Breaking the Wealth Rules: Crissi Cole on Ditching Budgets and Building Real Financial Freedom

In the latest episode of Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Tyfone, welcomed Crissi Cole, Founder and CEO at Penny Finance Inc. The episode centered around the real barriers to financial health and the need for more personal, judgment-free financial guidance.

Crissi argued that traditional budgeting tools and advice often fall short because they ignore each person’s unique goals and circumstances. She explained that most people struggle with money not because they lack discipline, but because the “trade secrets” of wealth management rarely reach them. Crissi shared how many financial lessons remain locked behind closed doors, and how shame and confusion keep people from seeking help. She emphasized that building wealth is less about rigid rules and more about aligning daily choices with personal goals, especially as those goals shift through life.

Josh and Crissi explored the role of community financial institutions in closing this knowledge gap. They discussed how credit unions and community banks can offer better support by focusing on education, digital access, and understanding members’ true objectives—rather than pushing one-size-fits-all budgets. The episode made a clear case for rethinking how banks help people build real financial security.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Crissi Cole, the founder and CEO of Penny Finance. You know the old joke, think back to like your college days here of the saying, you need a friend like this. When you're sitting in jail saying, man, that was fun. I'm the friend sitting next to you saying, yeah, it was, well, that's not Crissi.

[00:00:25] Josh DeTar: Crissi is the friend you call when you realize, okay, that was fun, but now we're stuck in jail and we need somebody to help us out of this mess. Crissi said, her deep desire is to be seen as dependable. She's there for people when they need it. She shows up when she says she will, and she does what she says She will as an older sister and a former teacher's pet, she felt this role was kind of always her lot in life, and she actually finds true joy in it.

[00:00:53] Josh DeTar: The desire to show up, stand the test of time, and do the hard work also created a foundation of resiliency. It's also what led her into the fast-paced, high stakes, high stress world of Goldman Sachs. And after 10 years of pouring her energy into her corporate career, Crissi had her own epiphany moment of securing her own personal financial health and freedom.

[00:01:18] Josh DeTar: And this was so powerful, invigorating, and moving to her. She said she felt free and she wanted everyone to experience this amazing feeling. So what did she do? The most financially irresponsible thing she possibly could. She quit her job and started her own company. Look, once she saw the light of bringing financial health to others, she said she just could not shake that this was her new greatest mission in life outside of being a wife and a mom.

[00:01:45] Josh DeTar: So while she took a step back in her own personal financial stability in her eyes, it will all be worth it if she helps others experience financial freedom. Listeners of this show are no stranger to my own passion for this topic, and I'm super excited to have Crissi on to talk about the science, the data, and the no holds barred thoughts, uh, she has on how we truly empower people's financial health future and freedom.

[00:02:13] Josh DeTar: So, Crissi, welcome to the show.

[00:02:15] Crissi Cole: Thank you for having me. And you know, it's so terrifying. My 3-year-old daughter is a clone of me, so that poor girl,

[00:02:23] Josh DeTar: Oh gosh,

[00:02:25] Crissi Cole: but, so there'll be another person in the world people can call when they're in jail.

[00:02:31] Josh DeTar: It's not funny how, like, I don't know about for you, but it's just, it's so interesting to watch what traits of us our kids pick up. Yeah. And like how they're the same. Yeah. So different and yeah, some of those things I look at in my kids and I'm like, oh, I'm so glad you got that. And some of 'em like, that's terrifying 'cause I know

[00:02:48] Crissi Cole: Yeah,

[00:02:48] Josh DeTar: that leads.

[00:02:49] Crissi Cole: I'm so,

[00:02:50] Josh DeTar: Sorry. No, but man, I tell you what, like as, as an outsider looking in, right, you are a total ba and if your daughter grows up to be anything like you, like she's got a really bright future ahead of her. So I think that's something to be really proud of. And you know, again, people who've listened to this show are kind of no stranger to, I always love having founders and CEOs on the show.

[00:03:20] Josh DeTar: Um, we were even talking about this before we started recording. Like I make the statement, I love to be a great number two, but I have no desire to be number one. I have no desire to start anything. And so it's always really fascinating to hear people's origin stories and. I really think yours is important to tell because I think it sets a lot of the tone for the conversation that we're gonna have today.

[00:03:44] Josh DeTar: Um, so tell us a little bit about, like, go back in time, but then bring us back to the point where, what made you say, Hey, I just worked so hard to kind of achieve financial stability. It's so important that I wreck it for this cause.

[00:03:58] Crissi Cole: Yeah. Um, and I wish you had my husband on here so he could tell his version of the story two opposite, um, viewpoints. Um, what I didn't tell you, Josh, is in that decade career at Goldman. I was also the friend people would call for financial advice. 'cause I was the one that worked in wealth management. And when you get asked the same question over and over and over again, especially if you're like a problem solving kind of person like me, you can't help but be like, wait a second.

[00:04:30] Crissi Cole: Like what is wrong in the world? Like why is everybody asking me the same thing over and over again? Like there's obviously a gap in the market. And so the light bulb was not only, oh, I finally got paid off my student loans and I don't have unpaid credit card bills and I'm not putting my rent on credit card.

[00:04:47] Crissi Cole: It wasn't just that it was, oh my God, like I, there is no home for people who don't have a hundred K in the bank. No, no place for them to go. And once I connected the dots in my brain around like, oh, people are asking me this over and over again. Oh, I think I know the answer and. I think I'm crazy enough to go try to build the thing to solve this.

[00:05:14] Crissi Cole: Once I got that idea in my mind, I could not detach from it. It's all I was thinking about. And when you have this idea that lights you up, it makes you do irrational things like what I did, which is go quit my job and then tell my husband after I quit my job, this is what I'm doing.

[00:05:37] Josh DeTar: that. Yeah. Uh, you know, I don't, I don't know about for you, but I think one of the other things that I had kind of a personal realization around was like, this stuff was important to me before, but when I became a parent, I, I think I took on even another lens of that. And you look at, and, and I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say, you know what I see, but the problem is, is that generational wealth and generational financial instability, like, we see both of those things, right?

[00:06:12] Josh DeTar: And so it's, you know, the, the path is there when you've got healthy financial habits and money available. To the next generation. And it just makes it easier and easier and easier for every subsequent generation to be financially stable. Right? That compounds. But I think what we also don't talk about a lot of times is the inverse of that is the compounding element of the financial instability and how that can continues to pass down to kids.

[00:06:43] Josh DeTar: And so for me, like when we had kids, I was like, oh my gosh, like this is that much more important that I set up the proper compound for them because literally the choices that I make now today can have all the difference in the world in my kids being able to own a home, go to college, like do all of those things and, and kind of bringing it back to for you.

[00:07:05] Josh DeTar: Like that starts with you. That starts with you as the parent or even before you're a parent. And you're right, like even so many people in my friend circle and our age group or like asking silly questions. They're not silly questions because they just haven't been given the answers.

[00:07:25] Crissi Cole: you know why I think that is? And I, I mean, I, we, I've read so many things and met so many people, so there's like what you read and then practice,

[00:07:34] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:07:34] Crissi Cole: I think the trade secrets, so to speak, of like. How you create wealth and keep wealth. They're in the four walls of where the wealth exists. And, and that's what I saw at Goldman, right?

[00:07:50] Crissi Cole: I'm like, this isn't like, this isn't, none of this is like crazy hard to understand or something that we can't share with everyone. What ends up happening is the wealth gap widens because those trade secrets are not disseminated to people who didn't, don't have the opportunity to hear what I heard on the 39th floor of Goldman Sachs.

[00:08:13] Crissi Cole: Right? Um, and if you're, if you don't get those trade secrets in your life and or you don't learn it at some point in your life, and not every state in America teaches personal finance, how could you be expected to get on the journey to wealth if you don't know what to do? I think it's that simple.

[00:08:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:08:35] Crissi Cole: How do you do that?

[00:08:36] Crissi Cole: How do you do it? Someone has to tell you. Someone has to teach you or you need to have seen it from a parent or you're inheriting wealth. And even people that inherit wealth, there's data that shows if they're not in a position where they know what to do or competent with what to do, then they're not able to preserve that wealth.

[00:08:53] Crissi Cole: So it's, it's so important that these trade secrets I call, they need to get out into the world somehow.

[00:09:01] Josh DeTar: Yeah. You know? That's funny. You made me like, I mean, it's like telling somebody who doesn't know how to play chess. It's like, how can you not know how to play chess? I don't. Nobody taught me. It's really, yes, it is a complicated game, but it's not that complicated to just start playing. But if nobody teaches you the basic rules of like, a pawn can do this, the queen can do this, you can't play chess.

