Julian Kohlbrand has an economics degree, she spent years helping other people buy houses, and she and her husband still found themselves $107,000 in consumer debt before they turned 30. What made it worse than the number itself was the shame that came with it, the sense that she “should have known better.”
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying something you refuse to name out loud. It is not the weight of the thing itself, but the weight of holding it alone. Julian Kohlbrand knows that exhaustion well.
If you have ever avoided opening an app, dodged a conversation with a partner, or quietly decided that your financial situation is too embarrassing to say out loud, this one is for you. Kohlbrand’s story is not about a lack of financial literacy. It is about the gap between knowing something and living it, and about what happens when you finally stop pretending the gap does not exist.
Early in the conversation, Kohlbrand described the debt taking shape gradually, not through luxury vacations but through ordinary choices made under real pressure: commission-based paychecks, a 2008 economy in freefall, and a determination to see family even when the power bill was due. “Those little bills start to add up, those late fees and all that stuff,” she said. “And then you put it on a credit card and then you’re balancing balance transfers, and then the interest shows up.” It is the kind of story that rarely announces itself as a crisis until, suddenly, it is one.
Knowing the Math Doesn’t Mean You’ll Use It
Kohlbrand studied economics in college. She understood compound interest. She had, in her own career selling real estate, walked clients through the terrifying total-cost-of-a-mortgage disclosure form, the one that shows what a house actually costs over 30 years. None of that knowledge stopped the debt from piling up.
“I definitely knew about the compound interest and that stuff, but it was one of these things in my mind that I was like, we’ll figure it out,” she said. “That’s what we kept telling ourselves. We’ll figure it out.”
That gap between knowledge and behavior is the real subject of this conversation. Financial literacy is not a vaccine against financial trouble. Life happens in real time, with real emotional pulls, and the math almost never wins the argument against “this matters to me right now.”
Kohlbrand’s econ degree, ironically, taught her almost nothing about personal finance. She studied macroeconomics, banking systems, and supply chain management, subjects she found genuinely fascinating, but nothing that resembled a household budgeting class. “It wasn’t necessarily a structured, this is how you create a household budget,” she said. That mismatch between what schools teach and what adults actually need to know about money is common, and it left Kohlbrand with theoretical knowledge and no practical framework for applying it under pressure.
The Shame Wasn’t About the Money. It Was About the Story She Told Herself
Kohlbrand did not just carry debt. She carried a specific belief that she was supposed to be immune to it because of her education. That belief turned a financial problem into an identity problem.
“For me, it was, I had this education and I knew about the compound interest and I knew about the interest rates on credit cards and these late fees and all this stuff,” she said. “And I was trying so hard to adult and keep it together, especially in my early 20s. And so I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to ask for help because I quote unquote should have known better.”
She described the feeling as a backpack she could not set down, one she carried to work, to bed, to time with friends, all while trying to maintain the appearance that everything was fine. Amy Stone, host of The Art of Imperfect Adulting, pointed out that shame like this is often rooted in expectation rather than reality: the belief that everyone else has this figured out, when in fact debt is common and widely hidden.
Kohlbrand had even absorbed conflicting money scripts as a child, including her father’s warning, “never a borrower nor lender be,” alongside an economics professor’s advice to put everything on a credit card and pay it off monthly. Neither piece of advice included instructions for what to do when the plan stopped working. The silence around that possibility, more than the debt itself, is what fed the shame.
Marriages Run on Money Values, Not Just Money Math
The debt was not only Kohlbrand’s problem. It belonged to her marriage, and her marriage had its own complications layered on top of the balance sheet. She described herself as the planner, someone who grew up valuing security and savings. Her husband’s instinct, shaped by his own upbringing, was closer to “spend it as fast as you can before someone comes to take it.”
For a while, Kohlbrand tried to manage both approaches quietly, protecting her husband from the full picture while attempting to keep the household afloat. “It just became really, really heavy,” she said, describing the moment it stopped working as “all those plates in the air” until “there’s just shattered pieces everywhere.”
That collapse became the turning point. Kohlbrand and her husband agreed to what she called ripping the Band-Aid off: an honest, shared reckoning with the debt and, more importantly, with the fact that they had never actually aligned on what money was for. “We’d rather be married than have this lifestyle that we thought we needed to maintain,” she said.
Saying It Out Loud Was the First Real Step
Once Kohlbrand and her husband faced the debt together, the next step was harder in a different way: telling other people. She started with her husband, then moved to her parents, then to friends. She told her family they would not be exchanging gifts for a while. She told friends that dinners out and concerts were off the table for a season, and asked whether there were other ways to stay connected that fit a tighter budget.
