my family so that I never had to feel like that again. Yeah. Out of control of my finances and my money and my situation, so that's where I am today. That's such an amazing story. It's great to find that thing that brings you joy, and then, oh, bonus, I actually get paid for doing something that I'm passionate about and that I love, and I get to help people. All right, we are on question number four, and it's a multiple choice. All right. Which U.S. airport has the most flights daily? Is it A, LAX in Los Angeles? Is it B, ATL in Atlanta? Is it C, LGA in New York City? Or is it D, DFW in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas? I'm going to go with Atlanta. Atlanta. Boom. That's two points. Yeah, ATL in Atlanta. Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International has 871 flights on the average day. Yeah. Which is a lot. That makes sense. Delta hub. Yeah. All right, question five. What is the average cost to take a family of four to Disneyland if you factor in parking for the day and one night at a budget Disney resort? Ooh. This is just for one day? Just for one day. Just the parking, the tickets, obviously, and a night at a Disney budget resort. How big is the family? Or just one ticket? Four. Four tickets. A family of four. $1,500. Aw. Not quite that high. It's actually only $1,000. OK. All right. It's only $1,000, but if you think about, you can't go to Disneyland and not also get food and the ears and the tchotchkes, you know? And who goes for a day, right? Exactly. So I think that $1,500 is probably more likely once you factor in all those things, which is a big number for a lot of families. I know we dropped around $4,000 or $5,000 when we went with our family of four for about three days, I think. So yeah. Yeah. That's a big number to aspire to. How do you sort of balance the fun family memories, budgeting for those fun family memories, but also making sure that you're staying on track to reach any financial goals that you have? Yeah. I think it's important with any savings goals or investing goals is to put a purpose around it. And when you lose that purpose, then you kind of lose your zest for wanting to save or invest. So we actually put goals for our family experiences around saving and investing. So we'll make a savings or a sinking fund to make sure that we're able to go to Disney World or Disneyland and not have to go into debt for it in a year or two or whatever we decide that is for our family. So by putting specific goals around it, that really helps us to want to save. And that puts us more in the savings and investing mood instead of saying, oh, I should definitely save more. It's like, okay, here's a purpose for it. And that makes us want to do it more. That's so true. It's one thing to have just like a bucket of like, oh, this is our like extra that we'll do whatever with and another to have like an actual, this is our Disney fund or this is our fun family vacation fund that kind of makes it more real when you give it a name. Yeah, I feel the same way. Okay, question number six. What is the average FICO credit score? Average? 620. It's actually a lot higher. It's 716, which is great. That is great. Surprising for me too when I first learned that. Yeah, very cool. Question number seven. What is the average amount that parents in the U.S. spend weekly for daycare for one child? Parents spend daycare for one child weekly. Man. $700? It's actually for a week. It's only on average about 226. Oh, there we go. Good, yeah. But I think that that number definitely adds up, especially when you consider that you have to send them for, you know, every week. Yes, over and over again. Maybe you have other kids too. So I think this is probably one of the biggest expenses for parents, particularly of young children. What advice do you kind of give your clients who are either thinking about expanding their family or maybe their family unexpectedly expanded? What's kind of the first step in family financial planning? Oh, I would say the first step with all these things, whether it's a Disney expense or daycare, is to make sure you're planning out what's coming in and then what's going out, especially as you're maybe expecting that new child or expecting the second child. The preparation is well worth it. And writing down those numbers, doing some research beforehand and understanding what those costs are potentially going to be or getting on that reservation list to join the daycare, because sometimes that takes a while to get onto. It's planning. It's really just planning it out. I mean, it's the same thing we do with our calendars. We don't just jump into the day and say, I wonder what's going to happen today. We have it all planned out. We've got a schedule of what's going to happen. Same thing needs to happen with our budget. We need to plan it out and say, here's where I want to spend my money based on my family values and be in charge of it. So that's worked well for our family, worked well for a lot of the families I've spoken to. Absolutely. I think parenthood in general should involve, you know, like we need some plans at all the stages. Got to live by that schedule and got to live by that budget, man. Absolutely. Exactly. All right. We are on to question number eight. It's another multiple choice. What is the least expensive state to live in? Is it A, Mississippi? B, Nebraska? C, Kansas? Or D, Ohio? I'm going to go with Mississippi. Yes. Spot on. Mississippi. The least expensive state. You can get a single family home there for $140,000. 