EPISODE 388: Overcoming Inflation in Your Life with Christine Odle

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry.

Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Hey docs, I'm excited to bring you a interview with Christine Odell. As many of you know, if you've listened to this podcast over the years, uh, Christine was instrumental in getting me back on track financially in my personal and professional life back in 2016, 2017, probably rounded out into early 2018.

We really got things rolling and got back on track, you know, just like anything. Uh, you make mistakes. Um, we're not experts in finances or at least, um, many of us are not. And I had a great. Start to my career. Great start to my practice 2010 when we opened up all the way to 2015, things got rocky with insurance as I dropped insurances, things got rocky in the personal life, but Christine was there to really help me understand personal and business finances.

And she's just a really, really good at what she does. And she's been on this show a handful of times and has been a, quite a resource for other chiropractors. And, uh, we dive into personal. finances, you know, and kind of [00:01:00] overcoming inflation. It's obviously a real thing and some things you can do you and your significant others to, to work around that.

And she's got real life experience, real life strategies that you can implement. And she dives into that today and provides you with a ton of information. And at the end, she's got an opportunity for you to learn more and how you can help your, or of your finances. And it's been something that we, we really work with chiropractors a lot and talk about in our coaching programs, because it's, um, you know, as much as we don't want to make it about money all the times, you know, those that have financial peace or, you know, Cashflow confidence are functioning at a very high level and feeling good about their progression throughout, uh, their career in, in, in their personal lives.

And so, uh, we dive into some of those topics today. And so without further ado, here's my interview with Christine Odell.

 All right. I'm excited to have Christine Odell on the podcast. It's been a [00:02:00] little while since you've been on. And, um, you know, I, I always reference you and what you did to help me, uh, through different financial times, whether it was my own personal struggles in 2017 or our world struggles in 2020 with, with COVID and navigating all of that.

But, uh, welcome to the show. What's new in your world.

Christine Odle: Thanks, Dr. Christie. I'm so happy to be back. Um, Well, the world is doing crazy things and we had no idea five years from today what we were going to experience. And so I think today might be a similar situation. We have no idea what's coming. Um, but this is a great time for us to get ready for ourselves.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, I agree with that. It's it was funny. Um, Uh, my wife and I, we just celebrated our five year anniversary a couple of weeks ago, or I should, I don't know when this episode comes out, but it was in July. We celebrated and we went back, uh, to Sonoma where we got married and we kind of talked about the last five years, uh, together, uh, as far as our [00:03:00] marriage and it would have been 2019, July, 2019, we got married and it was kind of comical how much went on in the last five years.

Christine Odle: That's a good statement to say. Yes. Comical is good.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Many positives into my personal world and all that, but obviously the world's been tricky and I want to, we're going to dive into the topic of inflation today and I know that's hitting a lot of people. It's hitting us, uh, personally, it's, uh, it's hitting us as business owners and, and trying to, you know, Navigate that.

Obviously, if you're a chiropractor that, um, works for someone, it's hard to navigate your own personal inflation costs and kind of your fixed pay. If you're a chiropractor that owns your practice, you're kind of getting hit, uh, from both ends there, as far as your, your cost of living has gone way up. And then your cost of running a practice has gone way up.

And I can guarantee you your insurance reimbursement has not gone up. And if [00:04:00] anything, it's. Probably gone down, but I'd like to start out with the history of inflation and some of the, uh, some of the history of that, that you've really, uh, doven into.

Christine Odle: So, okay, first it's important to define what inflation means, because the idea is everything goes up in that in price.

And so the actual definition is it's the change in your purchasing power. So if you're buying something, then you might have bought gas at 65 cents a gallon back in the 80s, but now it's, um, depending on where you are in the country, somewhere between 3 and 7 a gallon, right? And so part of that is the economy on where you are.