The response surprised her. “Once we finally raised our hand and said, hey, we’re in a financial disaster, other people said, me too, me too, me too,” she said. Saying the number out loud did not erase it, but it changed what it felt like to carry.
“It didn’t fix the problem immediately, but it made me feel so much better to just finally say like, okay, this bag, this bag of rocks, this bag of shame and weight, I’m leaving it here and I don’t want to pick it back up again,” Kohlbrand said.
From there, the practical steps were straightforward, if not easy: building an emergency fund so new expenses stopped landing on credit cards, and defining, specifically, what counted as an emergency versus what counted as a want dressed up as a need. Kohlbrand described the process with a line that has stuck with her ever since: “It’s like plugging the bathtub and not letting the water continue to drain out when you’re trying to fill it up.” It took six years to pay off the debt. It has taken longer than that to fully unlearn the instinct to hide financial stress instead of naming it.
Communication with her husband did not stop once the debt was gone. Eighteen years into their marriage, Kohlbrand says budgeting has become something closer to a game they play together, one she describes as “the biggest game of would you rather.” They are now teaching the same habit to their 7-year-old daughter, framing spending decisions as trade-offs rather than restrictions. It is a small shift in language, but it reflects a larger one in how the family approaches money: less about deprivation, more about deciding what actually matters.
Kohlbrand, who was later diagnosed with ADHD, has since become a financial coach who works with clients navigating similar struggles, including many in the ADHD community who face the same gap between understanding money and managing it day to day. Her family made a deliberate choice to stop using credit cards altogether, a boundary she compares to not keeping alcohol in the house of someone in recovery.
Debt is common. Shame about debt is common too, and it thrives specifically in silence. Kohlbrand’s story is not a tidy formula for getting out of six figures of consumer debt, and it does not pretend financial education alone will save anyone from a hard season. What it does offer is a simpler, more useful idea: the backpack gets lighter the moment you say what is actually in it, out loud, to someone who can help you carry it. That is not a strategy. It is a starting point, and for a lot of people, it is the one they have been avoiding the longest.
This article was inspired by an interview with Julian Kohlbrand and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen or https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Debt: Interview Transcript Julian Kohlbrand with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | August 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:00]:
This is The Art of Imperfect Adulting. I’m your host, Amy Stone. I share stories from real people who have already been through some hard stuff.
Speaker B [00:00:09]:
Why? So that you don’t feel alone while you’re busy figuring out your own life.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Let’s do this. Hello, friends. I am excited to be here with you today. My guest is Julian Kohlbrand, and we’re going to talk about Debt and choices. Julian, welcome to the show. Are you ready to have a fun conversation?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:00:30]:
Yes, I’m super excited about this conversation.
Amy Stone [00:00:34]:
I know. I love that you’re so excited about this.
Speaker B [00:00:36]:
What—
Amy Stone [00:00:37]:
start with the same question for all of my guests. What part of the world do you call home? Part 2 of question 1, what’s something you love about where you live?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:00:44]:
So I am outside of Seattle, Washington in USA. Um, I, the place that I have lived here my entire life, so I love— I sometimes forget how amazing this place is. So I like to reconnect with that every once in a while. But the thing that we absolutely love here living in Western Washington is summertime. It is the time everyone calls out sick and the sun is out, or if you are from around here, the mountain, Mount Rainier, is out, and it is just such a beautiful place to be. So the summertime is really amazing. Some of the other months we tolerate so that we can have a beautiful summer.
Speaker B [00:01:24]:
Boomer here.
Amy Stone [00:01:24]:
But yeah, I hear that. That is a great answer. All right, here we go. Which generation description matches you? Silent Generation, Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:01:37]:
So I— this is such a good question. I had this conversation with my parents because I am in between Gen X and Millennial, so I’m in that Xennial, I guess they call it, stage. But every single person in our family, we have skipped a generation. So, um, it’s been— so a lot of us are older, older parents. So I became a parent later in life. So I have— what is it? What’s after Gen Z? I think it’s Gen Alpha now.
Amy Stone [00:02:05]:
Alpha, maybe. Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:02:07]:
Yeah. So I think this is— and I used to work with a lot of Gen Z. So, um, I, I have a hard time answering this question because I’m right there in the middle of you, depending on which, uh, years you use. Um, I was born in 1982, so we’re right there in that. I remember not having the internet, but I also remember some other amazing things about growing up without all the extra things of life that we have now.
Amy Stone [00:02:33]:
So do you ever take those quizzes online about, you know, you know, personality traits related to the titles? Like, you know, you, you might be Gen X if XYZ. Do you, do they match you or do they not? Because you’re, you’re on the—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:02:48]:
I’m a little bit more on the old school side, so So I would probably say a lot of my thoughts and beliefs and things like that are a little bit because I was raised by boomers. Okay. And so I am a little bit more on the old school side, if you will, than some of the— yeah.
