Budgeting, episode 2

Listen to the episode:

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Episode overview:

Troyer family story, [starts at 00:45]
Chad Campbell, Financial Advisor, Everence, [starts at 05:50]
Producer roundtable, Best budgeting apps, [starts at 17:27]

Podcast resources

• Cash flow plan guide - Learn about the different aspects to consider as you develop your budget or cash flow plan.
• Cash flow plan template - Download a cash flow plan worksheet template you can fill in with your numbers. 
• Budget apps from the roundtable: YNAB, PocketGuard, Mint and Goodbudget 

Read the transcript:

Trisha Handrich, Host:

What word comes to mind when you think of "budget?" Oppressive? Tiresome? Freeing? In this episode we talk about budgets or cash flow plans and how they can help you find stability and confidence in your finances. We'll hear from a couple who developed a budget and how they stuck to it, and get advice from an Everence Financial Advisor who helps others develop their budgets. Also, which budgeting app is the best, and are they worth using?

I'm Trisha Handrich and this is Smart Living, Simple Money.

First up, I was able to talk with Collette and Weston Troyer, they're from Goshen, Indiana. Weston has an MBA and Collette has an associate's degree. They have a two year old daughter, they're homeowners, they're car owners, and they're 28 years old. I started out by asking them about their first conversations around money as a couple.

Collette Troyer:

We started talking about money before we decided to get engaged, so that was in college.

Trisha:

And in what way?

Weston Troyer:

Talked about how we would spend larger purchases and sort of the future of what career-wise and lifestyle-wise how we wanted to live out our life. With her staying home, that was one thing, even before we were married, we discussed, is that something we want to try to do? Obviously the answer was yes, on that. So, kind of keeping that in mind, too, as we thought through budgets and things.

Trisha :

When you started to think about becoming a family, so you're married, got a couple years and then you have a child. When you started to think about having that child, what were some of the big financial questions that you talked about and navigated?

Collette:

Budget-wise and family, he knew that I wanted to stay home if we were able to. Before we had a child, when we were both working, two incomes, we decided we'll just live off of one. And then, when we bought our house, live off of one income for the house, also. So we were kind of setting ourselves up so that when we had the child, we'd be able to live how we wanted to, still, in a nice, comfortable home, but also I was able to stay home.

Trisha:

Did you create a budget when doing that?

Collette:

Oh yeah. We've had a budget since we were married, the day one. The first year we were married, he was still at Goshen College as a senior there, finishing up, and I was working. We didn't have a lot of extra income. We set up a budget, and we've adjusted it throughout the years just because life changes and you set different goals and have different income as you get older.

Trisha:

When you're starting to talk about creating a budget together, so you're two separate people and you probably have different goals in life, most people do. How did you come together to start thinking about a budget?

Collette:

The thing that helped us was kind of being on the same page, and also, to understand how he thinks about finances and how I think would think about finances is we took the Dave Ramsey class at our church. He talks about what kind of spender or saver you are and kind of helps you map out where your values are and how you want to do things together, individual, and so it created open discussion between us about finances.

Trisha:

How do you stick to a budget?

Collette:

We decided, when we were setting up a budget, Weston's like, ‘nah I don't want to do it, you do it.’ I was like, ‘okay.’ I kind of like doing it, anyway. We do it every two weeks whenever Weston gets paid, so we try to stick to that schedule for the most part. And how we do it is we spend cash, actual tangible cash, on clothing and entertainment, going out and doing stuff, so that entices me to do the budget because if I don't, I don't take that money out of our account and then we don't go out to eat and we don't get to go to the movies or whatever we want to do. It's like I'm basically applying it to myself, you have to do this or you're not going to be able to do other things you want to do. That's how we try and stick to it.

Trisha:

Do you guys have any advice for people that are just starting out making a budget?

Weston:

Start Simple. Don't overthink it. And also, suggest what helped us, was setting up those larger goals, like a house or car payment, together that you're reaching for in a couple years and then set your monthly or yearly goals to help bring you along as well in that process.