Part of that is taxes. Part of that is 100 different things. Things that go on. Um, part of that's also politics. So this is not a politics discussion, but it kind of is. Um, so one of the things I did is, uh, when Dr Christie asked me to do this is I went [00:05:00] back and I studied a little bit of, uh, What politics has to do with how inflation functions.

Now, I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, that doesn't matter in this, but it's good to understand the, the way it goes. So I went back to 1901 enlisted all the presidents in order and how many years they were in office. And then I went back and said, are they Republican or Democrat? And then I went to the inflation rate tables and was kind of shocked at what I found.

I kind of had an idea that years with Republican presidents, the inflation rates were historically lower. The only place that that was different was Nixon and Ford. We have a resignation of a president, vice president takes over, but those, um, eight years of time is where in the Republican party was the only time inflation was really high over the 4%.

And the national average for inflation is 3%. So if you go back over time, you say 3 [00:06:00] percent is the national average. But when a Democrat president is in place, the inflation rate usually is well over 5%.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Interesting.

Christine Odle: In some years. Yes, very interesting. Um, in some years, and if you look at the overall term of a president, like if we go back to 45 to 53 with president Truman, he started with a 2.

3 percent inflation rate, but by the end of his term it was 14. 4 percent. If you go back to Hoover, he started at a negative 2. 3 percent, so your purchasing power was getting better, so it's opposite of Inflation is increasing your purchasing power is less if inflation is decreasing your purchasing power is better so in Hoover, it went from negative 2.

3 percent to a negative 9%. So if you think back to the fifties of our parents and grandparents, they had lots of purchasing power. Then we see, we [00:07:00] saw that in, you know, you could buy a house on Sears from Sears, right? Cause there's lots of purchasing power back then. Um, so, but then if you bounce forward to 1995 from 1990, about 93.

The inflation rate got down to 3%, and if you go all the way up to when Trump got out of office, it stayed at 3 percent or lower that entire time. So we're looking at 25 years, an entire generation, where this country experienced virtually no inflation rate. Biden comes into office, you can blame it on Biden, you can blame it on Democrats, you can blame it on, uh, COVID, you can blame it on a hundred million different things, um, suddenly we're at 8%, and we haven't seen 8 percent inflation rate since the Carter years.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, I remember growing up as a kid, I was born in 1980 and growing up as a kid, my parents talking about the seventies and how hard that was. And, you know, it was interesting to your point in the eighties, [00:08:00] uh, when I was raised, I wasn't only child, so it's a little cheaper, but we were able to live off of my dad's income only.

My mom was able to stay home with me and my dad had a very middle class income. Um, if you adjusted for, Whatever, inflation and cost of living now. Uh, there's no way my dad would have been able to support without my mom working in, in today's environment. So it's definitely, definitely fascinating for sure to, to hear the history of that.

And I, you know, like, what are your thoughts on the, cause I, A lot of, um, young chiropractors feel pretty down about the situation and I get it. I think we all feel down about the situation. And I try to also reference, um, 2008, obviously I was a different animal. I joke around, I would have been 28 then and I was just getting started, but, um, things were cheap, but nobody had any money.

So it was a, it was a whole, it was a whole other level of frustration. And I remember, uh, having that where [00:09:00] just like so many patients, like none of them had jobs and money and you could lower your prices and buying a house was cheap, but just no one could afford to, to do anything. Cause they had, they had no money.

Um, whereas you fast forward now, there's like people actually, Making good incomes, uh, theoretically, uh, but then they can't afford anything. And it always seems like inflation has such a, a psychological impact on people. Uh, what are some of your thoughts on that?

Christine Odle: Um, I think money has psychological impacts on people.

Um, money is very emotional. So. Kind of that same thing. If we go back to the nineties, your average household income in the nineties was in the high 30, 000. So let's just say 40, 000. So that was the average in the nineties was you're making 20 bucks an hour. And that's your average income bump to now your average income.