[00:09:23] Crissi Cole: Right. And the stat that I always point to that sort of brings this home for me is if you look at the stats of how many people in America are investing. Because arguably you'd say if you, that's like one of the largest levers you can pull to grow your wealth and compound your wealth is investing.

[00:09:41] Crissi Cole: If you look at the data from 30 years ago, 60% of people were investing. If you look at the data today, guess what it is?

[00:09:49] Josh DeTar: Oh man, I'm gonna low ball it because I hate that. I'm gonna probably be right then. Like 5%.

[00:09:54] Crissi Cole: No, no, no. It's the same. 61%.

[00:09:57] Josh DeTar: fascinating.

[00:09:58] Crissi Cole: We have made zero progress in 30 years. Yet how many robo-advisors exist? 150? Like there's all these innovations that have been created to make investing easier.

[00:10:12] Josh DeTar: yeah.

[00:10:12] Crissi Cole: No free trading everywhere. You can go to any brokerage firm and place a trade for free. You can open a Robinhood app and place a trade for free.

[00:10:20] Crissi Cole: Why are people still not investing? That's, I always, I'm like, we're doing something wrong as an industry if we are at the same rates as we were 30 years ago.

[00:10:32] Josh DeTar: rate. So, okay. So let's go back though. You kind of went through this own journey for yourself, right? And paid down debts got to a place where you felt really financially free. What were some of the things that you learned through that process that maybe frustrated you when you were like, man, I really wish other people just knew these quote trade secrets.

[00:10:57] Crissi Cole: Um, there's many, but I'd say the first is just because you have debt doesn't mean you can't start investing and you can start investing with $100, not thousands of dollars. And one thing I'm so glad I did is I started contributing to my 401(k) in the first day of my job, even though I had a shit ton of debt and was literally paying for my New York City apartment on my credit card because I learned from my mom at a very young age that investing is critically important.

[00:11:28] Crissi Cole: You can't out earn investing with saving. And one of the things that on in that vein is not only should you do them at the same time, not wait till you're debt free, because the power of time is the world tells you you need to max out your 401(k) and like you gotta put 10% of your salary. And all of these like random rules of thumb.

[00:11:52] Crissi Cole: I, I think all of those are false. And that's what I learned. I never maxed out my 401(k) ever. I never had the opportunity to do that because I had all this debt that I was managing. But it still worked because I started when I was 22.

[00:12:07] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:12:08] Crissi Cole: Um, and so invest, it's just to recap, not waiting to start investing, not thinking that you have to have so much or do so much, right.

[00:12:20] Crissi Cole: Start small and then just doing it. The act of doing it teaches you.

[00:12:27] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:12:28] Crissi Cole: Yes. I think a lot of people will say, well, Crissi, you worked in wealth management. This is what you studied. This is what you did. Of course you felt comfortable doing this. I would argue, well, no, because in the first year of me working there, nobody taught me asset allocation.

[00:12:44] Crissi Cole: Like you just, you have to figure it out for yourself and do it, and not wait till you feel a hundred percent confident. Um, and so those, I'd say would be like the, the three big things. And then the fourth thing is like, there's always an option. There's always a tool. Guess who use 0% credit cards of the wazoo?

[00:13:03] Crissi Cole: All of my twenties I did. So many people don't even know what a 0% credit card is or how to use it in a, in a smart way. And so, um, I think being financially creative. Yeah, and open to options that the world or the culture might tell you, oh, a 0% credit card, that's not good for your credit. Don't do it.

[00:13:26] Crissi Cole: Right. Thinking about there's always trade-offs and what are you solving for, and that you have more options than you think. Even if you don't have a much leftover from your paycheck at the end of every month, like you can get into the game.

[00:13:42] Josh DeTar: I'm curious what your perspective is on this. 'cause this is just my own like N of one. Do you think that people think that, um. Investing is an all or nothing game. Like I either have to be able to go all in or nothing. And so a lot of times they default to nothing.

[00:14:03] Crissi Cole: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:14:07] Josh DeTar: I remember, um, I'm gonna, I'll overshare on my own personal side, right? And I, I literally saved this example, Crissi, going back to like watching our kids, right? I a hundred percent know that at some point in my son's life, he's gonna need to hear this lesson that I learned and I'm gonna hope that it helps change his trajectory.

[00:14:31] Josh DeTar: But you know, if you go all the way back. I had a really bad financial start, right? And I'm very, very fortunate that at 18 I was saved by a credit union and they took me under their wing. And so, you know, fast forward over the next couple of years, I managed to land, especially for the area that I was in, a really high paying job in manufacturing.

[00:14:53] Josh DeTar: Um, and I was doing really, really well. I was starting to set aside a lot of money and I put a bunch of money just straight into savings, and I literally did nothing with it other than savings until my, uh, la dirty little, uh, hobby from, uh, many years of growing up in a hot rod. Family's racing cars. And I remember writing a check for $22,000 for a new engine for the race car

[00:15:24] Crissi Cole: Mm.

[00:15:25] Josh DeTar: at 21. And the lesson that I learned is, man. I didn't start, I didn't actually start saving and investing into my future until almost 30.

[00:15:40] Crissi Cole: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:41] Josh DeTar: Could you imagine if I'd put that $20,000 into some form of investment arm at 21? To your point, like you can't outpace the compounding of money, right? And so I go back and I'm like, man, I lost 10 years of compounding that money that I'll never be able to get back.

[00:16:01] Josh DeTar: And it's not just do 10 more years. That's not how that works, right? And so, uh, that's my own personal story of like, going back, I remember thinking $20,000 was a lot to me, but it wasn't enough to go hire some fancy investment broker and do all of these things with it.

[00:16:23] Crissi Cole: they wouldn't

[00:16:23] Josh DeTar: Yeah. So I was like, so I might as well blow it on a race car.

[00:16:27] Crissi Cole: Yeah. And look, I'd say those less like, and, and again, that's what you will eventually pass on, but guess what? Your son might do something like that. And what I would argue is I think that there's so much shame and anxiety with your money and your wallet, that, and I'm not your, I'm not your therapist Josh, but I will for a second.

[00:16:52] Crissi Cole: It's like. You can't have any regrets. You just, you start now. It's like, obviously what, what happened at 30? What got you to be like, oh, okay, now I know more. Let me do this now. I will not wait another second. What? What happened?

[00:17:07] Josh DeTar: happened? Um, I mean, for me it was getting my first job that actually offered a good 401(k) and that was what got it going. And then that got me interested enough that I had a friend who was a partner for, um, Waddell and Reed,

[00:17:27] Crissi Cole: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:28] Josh DeTar: and I got him to sponsor me to take my series seven and 66.

[00:17:34] Josh DeTar: So, fun fact, if you wanna know how crazy I am, I took those for fun and never planned on doing anything with it. But I just, I, but I wanted that knowledge because then like you, once that got opened up to me, I was like, oh crap. Like I can't just bury my head in the sand like I have to Your point is exactly right.

[00:17:54] Josh DeTar: Like, I was like, I have to draw the line and from this point forward, I have to be different. I can't do anything about what came before it, but from this point forward I can be different. And so I had to draw that line.

[00:18:04] Crissi Cole: and that's, and I love hearing the stories of what got people to like shift their thinking. Like what was it? Um, because I think if we can all come together and like put together enough of those examples and then insert them in every 22 year old's life, or 16-year-old or 12-year-old, however far we can go down, that's how you close the wealth gap.

[00:18:26] Crissi Cole: That's how you create wealth is we gotta get those learnings out to people without having them have to take the series seven or 66. I mean, I, I failed the 66 twice. I had to retake it.

[00:18:39] Josh DeTar: That thing's no fun. Neither of em are any fun.

[00:18:41] Crissi Cole: It's an easier.

[00:18:43] Josh DeTar: either way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did I think, what did it take? Like eight hours for the series seven? I mean, it's absurd, right? But you wanna know what's crazy about that too, Crissi? I don't, I don't know if this, this is probably less true for you than me, but, um, you know, because I never actually put it into practice and it was never my day job.

[00:19:04] Josh DeTar: I would absolutely tell you that I've forgotten probably 75% of that too. Right. And I've probably only put into practice a small percentage of that. Um, but, but what it taught was, I think some, some just different mindset that I didn't have before. So I'm curious, as you've kind of like dived into what you were just talking about, like almost the psychology of money for people.