Collette:

Yeah. He mentioned earlier that we each have our own money we can spend on whatever we want, which I think is really great because then I can't get annoyed at him for spending on something that I think is silly, and he can't get annoyed with me at spending on another shirt that I think ... We have adjusted our budget, it's always being adjusted. You add a kid in, well your grocery budget needs to go up because they're starting to eat more food or Weston gets a different job and his clothing attire has to change. Things change, yearly, monthly, whatever it is, and so just being able to roll with those punches and realize that just because you have this budget and it's set, so to speak, set in stone, it's not. You still have to morph it to where you're currently at in your life.

Trisha:

Thank you so much, guys. Appreciate your time.

Next I had a chance to sit down with Chad Campbell. He is an Everence Financial Advisor and works specifically with couples on developing a budget and working with finances. First of all, I wanted to get a feel for who Chad was, so I asked him to share a little bit about himself and what his personal story looks like around finances.

Chad Campbell, Everence Financial Advisor*:

The way I describe my story, especially when I'm talking to new clients or prospects is, I'm talking about how my own values and my own life all growing up was all about just saving more and more money. If there was a way to get a free t-shirt or get my parents to spend money or get my sisters to buy me stuff, I would make sure and fight hard to make sure that happened. I hate spending money. Which can be a really good thing, but on the flip side it can be a really bad thing. What I mean by that is, as I got married, as I had some different experiences in college, like studying abroad, I started to see that money, just to have it and to accumulate, doesn't really bring that much added value to your life.

But, when you spend it on things that are important and matter and that are meaningful, that really adds the value ... it's using money in a way that makes your life more meaningful and so for me, that's been kind of a learning experience over the last few years, especially after getting married, realizing my wife, she's also very frugal, but she likes to spend money as well. I really respect her and appreciate the values that she's brought. Really says, "This is what's important and so we want to spend money on what's important to us."

Trisha:

That's actually, I think, tends to be the opposite of what people do. They tend to always just spend their money right when they get it, so you're coming from the opposite direction, but I think we all want to go towards that happy middle of, we accumulate money, we want to be happy in what we have, but also be happy and okay with spending it.

Chad:

Absolutely.

Trisha:

What's that advice that you would give a person that would be single, newly married, maybe married for a couple of years?

Chad:

Yeah, sure. That's a great question. The thing that I keep coming back to is really this idea of having a mission statement or a values statement. You think about a business, they might have a mission statement, that we're going to be the best this for our customers, we're going to be the best this for our suppliers, the best this for that. And that kind of is a guiding rule for them, then, that when they have a tough decision to make, they know, okay is this in line with being the best for our customers? The best for the people that we work with? All those things. And if you don't have a mission statement or a values statement, when different questions arise and new opportunities come and all these things are happening in your life, you don't really have that undergirding thing that says, what's kind of our test? Is it going to align with this? And if it doesn't, then we need to be honest and say we probably can't do that.

Trisha:

What's an example?

Chad:

Yeah, so an example would be, like, for my wife and I. One thing that's very important to us is hospitality, so part of our decisions as we think about where we're going to live, what kind of house we're going to live in, how much money we spend on food or on making our house a home. My wife loves candles. For me, I'm like, candles seem like an unnecessary expense, but sometimes it's nice to make the house smell good, welcoming, friendly, all those things. So, when my miser comes out, my saver, that's like, no we don't need to spend that money, comes out, she gently reminds me, we want to be hospitable. This is part of what that looks like. So, that's an example.

Trisha:

And it all takes a conversation at the beginning of you guys combining and coming up with that mission statement together.

Chad:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think, even if you're preparing to get married, doing that throughout your premarital kind of engagement season, having some conversations about your family's history. What are you bringing to the table? What are the challenges that you grew up with? And just being able to kind of think through all that together ... I usually encourage people to go on a coffee date and just give them a list of questions, say, "Here's some ideas to talk through and think through, how did your family deal with money? Were they savers? Were they spenders? Have they done well? Have they not done so well? And how does that affect who I am and what I'm going to bring to this engagement? If you've been married a few years, it's never too late. Taking that time, constantly coming back to it, because life changes.

Some of those values might change and shift, so I recommend even every year just revisiting; is this mission statement still what we're about? Is this what we're still trying to accomplish? And if you're single, you probably need that just as much as well, you know? To make sure, okay, I'm making these decisions for myself. I've got this money, I've got these bills, I've got these different things, am I lining up with what I say I'm about? Is there integrity in who I am and how I'm spending and saving the resources that I've been given? So, for me, that's really a key piece to any financial plan, is really just having that mission statement.