And this is, this is all [00:10:00] data I get off of government websites, by the way. Um, average income is 102, 000, which is 50 an hour. So in 25 years, we bumped. 30 an hour. And this is kind of interesting. Like our wages went way up, but inflation was stagnant. And what I've been able to find from being financial coach for so many years is our wants take over our needs is that we want so much.

So when I was growing up, we had one television and it was black and white. Yes. I just dated myself, but we also didn't have cable TV or cell phones. Um, I remember a long distance phone bill back then being over a hundred dollars at times and. So just what our needs are now. Now you walk into the average household and we have bought a house in St.

George, Utah, and we drive up the road in suburban America, and you can't park your car in your garage because there's so much stuff in the garage. You see this every [00:11:00] single day. And we walk into a house and there's a television. Every single bedroom, every child has a cell phone. I mean, so a lot of our wants in life have over superseded our needs.

So in an. If we're battling inflation, one of the things I think is the most useful is to figure out how to do a budget for your family. There's a hundred million theories on budgets, and here's the easiest one. Figure out what you absolutely have to have to survive. You need food, you need housing, you need transportation, and reasonable clothing, right?

So, if we're in crunch mode, we're not going to Neiman Marcus to buy a tank top, we're going to Walmart to buy a tank top, right? So, we really need to focus on what our needs are, what we absolutely have to have to survive, and then gradually add in the wants.

Dr. Kevin Christie: I

Christine Odle: think if we do that in a budgeting mode, then we can start seeing, oh my goodness, eating [00:12:00] out twice a day.

Every single day of the week is probably not cost effective because that's what we want every time we need to eat, right?

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. And I want to touch on that. Cause I'm, I had it down as one of my notes, there was a funny meme going and passing around. It wasn't fun. I mean, it was actually like a. Supposedly a poll or a study and it said like, what is the household income needed to live comfortably?

And it had a different states and it had different numbers. And some of the states were like 225, 000 and this and that. And people were commenting, it's like, oh, you're going to, you need to make 250, 000 to, to live with a family of four. And, and I actually remember commenting on it and I was like, I think a big problem is not necessarily what the number is to quote unquote, live comfortably.

I think. As a society, we've changed what comfort is to us. And we almost like think of comfort as like you said, is, um, you [00:13:00] know, sending the kids to private school, it's having, uh, the kids having 10 different pairs of shoes and, uh, yeah, Uber eats two to three times a week. Starbucks every day. Like, it's just, you start to think about, again, growing up in the eighties.

I remember how fewer things I had. Or my family had or our house had, uh, than, than my current house hold, you know, and, and just the, the lifestyle creep that has happened to people. And I think it's because of social media. I think it's because of invention of things. Yeah. It's like nice to for everybody to have a cell phone, but when we were growing up, you had one wall.

And you had one phone on one wall in the kitchen usually, and maybe you had one in a, in another office bedroom or something. Right. Uh, now you've got death by a thousand cuts because people have Netflix subscription and Hulu and, uh, Amazon, like they got 14 different things to watch TV on. Plus they have their cable bill of 250 right?

Like it's gotten the [00:14:00] same, the amount of things you need or you think you need. Right. And I, and I, and I think that's a big, big issue here for sure. Yeah.

Christine Odle: I do believe that that's a big thing. I was actually recently talking with a client. Um, and I was just, you know, running through his bank statements with him and like, what is this?

And what is this? And what is this? And he's like, am I still paying 1500 a month to them? And I'm like, okay, you make too much money if you're not noticing a 1, 500 a month payment going to somebody you're not using right Um, but it's that creep too, right? So it's apple apple tunes, itunes, spotify, netflix, hulu Once you add it all up, it's over a hundred dollars a month and then that's twelve hundred dollars a year and you're like Oh dang, if I had twelve hundred bucks right now, I'd do something different Right.

The cell phones are the same thing. And so that's why I always say you could take yourself back to your vital needs What is what exactly do you need to just live on? And [00:15:00] my husband and I did this recently too. We we were headed to town and he likes to shop and i'm like, okay We'll go shopping. How much money do we need for shopping?