[00:19:30] Josh DeTar: What kinds of things have you found interesting? 'cause yeah, it is, it's like, it's almost this taboo topic

[00:19:35] Crissi Cole: It's so taboo. I mean. Uh, that's the one thing. It's like money and religion or money and politics. It's like a tough thing to talk about, yet it rules every day of our life. Like every, it's almost every moment in our life there's something financial happening. Um, oh, there's so much. Where do I start? Um, I think the f the first thing is

[00:20:06] Crissi Cole: budgeting. And we've talked about this and I, I want you, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna poke you on this one, um, because I was, I have a strong stance on this and I, I'm curious your stance from a, from a data perspective, and then I'll tell you from a psychological pers per perspective what I've learned. The data shows like 87% of people don't stick to a budget, right?

[00:20:27] Crissi Cole: It's one of the first fundamental things we learn about money ever in our life. Why? Why I've tried to like understand why, what's, what is the problem here? Because a budget inherently is setting a limit against yourself for something. A budget is also a lot of numbers and a lot of different categories that your brain cannot remember.

[00:20:51] Josh DeTar: mm-hmm.

[00:20:53] Crissi Cole: What does the human brain do? The human brain pushes through limits. That's what we do. That's psychology. We don't want limits set on ourselves. We don't want, we want structure, but we don't. And we want rules, but we don't want limits. And so that is why budgets fundamentally from what I can see, don't work.

[00:21:12] Crissi Cole: And it's, and it's, um, that's the first thing. The second thing is in practice, the people who do budget and who budget, well, maybe that works for their brain, but that might not necessarily create wealth for them. Like we have to go back to what are we solving for? Okay, you cut a hundred dollars from your budget or you spend the same amount every month.

[00:21:38] Crissi Cole: Okay, but, but what did you do with those dollars?

[00:21:40] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:42] Crissi Cole: And so what I have found psychologically for people that is more helpful is you think about your goal. You understand your spending, and you might have a budget number. What you do, how you take action against your goals to achieve your dreams is much more powerful and motivating than being on a strict budget.

[00:22:08] Josh DeTar: I wanna come back to the goals thing, 'cause I think this is probably one of the biggest conversations I wanna have with you, but on the budget side, I actually, I really agree with you. I think

[00:22:18] Crissi Cole: the budget?

[00:22:19] Josh DeTar: no, so, okay. Again, I like, I'm, I'm an open book. I'm completely overshare. 'cause I, again, I want people to learn from, uh, right, wrong or indifferent, like the lessons that I've learned or seen.

[00:22:29] Josh DeTar: Right? And maybe you can laugh at me next time you see me at a conference or something, I don't know. But here's my thought on budgets one, I agree there's a huge problem with the whole idea of setting categories and limits to each of those categories, right? Because I can give you a really simple of example of how, even in my own life that goes south so fast in almost every single time, right?

[00:22:50] Josh DeTar: Let's just say for whatever reason we put a $500 limit this month on groceries, right? We've already spent $490 on the grocery budget and then we forget, oh crap, we were snack parents for the kids' T-ball game. This week we have to buy snacks. So now I'm over on that budget, right? And then I look at my budget, I'm like, you know what, that's fine because we didn't whatever, uh, spend this money from the, uh, gas category. And then all of a sudden I realize I've gotta go run an errand or something on the other side of town, and now I need extra gas. I'm like, well, I can't not have gas in the car. I have to do this thing. And now all of a sudden I've blown through both of those budgets where in my head I said, it's okay to blow through this one because I'm gonna save on this one.

[00:23:36] Josh DeTar: And then something came up and this one blew through too. Right?

[00:23:39] Crissi Cole: And how do you feel after that? You feel like, crap,

[00:23:42] Josh DeTar: you feel like crap. You feel like crap 'cause you feel like a failure. And then,

[00:23:45] Crissi Cole: energy on $5 here and there when you could be spending that energy on something else.

[00:23:53] Josh DeTar: And again, right. I'm not, I'm not generalizing, I'm gonna use myself as the example, but I'm the same with peanut m and ms, right? I have ZI have a hundred percent control over peanut m and ms. If I see a bowl of peanut m and ms sitting on a table, I can eat none of them until I eat

[00:24:12] Crissi Cole: Want, yeah.

[00:24:13] Josh DeTar: And then I'm like, screw it, I've had one.

[00:24:15] Josh DeTar: And then Crissi, it doesn't matter. That could be the five pound Costco bag of peanut m and ms. I'm gonna eat that whole thing till the bottom. Right? And so it's kind of the same thing with the budget. It's like, well, once I've blown it, like screw it. It's already blown. I've already, I'm already a failure.

[00:24:29] Josh DeTar: I might as well just blow it. Right? And so then that almost creates the habitual process of just, it's okay to blow through

[00:24:36] Crissi Cole: okay. It's okay. And that's what we do in our head. The second you go through the limit, you just rationalize it every month and then it's like, well, this was not

[00:24:44] Josh DeTar: What was the point? Yeah, so you know what was interesting too? So again, I was, I told you I'd kind of overshare, you know, one of the things that my wife and I found really interesting too is when, when we came together and then fast forward, you know, 10 years later, like our incomes had changed pretty significantly through that time period.

[00:25:06] Josh DeTar: And you know, we got to a point that I actually argue is a fairly dangerous point for people to get to. We are not rich, we're not swimming in money, right? But we also weren't living paycheck to paycheck anymore. We'd gotten past that point, like we'd gotten to a decent stable point where we owned our home, our cars, like all of those things.

[00:25:28] Josh DeTar: And then what we found, Crissi, was that was actually where we were. The worst about managing our money is because we had enough to not really worry about stupid little spends. Right. But we didn't have enough to just buy whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And so we just, we got into this habit of like, not even realizing that we were spending money until you were like, oh crap, we kind of overspent last month.

[00:25:52] Crissi Cole: Yep. And it's good to know that, and it's good to be aware of that. And I think it's important. I'm not saying like throw the whole budgeting concept out the window because you need to know what, how you're tracking Our view, and I think this would've helped you and your wife, is what is are the must pay expenses to live your life?

[00:26:15] Crissi Cole: Give yourself a little wiggle room and you lock it in. You don't even think about that. It's done. You gotta drive to work. You gotta drive to T-ball. You have to put food on the table. You have to do these things. What's leftover? Remember that one single number? Is it $500? Is it a thousand dollars? Is it $3,000?

[00:26:34] Crissi Cole: And then you and your wife sit down and say, what do we want to accomplish with this $2,000 we have leftover every month? And when you only have to remember one thing. It becomes much more effective at influencing mindful spending. You go to buy something that is not significant and you're like, well, maybe I don't wanna buy that thing.

[00:26:53] Crissi Cole: Or you go to buy the T-ball snacks and you're like, this is an important purchase because I'm supporting my kid and his team. Right?

[00:27:00] Josh DeTar: Um, I'm curious, so that, that leads us back to the goals thing.

[00:27:03] Josh DeTar: I do want come back to that, but I'm, I'm curious what your thoughts on this were. And what's funny is I even brought this up on a recent podcast and then still didn't do it. And so I'm gonna write a, I'm gonna write a note on my whiteboard. We're gonna go back to this maybe unless you gimme a better idea.

[00:27:19] Josh DeTar: But you know what actually worked for my wife and I, and this is gonna sound really silly and stupid, but I think it kind of speaks to what you were talking about, about just some of the accountability of the purchases is we literally used to keep just a seven day, um, calendar piece of paper on the kitchen counter. And it just had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Right. And anytime you spent money, everything from $5 to 10 grand didn't matter. You had to write it on the sheet. And each of my wife and I got a colored pen.

[00:27:48] Crissi Cole: That seems like a lot of work, Josh.

[00:27:50] Josh DeTar: You know what it was? It was, it was a lot of work and mandated out. But it worked because what it did was I literally would go to buy something and be like, do I really wanna go walk out to the kitchen to put that on the paper?

[00:28:03] Josh DeTar: I'm like, I don't need it that bad. And then the worst was, Erica's gonna look at that piece of paper later. She really like my, do I really

[00:28:11] Crissi Cole: on that.

[00:28:12] Josh DeTar: that car part to her or do I want to just, just not, you know? And so, you know what, why I say I'm, I'm curious your thoughts on it is because Yeah, it was, it was a lot of work.

[00:28:22] Josh DeTar: Right. I actually argue that it was, it was a little bit on the negative behavior side too. Right. And, and I'm very fortunate that my wife and I have a, a really good relationship where we can talk about these kinds of things. And it wasn't like. We didn't beat each other up or demean each other over purchases, but it did like give that level of accountability.