Trisha:

So, once you have that mission statement, you've had the conversation about where you want to go, now, in the future, how do you make that budget?

Chad:

When it comes to making a budget, there's a lot of tension as an experience in that. We maybe have college bills or college loans, or maybe just a car loan, or maybe we're looking for a house, or we need to upgrade our car because the one we got is kind of a junky one, or maybe I want to travel and I want to see Italy and Greece and wherever there is to see. But, there's also, I've got to save for retirement, and I've got all these bills, and how do I kind of keep the tension of, the things that I want to do with kind of the things that I have to do?

And so there's definitely a tension in creating a budget. The thing that I see is that there's opportunity costs at any stage in the game. Sometimes you have to work more to make more money to have some more flexibility. Other times maybe you don't need as much money and so you can get by on less and have more flexibility early on. So, there's a lot of opportunity costs and what I find is that a lot of people want all the good stuff, but they don't want to put in some of the hard work and the time and the energy that it takes to get all the good stuff.

So, really just recognizing the tension and then seeing the opportunity costs is a big start to forming the budget because if you're value is I want to travel the world, you need a decent amount of money to do so. And if you've got other bills and expenses, those might make it difficult to do that. So, again, sitting down with that mission statement, thinking through, okay, is this a season in my life where I want to travel and can travel? How can I allocate my resources in a way that enables me to do that? Does that mean I need a different job? Does that mean I need to move in to a rental situation with some friends where I'm paying half as much as I pay on rent? Does that mean I'm going to do something different with my college loans, or I'm going to say, no I'm going to work really hard for the next five years, I'm going to pay everything down, I'm going to get myself in a good situation, and then I'm going to travel.

Determining some of those things is where I'd start.

Trisha:

What is your advice with using an Excel spreadsheet versus one of those apps, one of those budgeting apps for your phone? I'm a very visual person, so it's easy for me if I don't have a budget that's visual, to just forget about my spending. Which is not helpful when you're trying to follow a budget.

Chad:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm kind of a both/and kind of person, so I think having a spreadsheet put together that says, here's kind of what I would like to see, right? I know what my rent is or my mortgage, I know what my car loan, about what I'm going to pay in fuel, I know what I need to spend on groceries and eating out and all those things. So, putting that on to paper, or an Excel spreadsheet, kind of helps you formulate, okay, here's how much I'll have leftover if I spend this way. But that's only half the equation, and something like 50 or 60 percent of people have some kind of budget set out in that way. But then, as you mention, you've got to track it. You got to know, did I actually spend the $100 I was thinking I would spend on groceries, or did I spend $200?

And, again, part of that is figuring out those numbers, has a lot to do with what's important. What's the value? If it's hospitality, maybe you spend more in groceries than maybe somebody else would, but you say that's what I'm about.

Trisha:

What are things that are often overlooked when developing a budget?

Chad:

Yeah, there's quite a few things, I think. A couple of them would be what we call intermittent expenses. Those would be like, typically when you're thinking of your budget you've got things that happen every month, like I've been mentioning. But then you have other things that come up maybe once a year, or every other year or something. Car registrations or maintenance on your home or vehicles. If you're preparing for that throughout the year, putting a little bit aside each month, it makes when those expenses come so much easier to handle, and it's often overlooked.

Also, not tracking their expenses, so they put the budget out and then they don't track it. They don't know how much we actually spent. A funny example, I was working with a couple and they had some exorbitant amount, like $900 on Amazon purchases. And it's like, okay, so what did you buy on Amazon? And it's like, I don't know, we weren't really, but we started tracking it and we're seeing now that's not maybe in alignment with what we want, so now we can move in to saying, here's maybe our cap for a month, or here's the things that are important for us to buy.

And then, lastly, as it relates to our lives, there's this saying, it's kind of industry lingo, we call it lifestyle creep. And basically what that means is as you get raises, as you progress in your career, it's really easy to justify spending more money on the car, on the big things, the house, or whatever, but also just more lunches out. More time, Chic-Fil-A or Chipotle sound really good right now and I don't feel like making anything tonight, so let's go swipe it, no big deal. But those little purchases really start to add up over time. And so if you're not real diligent to say, okay we're making this amount of money, what are our values? Coming back to that mission statement, and saying, how do we spend this new money? Should we put it towards goals? Should we put it towards something more important? Because if you don't, that creep is just going to continue on and you're going to spend more and not realize that you spent it.