And he's like, I don't know throw a thousand bucks in your purse I'm like, okay We use paper money not credit cards or debit cards But through the thousand dollars in my purse and off we went and we went in and out of stores You And he's like, you're not buying anything. I said, you said we're shopping.

You didn't say we were buying. And there's a difference. People go in and out of stores and they buy a trinket at every one. Um, and I just kind of walked in and looked around and there's nothing I wanted. There's nothing I needed. So I just turned around and walked out and he's like, he goes, we could get a new frying pan.

I'm like, yeah, but the frying pan we have works just fine. So. That's kind of the things that you have to do when you're shopping. And I actually stopped going to Walmart four years ago and had nothing to do with the pandemic. I just realized one day, every single time I walked into Walmart, I spent a hundred dollars and I was like, I walked through the store and I said, there's nothing I want to buy here.

I don't want to buy food here. I don't want to buy [00:16:00] anything else here. It's cheap plastic stuff. So we just don't shop at Walmart anymore.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. And on the, on the flip side of that, and I'm going to, you know, talk about it even from my, my perspective of my family is, um, and you know, we're in a, A very nice position financially and we're lucky for that.

Um, but our grocery bills, you know, we, yeah, my wife shops at, at Whole Foods and I like to go to Fresh Market, which is here. And um, we do try to eat healthy and organic and things of that nature. And it's just astronomically expensive. And so if you find yourself where inflation is impacting you, um, you know, you may have to consider going from, if you've been shopping at Whole Foods, you might want to go back to Publix or whatever one is in your region.

That's like your regular grocery store here. Not that it's cheap, but it's definitely cheaper than Whole Foods and Fresh Market. So it's sometimes you, you gotta kind of go back on that. You still order a good food or, [00:17:00] you know, buy good food, but maybe not at, uh, at the, at the Whole Foods there.

Christine Odle: So, funny enough that you say that because it's something that I've hacked to death.

Um, if you stick on the outside of the grocery store and never go on to the inside of the grocery store, you can save money on food because your body actually likes whole foods better than it likes plastic foods. So, you can save a ton of money on that because you're not always hungry. That's one thing.

Most of us live within 20 miles of a farm. And if you're in New York City, you don't count. Sorry, can't help you there. But most of us, there's actually farmers markets everywhere and food at farmers markets, almost always cheaper than the grocery store if you're trying to cut and stay healthy. But I agree, sometimes you do have to find the lesser expensive store for some things.

But groceries is typically the last place I cut. Because our bodies do not function well if we don't feed them right.

Dr. Kevin Christie: I agree with that. I'd rather see you

Christine Odle: cut with, [00:18:00] you know, let's, here's the things I don't cut. I do not cut my chiropractor and that's not because I'm on this call.

Dr. Kevin Christie: It's a

Christine Odle: necessity in my life.

Um, I feel the healthiest when I'm seeing my chiropractor. Um, the other thing I feel the healthiest is when I'm eating whole foods and taking really good supplements. Um, I don't feel healthiest when I sit down and watch TV all day. Which by the way, never happens. But when, even when we have like a TV day, because there's a blizzard going on in Colorado, um, at the end of the day, I'm like, gosh, what a waste of time.

So we have cut all of those subscription accounts because it doesn't make us feel good. So when you're looking at needs, I think the other thing is what makes you feel good. So if you're part of a sports team and it makes you feel good, keep that, get rid of Netflix. Um, and I think that really helps people with the budgeting.

Same thing with cell phones. I mean, I've, I've done this one for years. I have a track phone that I got years ago because my client said [00:19:00] this was back when long distance wasn't free for everybody. Um, some of my clients said, I can't call you long distance. So I got a track phone. Track phones cost 20 bucks for the phone and about a hundred dollars a year for plenty of minutes.