[00:28:42] Josh DeTar: But even then, it was still kind of like negative. Like, oh, did you really spend that on that? You're like, oh, you know? So I don't know.

[00:28:48] Crissi Cole: think so. Oh, and I've hidden credit cards from my husband many of, many a times because I don't want him judging me. I'm like, you spent that much on clothing. What?

[00:29:00] Josh DeTar: what

[00:29:00] Crissi Cole: Um, I think, no, I love it. I think for everyone, they need a different sort of accountability mechanism, and each person is different depending on their relationship with money and how shameful they are about it, or how much they need to monitor that.

[00:29:18] Crissi Cole: Like, everyone's different, right? Like, I am, I, my husband's really conservative and doesn't spend on anything. I am the opposite. So there's. Another little hack that I'll share. And this might be helpful for you and we'll you'll like not, it'll be less time consuming. 'cause I'm imagine you don't have a lot of time to do that.

[00:29:37] Crissi Cole: Is some people, when they find they're overspending in a certain category, um, will open, have their own dedicated credit card for that type of spending. For example, I hear all the time, I, I one click buy on Amazon way too much. It's just too easy. Okay? Have your own credit card designated for Amazon.

[00:30:00] Crissi Cole: That's not muddied up with everything else so that you can just look at it at any point in time and see like, what did it all add up to? What am I, I'm at $500 this month or I'm at $2,000 this month. And um, it also forces you to get out a different card to go pay for it. That's a hack we've seen in the world for people who feel like, I wanna really cut my spending in X category and just like know what it is all amounting to be.

[00:30:27] Crissi Cole: Um, because seeing it line by line category is like, it's sometime helpful for sometimes helpful for awareness, but it's, it's like this exercise that nobody wants to do. Like, do you, do you really wanna go sit and look at your categorized expenses?

[00:30:45] Josh DeTar: yeah, no,

[00:30:46] Crissi Cole: No, thanks.

[00:30:47] Josh DeTar: no. And it's muddy anyway, right? No, that's a great idea. You know, actually, um, I recently did something somewhat similar, but you know, I use a personal card for all of my work expenses, so I get the points shout out to my company. Thank you for that perk. It's awesome. Um, but, but totally Crissi, one of the things that I noticed is I was like, I've given the company a ton of money over the years because I'll buy a water at the airport or something like that, and I'm just, I just don't do the expense report for it or whatever it may be.

[00:31:21] Josh DeTar: And it does, it just gets so buried in all of my transactions in my personal life and I just never go audit it. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure these are the expenses. That I at least took the time to take the picture of the receipt for on my trip. And we even used the super awesome Expensify, uh, tool for expenses, which huge shout out to Expensify.

[00:31:39] Josh DeTar: You guys are amazing killer product. Um, but, but again, it's just, did I bother to take the picture of it? Did I bother to get the receipt of that? Am I willing to just whatever, screw it. And so finally I just put all of my work stuff on a different personal card. So now I just have two of the same personal cards and one of 'em we use for our actual personal and the other one I use for the, the work side of things.

[00:32:00] Josh DeTar: And it's so much easier to just audit, trail it and be like, Hey, my expense report was $1,112 and 36 cents. Is that what's on my card? Yes. Cool. We're good. I'm done.

[00:32:09] Crissi Cole: It's like a little organizational hack that does the math and summarizes it for you. So you don't need to go decompose the $12,000 credit card bill for everything in your life.

[00:32:23] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that was one of the other challenges that I found too, is like, then it overinflated what, you know. Yeah. My personal spend may have only been this, but like, it was a crazy busy, you know, travel schedule for work and it's like 10 different flights and, you know, 12 different hotels and all of this, and uh, and all of a sudden that credit card bill looks really ominous and you're like, oh, wait, well, which of that is actually the work stuff?

[00:32:48] Josh DeTar: So that's a good idea to, even if there's a certain category that you're like, Hey, AM and Amazon is probably, I think all of us are sitting there nodding like, oh

[00:32:56] Crissi Cole: hopefully no one from Amazon's listening. They're not gonna.

[00:33:01] Josh DeTar: Um, but, okay. I, I wanted to go back to, you've touched on a couple of times goals, and I think this is actually one of the things that you and I like first bonded over when we started talking about this is because I think for me, this is the fundamental problem I've always had with like traditional PFM tools too.

[00:33:20] Josh DeTar: Is that they don't take into consideration what your actual goal is. And we all have different definitions of success. Right. And I know I've used this example in the past, but I think it's relevant to use to kind of set the stage here. I mean, I literally have, within a very small circle of friends, we've talked about, what does financial success look like?

[00:33:42] Josh DeTar: I have one set of friends that are on the fire program, right? The financially independent, retire early, and Crissi do, I mean, they will not spend like a single penny that they don't absolutely have to, right? Like, no,

[00:33:58] Crissi Cole: they have said, my goal is to

[00:34:00] Josh DeTar: That's my goal,

[00:34:01] Crissi Cole: as quickly as physically possible, and nothing's gonna get in my way.

[00:34:05] Josh DeTar: nothing's gonna get in the way of that, right? I have another friend who's like, I could die tomorrow. I might as well spend everything now and enjoy every penny of it, like rock on and just constantly floating different debt over to this debt and spend like crazy, right? And then you look at my wife and I, and we were actually closer to our friends of being hyper conservative and everything was focused on retirement, right?

[00:34:35] Josh DeTar: We put every extra penny that we had into 4 0 1 Ks, our investments, our stock portfolios, different assets, like that was the goal. And then when my wife had breast cancer and she got through that, that changed everything. And we literally had a sit down where we talked about we have a new definition of success, and we were like, yes, we're not gonna go all the way to the end of just like spend everything we could die tomorrow.

[00:35:02] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[00:35:03] Crissi Cole: Yeah.

[00:35:03] Josh DeTar: we still have like, we want a family. We want to have kids that we set up for success. Like we wanna make sure that if we do happen to manage, to live to be 104, like we can afford that, right? We still wanna do that, but at the same time, we do wanna try and live a little bit more in the moment.

[00:35:18] Crissi Cole: Okay.

[00:35:18] Josh DeTar: we redefined our definition of success.

[00:35:21] Josh DeTar: But I think the problem is, is that a lot of the traditional PFM tools just say all three groups of those people, same definition of success. Here's a budget, you're good.

[00:35:30] Crissi Cole: Here's a budget. We're gonna retire at 65. You're not on track. Good luck.

[00:35:36] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:35:37] Crissi Cole: not fair because there's so many versions in the middle and, and your goals can change. So it needs to be an evolving thing. Um, I think a, a great example that I like to give people is like debt. Okay. The world thinks you should be debt free.

[00:36:01] Crissi Cole: Argument. I could make, well, maybe some industries don't. They wanna sell you personal loans and credit cards and you to be in debt forever. But let's just argue like the financial habit is you need to be debt free. Well, everyone has a different comfortability with debt.

[00:36:18] Josh DeTar: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:18] Crissi Cole: You might feel you might go to bed every night and be like, I can't sleep because I have these student loans and I wanna pay.

[00:36:29] Crissi Cole: My goal is I wanna pay them off as quickly as possible because for me, what feels good to me is to be debt free. Then there's me. I don't care if it's seven years, nine years, 12 years. I just wanna know. I'm on track to pay them off eventually, and my payment is right sized.

[00:36:47] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[00:36:49] Crissi Cole: PFM solutions can't dictate what the right.

[00:36:53] Crissi Cole: Years till debt free should be. You are the only person who gets to decide that, right? All we can do is share with people what are the trade-offs like, what are the options? If you are gonna be debt free in nine years, this is your payment. Um,

[00:37:11] Josh DeTar: Um,

[00:37:14] Crissi Cole: what does it look like if you took a hundred dollars from your debt payment and put it in retirement?

[00:37:18] Crissi Cole: Is it, is that 12 years now debt free? How do you feel about that? Do you want, does that feel good to you? Lock it in or in the reverse? What if you paid it a hundred dollars more towards it? How does it chip away at it? That's where I think we need to go, because personal finances isn't black and white.

[00:37:36] Crissi Cole: Who am I or you to tell somebody you need to pay off your debt in five years? Who cares why? 'cause you're paying interest. Okay, but debt was a tool to get to something in your life.

[00:37:48] Josh DeTar: yeah,

[00:37:48] Crissi Cole: Maybe it's your car payment, whatever, right? I think, I think I would like to see the industry move towards more acceptable of, maybe the math doesn't math perfectly, but it feels good to you and that is the only thing that matters.

[00:38:07] Josh DeTar: mm-hmm. You know, um, I think that say like, personal finance is not black and white.