Trisha:

If somebody were wanting some help on creating a budget, where do they go?

Chad:

Talking with a financial professional is a great way to start, especially somebody who does more in the financial planning aspects to help you get everything all on the same page.

Trisha:

Thank you so much for joining us.

Chad:

Absolutely. It's my pleasure.

Trisha:

Up next, we'll have a round table with our executive producers and we'll talk budgeting apps. We'll be right back.

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Trisha:

Start two devices synced automagically.

Everyone:

Automagically?

Hannah Heinzekehr, Executive Producer:

I wish people would not say things like that.

Madalyn Metzger, Executive Producer:

I see what you did there and it's not quite as clever as you think it is.

Hannah:

I see what you did and I don't like it at all.

Trisha:

So, for our life hack section, I invited our executive producers and producer in to the studio and as you can tell, we had some fun at the beginning and then we get down in to the serious stuff. Our executive producers being Hannah Heinzekehr and Madalyn Metzger, and then our producer, Sara Alvarez. Each one of us took on the task of testing out and reviewing a budgeting app each. Some of us did two, but most of us reviewed one. And our conversation and fun continues with the most prepared review from Madalyn Metzger.

Hannah:

Madalyn actually prepared for this assignment.

Trisha:

I think we all prepared, we just didn't all type out our answers.

Madalyn:

Well, I decided to review, You Need A Budget, which is, most people refer to it as YNAB, which feels weird to me to say it out loud, but that's ... anyway. I found YNAB to be kind of similar, I think, to Mint and Personal Capital, which Hannah, I know you took a look at Mint. Trisha, did you look at Personal Capital or was that-

Trisha:

No, I have Pocket Guard. Which is really hard to say. Pocket Guard. Yeah.

Madalyn:

So, the theme for today's round table discussion is words that are hard to say.

Trisha:

Words that are hard to say.

Madalyn:

Basically, with YNAB, you can connect your accounts and review your transactions in real time, so that's what makes it similar to something like Mint. And you can also create reports that track your money, what you're bringing in, and what you're spending.

The way that YNAB differentiates themselves from other apps is that they have three rules or methods for budgeting that they really try to promote through their process. So, the first one is, give every dollar a job. Which is basically tagging your incoming cash. So what you're making and putting in to your accounts for specific purpose as soon as you get it so that there's less of a chance that you spend it elsewhere.

Then the second one is, setting aside money for recurring expenses that might be infrequent. I don't know how you guys do it, but I pay my car insurance every six months. It's a recurring expense, but it's not one that I have to pay every other week or every month.

And then the third is having the flexibility to roll with and transfer money around if you have an unexpected expense pop up. And all of that is supposed to help users of the app move away from living paycheck to paycheck, to actually having money set aside and living off the money that you earned the month before.

Trisha:

I think I'll go next. This is Trisha and I did Pocket Guard, and I'll go next because I think what you are saying, Madalyn, is actually very similar to what Pocket Guard is doing as well. One thing that I did notice with Pocket Guard, I had the free version, and so I think that there would probably be a few more options if I were to pay for the app, but I did not do that for this time. You set a goal with how much you want to save, it helps you track that goal and puts spending limits on different things. I don't know if I need to do a whole review, but it's very similar to what you're saying with YNAB.

Hannah:

And I will go next, this is Hannah. I looked at Mint, which was actually kind of cheating because our family actually literally uses Mint to track our budget month to month-

Madalyn:

Oh, we see now why you chose that one.

Hannah:

You know. Trying to keep it convenient. The reason we liked Mint, the reason we chose it, is because you can sync up all your accounts. It's a very easily customizable app. We can have our investments there, all of our credit cards there, checking, savings, all those things so that we can track them. And it's very easy to kind of import your own budget categories and goals so that you can tag each purchase as it comes in. And they've got a very nice, easy to use interface that will give you some nice graphics that will kind of illustrate how you're doing with each category along the way. It's one of the larger apps, so it's pretty conversant with most of the major banking platforms. I would highly recommend. As I was googling around, some people call it, "The gold standard" of budgeting apps, and I would agree. And it's very easy to pronounce. Mint.