You just can't do everything on your phone on that little mini computer. So there's a place there though. If you're looking at a 3, 000 a year cell phone bill, you can cut that very, very quickly. So there's lots of things you can do, but the key is Not to crush your budget so much that you don't feel good because if you don't feel good or you're not having at least some of life in this country, then you will, by definition, bust your budget 100 percent of the time

Dr. Kevin Christie: you have to feel a

Christine Odle: little bit normal.

Dr. Kevin Christie: And then Starbucks

Christine Odle: once a week instead of every day. Yeah.

Dr. Kevin Christie: No, I mean, there's a lot of things you can do. And I guess one of the things I wanted to make sure we talk about, cause I know you specialize this pretty well, but, and I've had [00:20:00] conversation with a lot of chiropractors and then it's the, it's the communication with a significant other and, and getting on the same page.

And sometimes people don't like to talk about money and, uh, What are your, what are your thoughts and strategies around that and making sure that the, the, the partnership there is on the same page and everybody's working towards the same goal?

Christine Odle: I look at two sides of it. One of it, one side, um, Zig Ziglar says two people in a marriage, just to like one of you is unnecessary.

So in most cases, one of you is a little bit better wired to manage the money than the other one. And so. Rather than making a fight out of it, like you didn't do this, or you didn't do that, pick the person in the marriage who is better at managing the finances to handle the bulk of it. So, making sure things get paid on time, making sure the bank account is reconciled, that we've looked through the credit card statements to make sure that Just say, what, what's on there.

We actually planned [00:21:00] a, we planned on spending and we did spend. The other thing is, never use finances as a weapon because 78 percent of. Marriages in this country fail on finance fights. Don't make it a weapon, use some other weapon. but instead make it a communication point because our finances in this country are Our value system to make it a communication point if you're not married yet, and you're getting married get somebody to help you before you get married and commingle everything.

I do recommend that you commingle everything I don't recommend that it's his money and her money and you have this job and I have that job I actually do recommend you put it together, because again it's your value system it's the, it can be the glue. Or it can be the weapon. So make it the glue that you're saying this is all of the money that we earn together and this is where we should spend it each month.

And then do a budget each month. And then don't just do the budget and throw it in a corner. Keep it handy so you can look at it and say how much [00:22:00] did we budget for groceries and where are we in that plan? How much did we budget for household stuff and where are we in that plan? But use it as a tool. Um, I think that that's probably the most important, but understand that one of you mean the same thing.

One of us is a night owl. One of us is a morning person, right? If you're ever lucky enough to have somebody on the same page on both of those, that's awesome. Just make it so it's a point of communication. Too many times if we separate it, uh, our value systems go with that. And that's a part of what the divorce is.

It's like, well, you have more money than me, so you get to spend more money than me. No, that doesn't work. You have less money, you get to spend less money. That doesn't work. If we put it all in the same pot and work on it together, that works really well. And then

Dr. Kevin Christie: how often do you recommend a couple get together and talk about the budget or the finances and get on the same page with that?

Christine Odle: Honestly, everybody's going to cringe when I say this, you probably ought to do it [00:23:00] weekly. But once you get used to it, weekly is a 10 minute conversation, not a three hour dissertation. Right. It's where are we? Um, was there a cut in pay this week? Was there a bonus this week? Um, do we need to cut back somewhere?

Did we overspend somewhere? Just a touch base on it. Monthly, we should probably say, um, like this is, if this is the end of the month, we're going to say, okay, next month, we're going to sit down and say, we expect this much money to come in. Where do we want it to go next month? So you want to plan next month in the previous month.

What I see happen most of the time is we try to plan this month. At the end of this month, and you can't do that because. You can look back, but you can't fix anything along the way if you do that, then you're going to be scrambling. And this is how we wander into debt in this country, is that we're trying to plan the money after the money has already been spent.