[00:38:15] Crissi Cole: It's not.

[00:38:16] Josh DeTar: And this goes back to, yeah, what is your definition of success? What are your goals? What are you comfortable with? And I think a lot of that too comes down to your understanding of the systems. You know, I remember having an argument with a friend once, um, this would've been a couple of years ago.

[00:38:34] Josh DeTar: I could probably tell you exactly when, when I tell you about the rate on this, you could probably pinpoint the time. Um, I remember having an argument with a friend about why when I bought a car, I had financed it as opposed to, uh, not financing it. Wow. And it was at the time where my credit union's auto rate on a new car, it was 1.99%. And I was like, that's free money to me.

[00:39:01] Crissi Cole: Right?

[00:39:02] Josh DeTar: that payment was no problem for me. Right. And I said, all of that cash that I would've just put into a depreciating asset, I said, I literally just put into our aggressive stock portfolio that I don't need to touch for the next 30 years. And I said, I guarantee you over the next 30 years, I'm gonna make more than the 1.99 I'm gonna spend on this cost of capital for this car.

[00:39:26] Crissi Cole: Right?

[00:39:27] Josh DeTar: But for him, that was like a hard no go. That was debt. Debt was not okay. Right.

[00:39:35] Crissi Cole: And that is the perfect example of neither of you were wrong.

[00:39:40] Josh DeTar: yes. Great

[00:39:41] Crissi Cole: the industry will tell you that you are, and then you each wonder, you second guess, you're like, did I do the right thing? Now I feel shitty about this car loan. Well, no, no, that's leverage, right? If you can earn more than 2% in the market and that's what you're gonna do, great.

[00:39:57] Crissi Cole: And maybe it impacted your credit score for a hot second. If you didn't need that credit score to do anything else in your financial life and it didn't hurt anything like prohibit you from reaching your other goals, great. But your friend, if he, if he maybe can't sleep at night, if he had a car loan, fine.

[00:40:13] Crissi Cole: Don't get a car loan.

[00:40:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah,

[00:40:15] Crissi Cole: There's, there's no right way. It's whatever you're solving for. And I, I think where I think people get stuck is when you have competing priorities, it's really hard to figure out what to do. I wanna save for a down payment on a home and save for, for retirement and pay down my debt.

[00:40:33] Crissi Cole: And how do they all work? Alongside each other and impact each other. That's when things get a little more complicated and you, you might want a little more support figuring that out and understanding that. But again, no right answer to the way that you balance those things.

[00:40:51] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And I, I, you know, one of the other things I find really fascinating about money is everybody's got an opinion, right? Like, and everybody

[00:41:01] Crissi Cole: Especially your parents.

[00:41:02] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And everybody wants to judge your decisions. And, and I, and I'm drawing this back to even how like traditional budgeting and PFM tools have thought about it.

[00:41:14] Josh DeTar: Everybody come to your point, wants to judge you based on maybe this one decision without looking at the entire thing. Right. And again, I like, I like to use myself as a personal example. 'cause I can throw shade on myself and I know all the details, but it's like, yes, still to this day, fast forward. And I'd like to think, I don't make as many of the stupid decisions of like, you know, being a 21-year-old, buying a $20,000 motor for the race car, but I still love cars.

[00:41:38] Josh DeTar: Like, that's just been a part of my DNA, it's been a part of my like, upbringing. I love doing that and tinkering on 'em with my son. And so sometimes people look at the cars and they're like, oh. Must be spending too much money there or whatever it may be. Cresty, you realize the only clothes I have are Nike basketball shorts that my wife got me when she still worked at Nike for free in a, like as samples and typhoon t-shirts.

[00:42:03] Josh DeTar: Like my poor wife, she, I don't think she sees me in anything else. I, I'm amazed she's still attracted to me. Um, I eat the exact same thing from bulk Costco every single day for lunch, right? Like, I'm one of those guys that I just, I don't spend a dime

[00:42:19] Crissi Cole: Yeah.

[00:42:20] Josh DeTar: except for one area. And so, kind of going back to the PFMs, right?

[00:42:23] Josh DeTar: Like a lot of times those tools look at, oh, you spend way too much money

[00:42:26] Crissi Cole: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:27] Josh DeTar: and they make you feel bad about it, but they don't take into consideration, okay, well your mortgage is paid, your health insurance is paid. You, you know, are saving for your kids' college fund. All of your other necessities, like you were saying, are met.

[00:42:42] Josh DeTar: And so therefore the bucket is left over here and you're fine within the bucket. If you look at it almost too granular and one thing seems outta skew without taking the whole financial picture into it, like then again, it becomes a very emotional thing,

[00:42:56] Crissi Cole: And that's not, and and I, I really hope for the industry we can get out of this. Like, let's set these rule of thumb things for everyone. Like, you should spend 20% on this and you should put 10% in 401(k), and then all these percentages because. It's your money and you should do whatever the hell you wanna do with it. Right? And the only judging that needs to go down, or, or guardrails that need to happen is calling out when there's an opportunity to do better. Right? Like, oh, you're not paying the minimum payment on your debt, you're, you're never gonna pay it off. That's a call out, right? Of like, we're not gonna judge people, but we're gonna call it out as like, that's an opportunity to make sure that you're not just paying indefinitely for the rest of your life to the bank and then, and, and then you don't have anything to show for it.

[00:43:56] Crissi Cole: And, or you get charged credit card fees, like opportunities. Yes, you got charged the credit card fee. We can't judge people that you got charged the credit card fee. We need to say, here's you got charged this fee. Here's a solution. Let me help you. Right. Um, because the problem is we'd love to. Not we. I'm just saying the industry just loves to be like, you are not doing this well, but not give the solution, which is okay, how about we use a 0% card for temporary period of time?

[00:44:31] Crissi Cole: How about we look at spending for a period of time? How about we look at all of your debt and maybe we can negotiate medical bills? Like there's so many levers that you can pull, and I'm just not seeing those out in the public sphere for people to actually help them. What do I see is all the predatory stuff and that's just not cool.

[00:44:54] Crissi Cole: Like we gotta get away from that.

[00:44:57] Josh DeTar: Well, and this, I'm, I feel like I'm gonna set you up for this, but

[00:45:01] Crissi Cole: God.

[00:45:01] Josh DeTar: know, this is like, this is the opportunity of the community financial institution space, right? Like, again, you go back to my story and it was because somebody at a credit union cared and they had enough working knowledge of the financial systems and the tools available to me and helped educate me, right.

[00:45:23] Josh DeTar: It was as simple as that. And so community financial institutions, credit unions, community banks, like they represent the good guys in this scenario and they genuinely want to help. And it's bridging that gap because kinda like we were talking about like so many times finances is taboo and so people also don't ever talk to anybody.

[00:45:44] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Like you're saying, some of the most judgmental people or your parents or your friends or your spouse. And that's a hard place to be to then try and have somebody to help educate you when you're afraid to even ask the questions. But how can community financial institutions step in from a non predatory place and say, Hey, here's the tools and the products and the services that are backed by somebody who cares about you, and here's some education and let's get you set.

[00:46:11] Crissi Cole: this is the beautiful thing about credit unions and community banks, I don't think a lot of people know, is that, um, little things like credit cards, credit unions, I think the rule is 17%, the max interest rate, you can charge credit card. Whereas the industry, I think it's up to like 30 or even higher.

[00:46:31] Crissi Cole: There are so many similar situations of the product set that credit unions and community banks have to offer, or largely more suitable and beneficial to the consumer. And little things like, you know, uh, you can get a personal loan with 0% interest for an emergency. Wh where can you go get something like that?

[00:46:56] Crissi Cole: It's very rare. And so I think community banks and credit unions have such a great opportunity, not just because they bank half of America, but because the products they offer are generally more suitable and helpful in a time of need. And guess what? That's a match in the world. Your product matches what someone needs. What we need to do is figure out how do you match that up with someone? Well, you need to know their goals,

[00:47:27] Josh DeTar: yeah.

[00:47:28] Crissi Cole: and you need to know where they're at in their finances outside of where they bank with you. That's the starting point. So we can start connecting the dots here.

[00:47:36] Josh DeTar: So how do you think, like where do we go from here then? Right? How do we start having better conversations with people about

[00:47:45] Crissi Cole: it doesn't have to, it shouldn't be a conversation. There needs to be a digital backdoor. Like if you were, if you were, um. I dunno. Let's think about if someone was in aa, do you wanna be seen going to aa? Probably not. You're gonna go through the back door. Okay. If you are struggling with your finances, are you gonna go walk into a branch bank location and go ask a stranger what to do?