Sara Alvarez, Producer:

I tried one that was a little bit different. Again, I'm Sara. Mine is called Good Budget. Instead of syncing up with accounts, you actually input everything, so if you're concerned about security, this is an app that you're not actually entering your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, that sort of thing. You're just typing in, when you first start to set up, your income, your account, how much money comes in, and then you set up different envelopes for what your different expenses are.

For example, groceries, gas, entertainment, you set them up exactly how you would want to label them. You set how much money you want to go in to each envelope out of your monthly income that comes in. And then, as you input expenses, you fill in the expense, mark what it's to, how much it was, and then add it to your envelope that it applies to. And so, it's more manual than some of the other ones, but it's a way to keep a budget without, digitally, without having your credit card numbers and account numbers attached.

They also have a paid version like yours, Trisha, where with the paid version you get unlimited accounts, unlimited envelopes. I think with the regular version you might get 10 of each. It seemed doable if you have a more minor or smaller type of budget, but if you have a lot, then it might be worth it to pay for it.

Hannah:

How labor intensive was it to kind of input all that information? Did you feel like it was taking you a long time?

Sara:

Kind of. They had a pretty easy interface where you add something and you can add it to any envelope, you don’t have to go in to the envelope to add it, but you can also do it that way. So they have it so you can add things in a lot of different ways. You just type in the amount, the envelope. It kind of depends on what you think of as labor intensive. If you're already entering that in to a spreadsheet, it's similar, but if you aren't doing it at all then it would seem like more work.

Trisha:

I did like the ease with Pocket Guard, with all being synced up to my credit cards, my bank account, because it could track those things very easily, and did not have to enter them in. But then, also, a con that I thought with labor intensive ... is it labor intensive? Well, in a way because you still have to look at each transaction and make sure that it's, A, correct. B, if they're making it a recurring payment. So, for instance, I have Netflix, and Netflix went up in cost, so they were marking it as the $9.99 per month, as a reoccurring thing, but it just recently went up to like $10.99 per month, so they didn't really know that that was going to be the new reoccurring expense, so that's something that I had to go back and say, okay well this is something that's reoccurring now, and so you have to just keep an eye on it, I guess.

Madalyn:

That's one of the things with YNAB that I found a little annoying, too, is that it tried to be intuitive about the budget categories based on what my accounts were telling it, and pretty frequently I had to go in and manually fix it.

Trisha:

Like the name of the category?

Madalyn Metzger:

Yeah.

Trisha:

Yeah, I had to do that as well with Pocket Guard, which was annoying.

Hannah:

It would kind of categorize it in the wrong way.

Madalyn:

It would make an assumption, like if it sounded like it was a restaurant, they would put it in the food category or the eating out category, or something. These days, you maybe could have gotten a sandwich at the gas station, although I don't usually do that.

Hannah:

But you could.

Trisha:

But you could.

Hannah:

You could, yes, or coffee.

Madalyn:

Right, and so if it looked like it came from a gas station, they might automatically put it towards your transportation, gasoline budget, rather than food or something like that.

Trisha:

Okay, so I have a for example, that I'm just looking at here in my expenses. I'm staying at a hotel here this weekend, and it's an odd name, for some reason, even though I think it's a major change, but when the transaction shows up, it's different. And so they put it under groceries because it sounded like a grocery store when in fact it was a hotel expense. So now I'm going to have to always go back and look at my expenses, so it's not making it any easier, in my opinion.

Madalyn:

And there's so many stores out there, like Target, a Super Target, or Meijer, where you might be buying personal items plus groceries, and if you want to split that cost, that's another thing that you're going to have to go in to these apps and manually either split or change because you're not always going to Target just to get toilet paper, you might be buying bananas, too.

Trisha:

Or clothes.

Madalyn:

Yeah.

Sara:

Clothes.

Trisha:

Let's just be real. Yes, clothes.

Sara:

One of the things on Good Budget, when you're entering in each of these transactions that you've made, you do have the ability to schedule. So I guess that would go towards making it a little bit easier when there's those recurring costs.

Madalyn:

Scheduling those recurring costs, that's actually a new feature that YNAB has, as well. I should have said earlier, this is actually my second time trying YNAB. I had tried them a few years ago, and they didn't have that feature. So that is an improvement, I thought. I could help it be a little bit better about knowing what was coming up and knowing what was in my budget.