141-ish. Yeah. If you're looking to move. That's good to say. Probably beats those LA prices, huh? Right? I'm like, hey, I might need to keep this in mind. That's right. All right. Question number nine. What is the average savings account interest rate? And this is non-high yield or? Right. It's just the average. The average for any. The average. Well, across all savings accounts, I would say the average probably is maybe 1% now because high yield savings accounts have gone up quite a bit. We're not there yet. It's still only 0.21%. Oh, geez. That's average with high yield and just traditional savings accounts. Yes. I'm with you on this. This number hurts my feelings. We're ticked up to about 3% for the high yield now, which is good. Exactly. I'm with you on this one. Depending on if people are watching this. I know. Guys, it doesn't have to be this way. Get on the high yield interest rate. That's right. Nerdwild's got some great resources for that. Absolutely. Thank you, Andy. Yes, we do. We've done all the research for you guys. I took them out. Absolutely. We love that. We love to hear that. Good. All right, Andy. The reality check. Final question. Question number 10. How much debt does the average consumer in America have? This factors in everything. Your mortgage, your student loans, credit cards, everything. Yes. I would say, on average, with a mortgage and student loans, some people don't have a mortgage, maybe $150,000. Not quite that high. It's $96,371. Okay. All right. Yes. That probably factors a lot of people who aren't homeowners, as well, about the mortgage and the opposite with student loans, as well. Okay, cool. Yes. Still a pretty high number. You've obviously been able to pay down a lot of debt, including a mortgage, which I think a lot of Americans are aspiring to. What was your family's first step or maybe the first thing that you decided to tackle when you were going to pay down some of that debt? Yes. Initially, we started having these conversations when we learned we were going to be parents. Before that, it was just, hey, we're living for the day and having fun, spending what came in. No regrets, really. We had a great time in our 20s when we met, and we got married. But then when something sort of clicked in our brains, we were like, okay, we're bringing a human into this world. We want her to have a great life, and we want her to have all of the, maybe the things that we didn't have, and what can we do to improve? So for us, that first thing was like, okay, how do we eliminate my student loans that I had accumulated and my wife's car debt? We said, okay, that's a good thing to tackle together and sort of get our feet wet. So we started with a budget. We started just laying down what was coming in. We automatically almost doubled what we had originally made because we got married. That's the perk of getting married. You get to have more coming in. We found a way to spend it all in the beginning, but once we started paying attention and saying, okay, what can we do to make a difference? We said, okay, well, maybe we can live on half. Maybe we can live on just one of our incomes for a little while, clobber the debt, and be able to make a big difference in our net worth, which was negative $50,000 at the time when we checked it when we got married because we owed a lot more than we owned. And so, yeah, that's what we did. We sat down for our budget party. We got together once a month and had some pizza, wine, and beer and relaxed and looked at the numbers and said, okay, what can we do? How are we trending on those goals? We were able to pay off that $50,000 in about one year with that focus. That's amazing. I think a big part of it is just focusing, working with your partner, and setting a goal and stepping forward. That's amazing. Congrats on that. Thank you. You said something that I really, really want to touch on, which is the fact that you kind of made it fun. You got pizza and you made it. I think when people get on a budget, they think it has to be this torturous thing where you're depriving yourself of having a good time. And it doesn't have to be that way. It could be a fun experience that you share with your partner and really help you reach some of those financial goals. Absolutely. And putting some celebration around it, too. When you do wild things like, hey, we went from $50,000 to $30,000 of debt. Wow. Whatever. Let's go out and celebrate. This is great. We're doing something crazy. And it doesn't always have to be some milestone, gigantic number. You set those goals and say, hey, at this point, this is how we're going to treat ourselves. So it's going to be fun along the way. That's a good way to do it. I think it's a lot more fun that way, like you said. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that. I think that that's a really awesome point. Thank you. Well, Andy, thank you for playing Reality Check. Three out of ten. Not bad. I feel like I was right. It's better than zero out of ten, I guess. Exactly. I feel like I was right in this in that you did not take. That was awesome. Thank you. So if people want to learn more about you and your business and your family's journey, how can they find you? Yeah, well, if you're watching this YouTube video, I've got a YouTube channel called Marriage, Kids & Money. It's focused on helping young families build wealth and happiness. I interview families that are on their own family financial independence mission. And I also share advice that we've had as a family that have helped us to go from a negative $50,000 net worth to millionaires in less than 10 years. So that is what I'm sharing on my YouTube channel. I'd love you to check it out. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. And if you guys missed that, don't worry. We're going to drop it down in the description below. And thanks again for playing. Bye. All right. Thank you. Thanks for stopping by to play Reality Check with us. If you learned something, be sure to give the video a thumbs up. And make sure you check out the other videos in the series to see how you stack up against all our guests. See you next time. Bye.