[00:48:15] Crissi Cole: No. So what I, I strongly believe there needs to be a digital backdoor. A place where you, there's a judge-free zone. You don't actually have to have a conversation, but you can get advice product served up to you in a digital manner because, hello to we're in 2025, like everyone is connected to a digital solution in some way, shape, or form.

[00:48:40] Crissi Cole: How can we have a place for people to go to find this information out? Because I don't know. I don't know. Would you go, you did this, you walked into a credit union and you sat down and maybe I think 10% of people would do that, but 90% of people I don't think would do that.

[00:49:00] Josh DeTar: Um, I know I've referenced it before, but, um, I wish I could remember who, who gave me the, the context. It was a podcast guest in the past. Um, there's a book called Nobody Lies to Google,

[00:49:15] Crissi Cole: Okay.

[00:49:15] Josh DeTar: a, they had a ton of data on how, and they gave examples like, um, you know, you go into your doctor's office.

[00:49:24] Josh DeTar: And the doctor asks, um, you know, how much coffee do you drink? And you're like, well, I don't really wanna be

[00:49:29] Crissi Cole: One cup.

[00:49:31] Josh DeTar: I drink one cup a day.

[00:49:32] Crissi Cole: Yeah. When it's seven.

[00:49:34] Josh DeTar: seven and then they promptly go home and ask, Google is one cup that's 64 ounces coffee. Okay. Right. And it's, and I think it's exactly what you were saying, right?

[00:49:47] Josh DeTar: Like they're more willing to be, um, really open and vulnerable when they feel like they're not gonna be judged by a human

[00:49:57] Crissi Cole: Human. Exactly, exactly. That's, that's I think the barrier here is, and, and the challenge we all have is like, how do you create the smartest solutions that are able to, like Google and even chat, GBT cannot, you know, give you the most perfect financial advice because you don't have all the information. So how do we get to a world where we can do it in that way?

[00:50:24] Crissi Cole: That's all of our challenges as an industry. We have to figure this out.

[00:50:28] Josh DeTar: you know? Okay. I'm, I'm glad you said that because I think that's also one of the problems that we face is now our financial lives are like so crazy fragmented. Right? You think about all the different places that we have money, most

[00:50:40] Crissi Cole: Most people have seven to nine institutions.

[00:50:43] Josh DeTar: seven to nine, just just institutions, let alone

[00:50:47] Crissi Cole: of accounts is like 14 to 20.

[00:50:50] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And, and across tons of different products, right? Especially in the world you came from, like start thinking about the investments that you may have. Right? And so what I think one of the other problems too is again, like I hate to pick on, uh, you know, the traditional way of thinking about budgets and pur personal financial management.

[00:51:10] Josh DeTar: But let's go back to that example that I gave of like the auto loan that I took out at 1.99, right? There's a very good chance that the traditional model, if it had just looked at I'm a PFM tool that runs on Josh's credit union, that he has that auto loan through. It's sitting there suggesting to me how I can pay that loan down faster. That's not my goal. I literally took out the loan on purpose to make the minimum payment on that so the rest of my money could go into. Right now, the cost of funds is cheap for me and the market is a great time to invest in, so this is an ideal time for me to borrow money for certain things and spend my money in this area.

[00:51:56] Josh DeTar: But the PFM tools over here telling me, you gotta pay that car down faster. 'cause it doesn't see the rest of my financial life. It doesn't see, okay, well we've got money here, here, and here. Your strategy here is this, your strategy here is this, and therefore it impacts what we do here. And that's I, that's no fault of them.

[00:52:14] Josh DeTar: Right. That's running on limited data. Yeah. If this is all I gave you data wise and all you know about me is that I have this auto loan, then yeah, I would say a reasonable thing to do would be to say, here's how I can help you pay it down faster. Right? But if I don't give it access to, well, what is my goal?

[00:52:35] Josh DeTar: What is my definition of success and where are other places that my finances live and how does that play into it? It is really hard to make a very thoughtful recommendation

[00:52:45] Crissi Cole: Right. And the, the question I would ask back to you is, what would get you to trust that thing? To give them the keys to every account you own? Because I think one of the challenges from Credit Union community bank or FinTech perspective is we all, we all want more data and to see everything, but how dare we ask the consumer for that if we're not giving them something good in return,

[00:53:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah, totally.

[00:53:16] Crissi Cole: you know,

[00:53:17] Josh DeTar: Why am I gonna go through the work to connect my seven to nine different accounts to you and feed all that data in unless there's

[00:53:27] Crissi Cole: good back.

[00:53:27] Josh DeTar: value out of it.

[00:53:29] Crissi Cole: Yep. So again, another challenge that we all need to solve for.

[00:53:35] Josh DeTar: What do you think the answer is?

[00:53:39] Crissi Cole: I think that we, I mean we've talked about this, but have to give people helpful information that they're not able to see themselves. We have to be smarter, right? Hey, I see you have this account that's not earning any interest right now. Did you know you bank at X Credit Union, you could earn 300 extra dollars a year by putting it in a high yield savings account or whatever.

[00:54:09] Crissi Cole: You have to, you have to give to get so smarter insights and recommendations, less judgment, and putting the pieces together in a way that people haven't seen before. Right? Like calculators on the internet, don't. Remind you of things that are happening in your accounts. Maybe I should alert this person because they told me that this was their goal, but they, but they're, they're not doing the thing that, that, that they need to do to reach the goal.

[00:54:37] Crissi Cole: So let me remind them, right? Like,

[00:54:39] Josh DeTar: Like,

[00:54:40] Crissi Cole: what would I do? I always think about when we're, you're building anything, like what do IW wish I could tell this person if I was handholding them human to human and replicate that? And that's hard to do because there are so many permutations of the ways that people can achieve their goals, how many different types of accounts you might have.

[00:55:06] Crissi Cole: Um, and so it's a hard thing to do and I really, I don't think anyone has done it yet, because there's too many permutations.

[00:55:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah, no, as you were talking, I, I was just starting to think of even a simple example of, um, you know, let's say that the goal is to buy a new car, and so that creates a savings account, but at what point does that also inform a notification that, hey, like your credit union has, you know, a special rate on used cars right now and like now, even though you haven't saved enough, now you can actually afford it because of the rate drop.

[00:55:42] Josh DeTar: Like those are two totally separate, but one

[00:55:46] Crissi Cole: at the same time and can come together. Yes. Yes.

[00:55:50] Josh DeTar: But that comes down to knowing what the goal is and then taking that goal and permeating it across all the different platforms and systems. I mean, this is one of the things that, I mean, between us and everybody listening, um, I think this is one of the things that excites me about open banking. Right, is this actually creates an opportunity for people to feel more empowered to connect their financial lives. And you know, one of the things that I always think is interesting, and I I'd love to get your perspective on conversations you've had with, um, like credit unions and banks, is, you know, sometimes when I talk to people, they're a little concerned about open banking and being like, well then my member's gonna share my data and their data with Chase. And I'm like, great, go for it. Let 'em, because at least now you're seeing the whole picture.

[00:56:46] Crissi Cole: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:46] Josh DeTar: So everybody's on the same playing field and everybody's seeing all the same data. And then going back to what you and I were talking about earlier, like, you're the good guys,

[00:56:56] Crissi Cole: right.

[00:56:56] Josh DeTar: you're the good guys. So now you're armed with the same data as Chase.

[00:57:01] Josh DeTar: And Chase is gonna come and say, Hey Crissi, we got a 30% credit card for you and your credit union's. Like. Hey, Crissi, we actually wanna know what your goals are before we go throwing some 30% credit card at you. Which of those two things am I gonna be more responsive to?

[00:57:14] Crissi Cole: Exactly. It's interesting you've heard that concern. I have not heard that concern. When I, whenever I have conversations around open banking, what I hear is I'm not sophisticated enough to ingest this data and do something with it. So why pay for it? That's what I hear.

[00:57:34] Josh DeTar: I mean, that is a big part of the challenge too, right? Like going back to what we were

[00:57:37] Crissi Cole: That's the flip side, right? It's like when you, you see held the way accounts, well what are you gonna do with that? Inside

[00:57:43] Josh DeTar: do with it? Yep.

[00:57:46] Crissi Cole: you're gonna get charged, right? For every API call you make on seven accounts per person, that adds up really fast. Um, and so I think that this is where in lies. Like we all have to just take a step back and be like, what are we solving for? Like, what is the purpose of it? And the purpose of it, I think, is consumers and members want help with their money so badly, so badly.