Hannah:

If Mint has a drawback, I will say that sometimes when the app decides to update itself, I don't know if you any of you all noticed this or if you had your apps long enough to go through an update process, but sometimes it does mess up some of the connections to the accounts and you have to go back in and clean those up. That might be a thing with any app, though, when they're updating their background information that you're going to have to watch that. It can be a little sneaky if you don't realize that it's happened.

Madalyn:

And sometimes, I think it's not the app, that I don't think it's always the app's fault. Sometimes banks will automatically break links because they want to make sure-

Trisha:

That it's secure.

Hannah:

That it's secure. Yes, that's true.

Madalyn:

I will say that some of you tried free versions of your apps and that there was an option to do a paid version. YNAB is not free, and it's, in my opinion, it's not cheap, either. It costs about $84 a year, but you can try the first month for free. So that is something to take in to consideration.

Hannah:

That's a serious eyebrow raise.

Madalyn:

Yeah.

Trisha:

We all raised our eyebrows for that one.

Madalyn:

And I think, for YNAB, they also have online forums and video tutorials you can access, so that's probably part of what they view as a value-add that's worth paying for, if you're into that sort of thing. If you're a do-it-yourselfer and don't really want to go to an online forum to ask questions, then maybe that's not really a value add.

Trisha:

It just goes against every fiber of my being to pay for a budgeting app. You're trying to create a budget to focus on your spending, save money, and then you have to pay for the app? I don't know.

Madalyn:

Yeah. I'm kind of the same way.

Hannah:

Especially if there comparable things out there, for free.

Madalyn:

Yes.

Sara:

Yeah, the way Good Budget handles that is when you go to their subscription page, they actually say, "Subscribers say they save an average $1,758."

Hannah:

That's part of their marketing.

Madalyn:

That's a very specific amount right there.

Sara:

It is, right? And then they have the prices right under that, which are significantly lower than $1,758. It's $17.99 for three months.

Trisha:

The final question is, have these apps changed your mind? Are you going to start using an app for your budget or are you going to stick with Excel sheet, for instance, or not a budget at all?

For me? I don't think I've been converted to using an app. Maybe I need to try something else like Mint or YNAB, just to get an idea, but I don't, I just don't know if I'm quite there yet.

Madalyn:

I feel the same way. I did like that it helped get things set up quickly, because let's face it, if you're using an Excel spreadsheet, yeah it takes a while to set it up to calculate what you want it to calculate and show you what you want it to show you.

I think I probably would not make the switch at this point, unless it was to something more like what Sara tried.

Hannah:

Well, so we already do use Mint, and have made the choice to do that, but I will say it hasn't completely replaced an Excel spreadsheet for us, either. We use it throughout the month. Both my husband and I have access to the same database so we can kind of see how our spending is tracking in different categories. Are we ahead on restaurants? Are we having too much coffee this month? Do we need to scale back? But, we still build most of our budget and kind of do a round up at the end of every month still in Excel. So, I don't know. I think we'll always probably use a combination of tools, and an app is maybe one of those.

Sara:

I think one of the nice things about an app is that it's in your pocket. And so, especially if you're using an app like Good Budget, where you're having to manually enter things in, or if you're entering things in anywhere, having it as an app, you can do it on the spot. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how I want to set up my budget. I think Good Budget kind of makes me want to do it, and Mint, also, because I like the convenience aspect of that one, so I'm still thinking of how I'll want to set it up. I'll be getting married soon and so I would want something that both my fiance and I can access. And whether that's a spreadsheet or an app, I kind of think I'm leaning toward an app right now.

Trisha:

Interesting.

Hannah:

Convert.

Trisha:

Well, I hope that this conversation's helpful for those who are listening. Obviously, we're still on the fence on a lot of things, but it's always good to try things out.

Smart Living, Simple Money is a podcast of The Mennonite and Everence. I'm your host, Trisha Handrich, with executive producers Hannah Heinzekehr, Madalyn Metzger, and Sheldon Good. Our producer is Sara Alvarez. Voiceover by Jeff Shafer. Sound producer by Norm Sohar. Thank you to our intern, Jace Longenecher. Graphic design by Jena O’Brien, and thank you to Greg Yoder for our music at the beginning and end of the podcast.

All recording is done at Everence.