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episode 20. Pedal House vs. Chez Soleil

On our 20th episode (happy 20th everyone!), we discuss possibilities for naming our house (and how this is harder than naming our kids). We also talk about fun things coming up (our anniversary day date) and sad things coming up (our ‘soul’ couple is moving away from us).

In money, we chat about house painting and other expenses. But we also celebrate the fact that our little home town, Gilbert AZ, is THE BEST PLACE TO LIVE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE MONEY!! (Clearly, this is due to our presence in the town…and maybe a teensy bit with cost of living). And Kelsey opens up shop on her creative coaching side business!

We also run through the fun exercise of how we’d spend $100, $1000, $10,000, $100,000, or $1,000,000. It’s super fun to pretend to spend money you don’t have (instead of actually spending money you don’t have, which, you know, leaves you debt-ridden).

Finally, we tackle a listener question about dealing with irregular expenses month-to-month as well as student loans. And we discuss our ‘big things,’ including dinner with Michael Pollan…and dinner with each other!

(Note: Chris is shown here lovingly embraced by the noted author.)

2 responses to “episode 20. Pedal House vs. Chez Soleil”

  1. Feisty Harriet Avatar
    Feisty Harriet

    Chez Soleil is beautiful (and I’m sure I spelled that wrong!).
    So, I’m so interested how a place that requires tremendous amounts of AC for 9 or 10 months of the year can top a list of saving money. As we look at the coming months of utility bills I am totally TOTALLY baffled. We will pay in one month here the same amount I spent in 6 months of blasting the AC in Salt Lake (which is a hypothetical because I only ever had the AC on for maybe 5 months of the year, and only 2.5 of those were blasting). So crazy!
    I love your $100-$1,000,000 picks, and I love that you didn’t talk about them prior to recording the podcast and still aligned so closely! And buy a cabin in Montana! We can be AZ AND MT neighbors!!! (That is where we will end up after our AZ stint, 95% positive of that fact.)
    MICHAEL POLLAN!!! I love him so much! I’m super jealous (and also jealous that you got to meet and mingle with Michael Crow as well, is he the high powered boss of yours!?! He’s amazeballs!)
    xox

    Reply
  2. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Harriet, good questions. I tend to keep a close watch on our energy use because it’s true, the desert demands considerable climate control. But as it turns out, our energy bill climbs above $100 only 5-6 months out of the year. And we get above $200 only 2 of those months.
    But you got me curious so I went looking for the average monthly energy use in US households. As of 2014, the national average was 901 kWh (for AZ it was 1,012 kWh). I found these data here: http://insideenergy.org/2014/05/22/using-energy-how-much-electricity-do-you-use-each-month/. That made me happy because our usage averaged 855 kWh/mo over the past year. So we’re doing better than the national average and far better than our state. So it’s possible, depending on your home size and other variables (pool, insulation, etc.), to be relatively efficient even in the god-forsaken desert.
    And yeah, it was fun hanging with the Michaels. Michael Crow is intimidating until you get into it with him and show him you know what you’re talking about. Then he’s fun to chat with and listen to. Fun aside: at the end of the night, he was getting ready to leave, so I asked him, “Do you ever get to have just a casual conversation where you don’t have to discuss how to solve the most difficult problems of the world?” He smiled and said, “No, not really.” Couldn’t quite tell if he liked it that way or not.

    Reply

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