[00:58:19] Crissi Cole: Like, look at the data, like people are struggling majorly, the cost of living has gone up astronomically, debt has soared. It's, um, impossible to buy a home. A lot of people don't even know. People think I'm never actually gonna achieve my financial goals in this world. And so it's so sad and it makes me like, that's why I get up in the morning every single day and work on this.

[00:58:46] Crissi Cole: And it hurts my brain because there's no like easy, you know, let's do this one thing and everything is solved, right? It's like really complicated and multifaceted and all interconnected, but somehow we have to figure this out and help people. And guess who's best positioned to do that? Credit union is a community bank.

[00:59:02] Josh DeTar: Totally. I know that's, uh, sorry to get on the, you know, soapbox train with you. But I mean, again, like going back to, especially now as a parent, like I think of just how much the world of money has changed in my lifetime.

[00:59:18] Josh DeTar: I'm terrified for what it's gonna do in my kids, and I'm terrified of what is it gonna look like when my kids try to go buy their first home.

[00:59:27] Crissi Cole: Right,

[00:59:28] Josh DeTar: I don't know what it's gonna look like, Crissi, but I'm gonna have to plan for the worst case scenario. And again, going back to what's your definition of success?

[00:59:37] Josh DeTar: Like when I'm long gone, I want my kids to be free.

[00:59:41] Crissi Cole: right.

[00:59:42] Josh DeTar: Like that's my definition of success. And I hate to say it, but money is a big part of that freedom for them. And so that's really important to me. And

[00:59:51] Crissi Cole: it's really important to most parents. We're seeing that in the data is like the second you have a child, your goals completely shift, completely shift. And now it's not just about you anymore, it's about, it's about them and their legacy and the things you can do now for them. And you know, like what are all the hacks for them?

[01:00:13] Crissi Cole: But guess what? You can't forget yourself either. So what ends up happening is people have seven goals now, not three.

[01:00:20] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:00:21] Crissi Cole: And that gets complicated. And they, you know, if you wanna retire, but you also want your kid to have the 5 29 account and an account for a down payment on a house. Okay? How do you do both?

[01:00:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:00:35] Crissi Cole: It's really hard for people to do both. I

[01:00:38] Josh DeTar: Um, you know, actually, again, I'll use myself as a personal example, just, um, before, and this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, like the, just start, you

[01:00:49] Crissi Cole: just start just right. You don't have to, you don't have to solve everything right now, but if you just start a little bit, then you'll get closer and

[01:00:59] Josh DeTar: When my wife and I got married, we knew all along we were, we wanted kids.

[01:01:04] Josh DeTar: Like that was, we wanted kids more than anything. Long story short, it took us a long time to get there. But in the process, we opened accounts for them before they even existed. And um, and this was back when, yeah, to your point, like we were still working through the managing the paycheck to paycheck thing.

[01:01:27] Josh DeTar: But I remember at a time, Crissi, where we had accounts for them where I literally put $10 a month in. But

[01:01:34] Crissi Cole: Little. Yeah.

[01:01:36] Josh DeTar: you know what,

[01:01:37] Crissi Cole: It adds

[01:01:38] Josh DeTar: 10 years of $10 a month. Right. And one of those accounts is a super high risk stock portfolio. They have probably a 25 year time horizon on that from when I started it to when they'll actually need

[01:01:56] Crissi Cole: it or use it? Yep.

[01:01:58] Josh DeTar: 10 bucks a month over 25 years

[01:02:01] Crissi Cole: Yep.

[01:02:02] Josh DeTar: in a super aggressive portfolio

[01:02:05] Crissi Cole: And that's where I think

[01:02:06] Josh DeTar: be a difference maker.

[01:02:07] Crissi Cole: it's incredible. And like that is a perfect example of what we want people to do. And I will say, we've talked a lot about like what we don't like in the industry, but what has been a beautiful thing that has happened in this industry is, is this world of fractional shares and like, you know, low $1 investing is, you know, that the accessibility has got come so far to allow that to happen.

[01:02:36] Crissi Cole: And so we, I just want everyone to take advantage of that, right? Like, no, no longer, oh, you need to put a thousand dollars in this fund in order to get invested, right? Like, you can do $1, literally $1 and get a fractional ETF and you know, get started. And I just hope, I just hope. I, I wanna figure out how to take advantage of that.

[01:02:59] Crissi Cole: Going back to the stat we started with, why are the same amount of people investing today as 30 years ago when we have all these amazing innovations? Why, why, why? Because people don't have the discretionary income leftover and or the education.

[01:03:15] Josh DeTar: well, and that I think also comes back to what you started talking about with just like, everybody wants to know what are the trade secrets? And you're like, well, yes, there are some trade secrets. And unfortunately, sometimes those do live in walled gardens, but they're also not like crazy trade secrets.

[01:03:31] Josh DeTar: Like these are really things that people can employ, but it's just, but we've gotta teach 'em to people. Uh,

[01:03:37] Crissi Cole: Right.

[01:03:38] Josh DeTar: don't know about that if I don't know about that.

[01:03:39] Crissi Cole: right. If someone saw, you know.

[01:03:41] Josh DeTar: you know,

[01:03:42] Crissi Cole: In a bookstore, modern portfolio theory, and then some like new fiction novel. They're not gonna grab modern Portfolio theory because it's boring and complicated and the jargon in there is ridiculous. Like, who wants to read about volatility and, you know, sharp ratios and correlation?

[01:04:02] Crissi Cole: Nobody. But guess what, can we literally like, it is like gonna be like, I don't understand, that's a whole nother language. But what if we explained it as modern portfolio theory is a low cost, low risk way to get invested for the long term. And you figure out what your goal is, how many years you have, you set a risk against it and you, you pick a dollar amount and you go, you just reframe the whole thing.

[01:04:27] Crissi Cole: Then it becomes much more palatable and accessible to somebody who may not have studied that in school.

[01:04:35] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And I, I think, again, this goes all way back to helping people even just like have conversations about goals, right? Like even just starting there so they understand, oh, okay. If that's my goal, then maybe. This principle applies

[01:04:53] Crissi Cole: Applies to it, right?

[01:04:54] Josh DeTar: You know, I, I'm curious what your thoughts are on, uh, again, I've talked about this in the past.

[01:04:59] Josh DeTar: You know, one of the things that drives me absolutely psychotic is how much fricking bad financial advice there is on social media.

[01:05:07] Crissi Cole: Oh my God. And everyone's turning to TikTok and Instagram. Everyone's turning to that because it's easy and it's there and everyone wants to know. They wanna know what are the secrets.

[01:05:21] Josh DeTar: Yeah. You know, I, uh, actually this episode's gonna air probably right after, or one after. Um, I had two awesome ladies, um, uh, on the podcast as, as dual guests, and we were talking about, um. Credit score. And um, I had, uh, a woman from Fisk University and from Equifax talking about, um, credit score and just the impacts of that.

[01:05:55] Josh DeTar: And we got down kind of the same path, Chrisy. And we were talking about the example that drives me nuts is like you actually see real examples of these, you know, 22-year-old kids that go and rent a Lamborghini from Hertz, park it in front of somebody else's mansion, and then film content saying, if you wanna get rich like me, follow my advice. They have no advice. And it's actually the things they're talking about are illegal, right?

[01:06:19] Crissi Cole: Yeah.

[01:06:20] Josh DeTar: But here they are making content and could you like me as a 23-year-old kid who loves cars? If I'm watching this TikTok and they're like, want a Lamborghini? I'm like, yeah, like, here's how you do it. I'm like, okay.

[01:06:32] Crissi Cole: Yeah.

[01:06:34] Josh DeTar: Right. We all want that instant gratification. Get rich quick. And if somebody's pedaling that idea on social media, it's really attractive. That terrifies me.

[01:06:42] Crissi Cole: it's terrifying. And we've seen, you know, we, we ask people how they feel about money, and it used to be shame, anxiety, some security envy has increased

[01:06:52] Josh DeTar: Oh really?

[01:06:53] Crissi Cole: and it's because of that. It's, and it's really easy to fall into that. Like even as a mom, I see people on social, like they have it all together.

[01:07:04] Crissi Cole: They're, they've got makeup on at drop off. And you know me at drop off this morning. Literally the dad who dropped off next to me was like, are you okay? I am like, no, I'm not okay. And thank you for telling me how awful I look right now. I mean, the same thing I wore yesterday. My kids didn't sleep last night.

[01:07:21] Crissi Cole: My husband's traveling. You wanna know what's going on. It's like per, you know, perception is reality kind of thing. Like I, I, yeah, I don't think, um, I like that it's brought, social media has brought awareness to personal finances, but it's not a trustworthy source and everyone is looking for a trustworthy source of financial wisdom.