So if you want a guide, a little [00:24:00] bit, um, depending on, so depending on where you live, let's just say Dr. Christie's in Florida. So some months of the year, the air conditioning is on 24 7, we don't go outside because it's so hot. It's steamy out there. And so our electric bill is probably going to be higher in those months, but in the winter months when the weather is really pleasant, we're going to be outside more, AC doesn't have to be as high, so we don't have to pay as much electricity in those months.

And so if we're looking back, we want to say something like that. We probably need to average it over time. Same thing with kids sports. A lot of times those are in the school year. Um, sometimes summer camps in the summer. So we just kind of want to, if we want to look back at the history, that's helpful, but going forward.

What do we need for the next month?

Dr. Kevin Christie: Makes sense. And then, um, something I wanted to touch base on that because I feel like with, with [00:25:00] this whole situation, you know, we got inflation, it's, things are getting more expensive. We can obviously budget and get some good frameworks there. Um, try to cut some expenses. So, you know, if, you know, if inflation was 8%, Can you last year, can you find 8 percent to cut some of the coffees and this and that?

And you can kind of get back to where you are. Um, I think some of our chiropractors work, they get some bonuses. Obviously, I think you need a budget to where the bonuses are extra money and you put that away. Um, and then I think you got to avoid the lifestyle creep and try to make sure you're saving for retirement.

And when you make, start to make more money. It doesn't mean that you go from the 20 bottle of wine, uh, three times a week to the 50 bottle of wine three times a week. So we want to avoid some of that. And, and it's, it's also the idea of delayed gratification, you know, depending on the age that you are, you gotta be willing to delay some of the gratification and reinvest some of that money into your future, into your business.

Um, Because too [00:26:00] often I see the, the personal budget gets out of hand. And so once they are over and they take money from their business to pay for that personal overage, and so now they're draining their business of money that could impact our cashflow or at worst or at best, it's impacting their ability to reinvest that money into the business that could then, um, you know, obviously pay them dividends down the road for that and having a level of delayed gratification.

What are your thoughts on that? On delayed gratification and some ideas around that.

Christine Odle: Well, if you're talking about being a business owner, then the delayed gratification, um, Is actually a tax strategy as well. So we have the choices, business owners, everything we earn minus everything we have to run our business.

And then we have our profit and we can just give the rest of it, give a big portion of it to the government. That's one strategy. And most people are afraid of the government. So that's what they do. They end up paying [00:27:00] overpaying the government. But if we're really sitting there and getting intentional about our money, which is a lot of what this call is about, then what if, you know, The end of the day, you look down and you say, Oh, I have a profit.

What if we take some of that profit and start investing in our retirement? We can use, you know, 401k, simple IRAs, SEP IRAs, all of those, or even traditional after tax, um, traditional, I take it back, traditional on the personal side, but in the business, um, you can invest quite a bit in yourself. And I use the tagline in my, in my book.

And oftentimes is how to make more by making less. And so as business owners, especially if you've had a wage job before that business owners, we try to replace that wage. And I always encourage people as a business owner, don't try to replace that wage, try to put as much expenses as you can that benefit you in your business.

So things like creating benefits for [00:28:00] yourself or your team. Um, Retirement accounts. Everybody thinks that they can't afford benefits for themselves or their team and I can tell you that Employees would prefer to have benefits because they don't want to be able to have to go out outside with their take home pay and try to create these benefits for themselves.

That's a very expensive place for them to do it, but in house, you almost can get away with paying a little less in wages to your team and create those benefits. They benefit you as a business owner, and it benefits the team. And it creates a loyalty within the team as well. They're not going to run off to just a higher paying job unless they can run off to a higher paying job plus higher paying benefits.

So benefits is a great place to kind of delay that gratification on the take home pay if you're a business owner.

Dr. Kevin Christie: I'm glad you brought that up because that is a great way if you're a business owner you do have Some strategies that the non business owner has to obviously stave off the inflation and some of your tax strategy aspects can be.