[01:07:45] Josh DeTar: Crissi, this you maybe, maybe if you agree you can help me with this, but I've been, I've been like preaching like crazy. I wanna see more credit unions doing tiktoks.

[01:07:55] Crissi Cole: Amen.

[01:07:56] Josh DeTar: Like call me crazy, but I wanna see you doing tiktoks and I want to see you out there giving financial advice. 'cause people are going there and whether you like it or not, that's become a medium where people are consuming that content.

[01:08:09] Josh DeTar: And they can either get it from some knucklehead who's trying to like peddle some advice so they can get followers and they can make money. Or you can get it from a trusted source like a credit union, right? Like I would way rather see that.

[01:08:25] Crissi Cole: it would be great because I think that, I mean, if you look at the trust data, I forget it's, if it's JD Power or someone else, I'll have to look up the source. I'll send it to you. After that, pulled Americans on how much they trust. The financial institutions that serve them. Credit unions are always at the top of the list with like 60 to 70% trustworthiness.

[01:08:47] Crissi Cole: I mean, that is huge. That is a huge differentiator.

[01:08:52] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I know. Don't, that's a whole nother podcast to get me started on my diatribe about

[01:08:59] Crissi Cole: I should wear a shirt. I love credit unions.

[01:09:02] Josh DeTar: I know, I, Crissi, I'm that total of obnoxious like Lyft passenger, where anytime I travel for work and I'm like in a Lyft, I always end up talking like, where do you bank and why? And

[01:09:15] Crissi Cole: Yep.

[01:09:16] Josh DeTar: but it is.

[01:09:17] Crissi Cole: Well, yeah, it's someone on our team. He met a nurse, um, like who comes to his house and she, they ended up got to talking and she's like, yeah, I banked at this credit union for three years. It's not even in, in California. It's in Indiana where I grew up and I'm never leaving them. Like you hear these stories over and over again, it's so amazing.

[01:09:37] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Well, and like you, it's like once you get that in. Once I know the power of what that can do for somebody's life. I mean, it wasn't, I was in a, I was in a lift a couple of months ago and, and I got to talking to some guy and man, like we went deep. I got the whole like sob life story, the whole nine yards.

[01:09:56] Josh DeTar: And um, and literally it snowballed into him talking about his financial life and all of this and, you know, and I was able to share with him. I was like, Hey, I'm in town visiting my credit union customer. You should go check him out,

[01:10:10] Crissi Cole: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:11] Josh DeTar: right? And he was like, I didn't even know that this was an option. And I started telling him about it and he's like, why am I not there?

[01:10:16] Josh DeTar: I'm like, it's a great question. That's why we're talking, dude.

[01:10:18] Crissi Cole: Yeah,

[01:10:19] Josh DeTar: You know, so it's like, I get it. I'm, I'm with you. It's like once you, once you see how much of an impact it can have on people, it's hard to let that go and not wanna be able to share that with people and. You know, I think it's really cool what you're doing, Crissi.

[01:10:34] Josh DeTar: Like I, I, I've said this, I'm not gonna be shy about it. I think the concept of actually talking to people, like people asking 'em questions before, just giving blank and advice and kinda looking at their entire financial life and saying, your definition of success may be different than this person's, but I'm gonna help you both get to your definition of success.

[01:10:55] Josh DeTar: I just, I really fricking love that. And I think you're onto something

[01:10:59] Crissi Cole: It's simple, right? I mean, it's like, I'm like, hmm, we just ask people what they're trying to solve, then maybe we can solve it for them.

[01:11:11] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:11:12] Crissi Cole: The problem is doing it scalably and digitally is the, is the challenge. But that's the fun, and that's why you as a founder, you take on these big, hairy problems.

[01:11:22] Josh DeTar: That's why you quit your job and plunge yourself into chaos. You.

[01:11:26] Crissi Cole: You quit your job and then pop out two kids and then wonder what?

[01:11:31] Josh DeTar: you guys are so well. Yeah. Like I said, I'm, I may be one voice, but I think you're doing some really cool stuff and you should be proud of what you're doing and, uh, I think you're gonna make an impact. So

[01:11:46] Crissi Cole: Thank you. And we can't do it without our credit union partners. We can't do it without digital banking partners. It's a, this is, I believe in the, like we all have to come together. It's not gonna be one company or one person that it's a, it needs to be a movement and I'm really, really passionate about that.

[01:12:05] Josh DeTar: You know, I think you're, I mean, you're right. I've said this before, it takes a village to raise financially healthy communities. None of us are gonna do this alone. It takes every single one of these elements. But I think what gets me so excited and wakes me up every day is we really do work for the industry That that is gonna be that village.

[01:12:25] Josh DeTar: Like I, I believe that, like, I want to, going back to like when I'm long gone. I want my kids set up for success. And that looks like I wanna make sure that there's community financial institutions for them to bank with.

[01:12:37] Crissi Cole: Right,

[01:12:38] Josh DeTar: 'cause I think that that's gonna make an impact in their future. And so it's like, like core to me to make sure that that industry survives, thrives, and is able to add the value that they do.

[01:12:48] Josh DeTar: 'cause I think it makes a difference.

[01:12:50] Crissi Cole: Totally.

[01:12:51] Josh DeTar: Well, Crissi, it,

[01:12:52] Crissi Cole: agree more.

[01:12:53] Josh DeTar: it is been a blast and a pleasure chatting with you. Before I let you go, I got two final questions for you. So, where do you go to get information? Like when you're learning about, um, you know, what does, how do people think about their finances and what impacts em?

[01:13:08] Josh DeTar: Where are some of the places you get some of your data? Where do you do some of your learnings?

[01:13:12] Crissi Cole: Yeah, there's, um, there's so many studies that a lot, there's some banking in like customers who publish studies about people, um, and do it with a huge set of data like Fidelity publishes data about people in their finances all the time in investing rates. And some of the things that I described, bank of America publishes one, JP Morgan publishes one.

[01:13:36] Crissi Cole: So in terms of like the industry data I was quoting today, it's a lot of, um, financial institution led reports. The Financial Health Network is the other place that's a more, I would say, unbiased source, um, to get data about people and their finances. And then I'd say for me, where I've been spending most of my time getting information, especially in the credit union industry, is the CU Times Daily Newsletter.

[01:14:01] Crissi Cole: I don't know, do you get that?

[01:14:03] Josh DeTar: course.

[01:14:04] Crissi Cole: it's awesome. It's just great to know. I know, I know. It's just, it's so informative. It's so helpful to see from a bigger picture, like what is happening from an industry level, from a particular credit union level, and then from a FinTech perspective. Um, FinTech futures daily.

[01:14:21] Crissi Cole: This is always good to it. We all have to learn from each other, and that helps me to see like what is happening on the innovation side of things. From a tech perspective,

[01:14:33] Josh DeTar: I love it. That's awesome. Um, last but not least, if people want to just connect directly with you and chat with you, um, or if they wanna learn more about what you're doing with Penny Finance, how can they do that?

[01:14:45] Crissi Cole: um, LinkedIn is the best place. I actually look at every invitation and every message that I get. Um, even though sometimes there's like a hundred of them in there. Um, the spelling of my name is C-R-I-S-S-I. And last name Cole. And you can find me on LinkedIn and I'll always reply to messages there.

[01:15:06] Josh DeTar: I can confirm you do, 'cause I think that's actually where I first connected with you. Although, uh, shout out to, uh, a mutual friend who, uh, I'll, I'll keep her name off the air, but, uh, a big thank you.

[01:15:17] Josh DeTar: You know, one of the other things that I love about this industry is. The concept of, Hey, I know this cool person and this cool person, and the two of them should meet. Um, so that's kind of what brought us together so you know who you are. And big shout out and thank you. Um, well, Crissi, thank you so much again.

[01:15:33] Josh DeTar: Uh, like I said, I'm not gonna be shy about it. I think what you're doing is super cool. I think this is, uh, a huge area of opportunity for community financial institutions to really live what they preach and have some tools to really help people in a very specialized way as opposed to just a very black and white blanket approach.

[01:15:52] Josh DeTar: Um, so keep up the good work

[01:15:54] Crissi Cole: Thank you.

[01:15:54] Josh DeTar: and being a guest on the

[01:15:55] Crissi Cole: Thanks for having me. It's so good to see you.

[01:15:58] Josh DeTar: Thanks, Crissi.

[01:15:59] Crissi Cole: Okay, bye-bye.