So I'm glad you [00:29:00] brought that up. That's a, a great way of, of doing that. Um, I want to transition a little bit to the next thing because what's interesting about the inflation number, I know there's some other things that aren't in the CPI and all that, but something that's definitely not in the inflation number, uh, which really skews the whole thing.

Is what I keep on hearing is the cost of money, which is, uh, if that car was 50, 000 five years ago and that, and that same car is 50, 000 now, and you have to take a loan on that car to get it, the cost of that car. Is actually way more now because the interest rate is so much higher. Your monthly payment is higher.

The cost of that vehicle over the terms of that, say 72 months is way higher. Same thing you're seeing with buying a house, you know, like people's purchasing power is down on buying a house. Not only because the house is more expensive, but the interest rate isn't 3 percent anymore. It's it's 7%, right?

Like. If I took my same house and let's say I [00:30:00] bought, I bought mine in 2020 and I have, I do have an interest rate of 3%. If I tried buying my same house at the same amount that I bought it for, it wouldn't be, but if I did, but it was at 7%, my monthly payment would be way more. Um, and so, you know, people's credit card, uh, interest rates are higher.

I mean, it's all just the cost of money. Is is higher. And so some folks are not only running into their cost of living and costly running a business has gone up, but the cost of the debt that they have or that they want to take on is a lot more. And so that's causing an impact there. Um, you're, you're, you've always been my debt specialist.

What are your, some of your thoughts on that cost of money? And then what What it would look like for them if they actually started paying down some debt so that they're not running into payments that are, that are bleeding into their budgets.

Christine Odle: That's actually part of this whole conversation too. Um, well, as you know, I'm not a big fan of debt.[00:31:00]

Um, although in the past, well, just to go backwards. And, um, 2001, my husband and I were over half a million dollars in debt and it wasn't a house. Um, by 2009 we paid it all off. So, getting out of debt and staying out of debt was a big thing for us. Well then in 2018 we decided to buy another house in another city and I actually did take on a mortgage for that.

And so I had to kind of backpedal and say, wait a minute. I'm going against what I'm telling people not to do, but you're exactly right. The cost of money. So for us to buy that house would have wiped out most of our savings. So taking out a mortgage, a reasonable mortgage made sense. And so when you're going to buy a house, um, you definitely want what's a reasonable mortgage.

Um, Ownership of a house is a great hedge on inflation, by the way. So it kind of hand in hand. So if you're buying a house today at the 7%, understand that alone is 30 [00:32:00] years. And we just talked about the history and depending on who's in office, depends on inflation, which would also have a direct impact on interest rates.

So if your interest rate 7%, it's very unlikely for the next 30 years, it's going to stay 7%. There's going to be a window in there where the rates are going to dip again. And that's a great time to be ready to refinance and potentially lower the payment and lower the amount of interest that you're paying out to the bank.

So, I would say don't, if you're thinking about buying a house now and you're thinking interest rates such a big problem, I would say go a smaller home. And be ready, you know, get the rest of your ducks in a row over time, because you still have to pay to someplace to live, right? Unless you're in a tiny house in a trailer park, you're still going to pay rent somewhere for something.

And, oh, by the way, trailer houses, or tiny houses in a trailer park is not a bad thing. But it's a lesser thing, right? [00:33:00] It's a very, it's almost like living in a tent. So we're, we're saying we, we still have to pay rent somewhere, which means we still have to pay something to live. So, if you take that same amount, possibly that you're paying in rent and say, okay, can I buy a home for that same dollar amount?

It might be a smaller home to start. Nobody likes moving, but if we could buy maybe a 300, 000 home or condo or something for now, right out this interest rate thing for a while and be ready by getting rid of other debt in the meantime, that we could buy a bigger house later. The average people stay in their homes is only eight to 13 years anyway.

Okay, so we're just going to look at that window a little bit. We get stuck on now, today. This is where we, this is where it's always going to be. But if we're looking to the future, there's going to be inflation, but there's also going to be fluctuations.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Plus, if you buy that house at the 7%, you know, it's going to go, it's going to, the house is going to [00:34:00] cost more money the longer you wait.

And then if it somehow dips down, let's just make up, it dips down to five and a half, guess what's going to happen. Everybody's going to look to buy the house and then it's going to cost the house. The cost of the house is going to go up. If you've already bought the house, you can just refinance down to the 5.

you don't have to fight everybody else trying to buy the house.

Christine Odle: Correct. So the refinancing is always an option, which historically wasn't a big option, but I go back to when I started in banking in the early nineties and my boss had a house loan with a 15 percent interest rate. So the 7 percent is still not as scary as that 15 percent was right.

And I think my mom's house was somewhere in the 17 to 18 percent rate when she bought her house in the seventies. So we've, we're still not way up there. I would be surprised if. In our current situation, we would get that close in the next 10 years. I've been surprised before as Dr. Christy knows, but I've been surprised many, many [00:35:00] times before.

But so the other thing about buying a home now is if you're buying it, what you can afford now. Yeah, 30 years of that payment. So if it's 2, 000 a month now, just for example, then it's 2, 000 a month, 30 years from now, if you stay in the same house and pay it over the time, most people don't, most people get increases in salaries, change in jobs, increases in their businesses, and most people pay off their houses early anyway.

So.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Well, it's interesting because I live in a neighborhood that's about 40 years old, and I actually have some neighbors that have lived in the house since the late 80s and early 90s. And I always laugh about because you can always look up the historical records and it's like, or I've even talked to them about it.

And it's funny with like, how little they paid for the house. Some of them, their mortgage is so low, or it's Paid off their property in Florida. We're lucky. We have a homestead exemption. So, you know, property taxes don't really increase. So they're paying next to nothing. And then their neighbor [00:36:00] next to them bought the house two years ago.

And it's comical how much they paid for the house, what the interest rate is, uh, what the property taxes are. It's, it's, it's quite stunning. The difference. Yeah.

Christine Odle: Yeah, you can definitely see that. So, so there's a lot of benefit to just saying, Hey, I need to buy a house today. Go ahead. And you know, with the 7%, there's a lot of benefit because you hear the, I always hear this.

I'm on a fixed income. Great. I'm on a fixed rent. How many people can say that they're on a fixed rent? Because that's what your house payment is for 30 years. It's fixed at this price for 30 years. And with that idea, it's also assuming if you have it fixed at that point that you're never going to get a raise.

And we all know that's not true.

Dr. Kevin Christie: That's true. Well, Christine, this has been, this has been great. I know we could probably do this for a few hours and we might need a part two to it, but I think you, you provide us with a lot of good historical context and some strategies to start working towards that. Um, I, you know, it's, it can be frustrating, but just like I always talk about on the [00:37:00] other end of 2008 and how frustrating that was for me trying to get out of the gates personally and professionally, uh, there was a lot of positives on the other side of that.

And we may not know what the positives are. On the other side of this inflation. Um, but just do all the right things, uh, keep, you know, working hard, try to do things that also increase your, uh, your pay or your strategies within your business, and then maybe make some cuts that aren't going to harm your family or your business and see where you can save 10 percent here and there in your, in your personal and business budget.

And you'll, you'll do good things. How can our audience. Reach out to you if they want to chat more about these or if they're looking to take another level on their financial knowledge.

Christine Odle: You can find me on my website, christineodl. com and I have a couple of options there for, I've got a book that I wrote called Rocking Your Business Finances.

Um, I have an online community and uh, just if you just want to [00:38:00] ask me a question, just shoot me an email, um, christine at christineodl. com and I'll see if I can answer that question for you.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Perfect. And I'd highly recommend the book as well. Um, and I again, want to always thank you for your instrumental work and, and my, uh, financial knowledge and development.

I can never thank you enough.

Christine Odle: Well, thank you. I learned a lot from you as well.