Amy Stone [00:03:09]:
All right, that makes sense. So it’s super funny because I could talk about it all day, but I had never, until you said it, made the connection that it depends on how old you are when you have your kids, whether they are the next generation or if you leapfrog over. So I’m Gen X, my stepkids are millennials, and my kids are Gen Z. So, but I had never, never made that connection until right now. All right, here we go. Conversation today, not actually about generational titles, believe it or not, kids. All right. We’re going to talk about debt. And I love that Julian said that she was excited about this conversation because that’s not usually the emotion that comes up when talking about debt.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:03:52]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:03:52]:
But before Before we do that, let’s back up a teeny tiny bit because part of your story is about, um, about you and your origin and stuff like that and choices. Let’s talk about school and education. Share with us what you studied in school.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:04:09]:
Yeah, so I got my degree in economics. Um, growing up, you know, my parents kind of the, the old school generation there of, you know, teaching you how to manage your money. And it was the thing that made sense to my brain. I tried a whole bunch of other things. I tried political science. psychology. Couldn’t even find my psychology class the first day, and I was like, this has got to be an experiment. I’m like being, you know, I’m being tested right now. So I finally undecided and then picked economics because it was the thing that made sense to my brain at the time. And so graduated with a bachelor’s in economics.
Amy Stone [00:04:44]:
One of the things that I love about economics as an academic study is that I think of it as math. Yet it is humanities. And I would like to discuss that with the people who make these separations. I actually— my economics class I took was like econ for people who don’t want to take math class. Like, so I took it. It was like, it was like they were like, it was like there were graphics and photos and, you know, it was not a—
Speaker B [00:05:12]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:05:12]:
It was not a math-heavy class, but very cool. Okay, so what job or profession were you thinking about When you came out with your bachelor in econ, were you thinking you’re gonna be an econ teacher? Like, what is the career path for an econ major?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:05:27]:
Yes, that’s exactly it. I wanted to be— I wanted to be Dr. Jules. I wanted to be an economics professor.
Amy Stone [00:05:33]:
And did you go— did you go into grad school?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:05:35]:
I did not. Okay, I did not. I went into real estate actually right out of— right out of college. So because I came— I came back home and I was like, All right, I need to get a job because I was still living at home and I didn’t want that to be my forever plan, and neither did my parents. So, um, yeah, I found a job in real estate and I started out as the office manager, just like that’s what I was just gonna do to, you know, build up some savings and get out of the house, and then bought our first house then.
Amy Stone [00:06:05]:
So, okay. And what, um, it’s not— if— tell me to buzz off if this is too private, but what was it that made you decide not to go back to grad school and pursue Dr. Jules?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:06:19]:
Um, one of it was the financial side of it. I didn’t want to, um, I wasn’t completely sold out on the idea. Um, and that was a stage in my life where I was like, okay, like you growing up, going to college was super important. Um, and so that was something that I was focused on. But then I got to that, I got, you know, I got that bachelor’s and then it was like, what do I do now? Um, kind of the thought process of pile up as much money as possible before you pass so that you can give that to your loved Mm-hmm. And so I, uh, yeah, I wasn’t totally, totally sold out on the, the idea of becoming a professor. I knew I didn’t want to teach middle school and high school at the time, which is really funny because another part of my story, I ended up, um, spending a lot of time with middle school and high schoolers in schools, but, um, it’s a different, different, um, vocation. But, um, I knew I wanted to do some type of teaching and, and, you know, imparting knowledge on the next generation.
Amy Stone [00:07:15]:
Oh, I love that. My in-laws were both middle school, junior high school teachers. Super interesting. I’ve never— there’s no part of my origin story where I wanted to be a high school or middle school teacher. It really kind of just was not— I have a lot of respect for teachers. I think it’s a very, very hard job. And it always looked hard to me.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:07:35]:
Always.
Amy Stone [00:07:35]:
And so when I met them, I remember, you know, early on in my relationship and my marriage, like, they loved it. They loved being around middle schoolers. And I remember thinking to myself and making a joke of But I was like, you would have to pay me millions of dollars to go back and spend time as a middle schooler or in a middle school. It’s just like, you know, it’s a very specific environment. But my mother-in-law, she loved it. And she’s just, you know, so, you know, praise be, right? You know, she’s like, thank goodness there are people out there that do that. But I thought of that when you said you knew that you didn’t wanna be in high school or middle school. And, you know, ’cause it is, it’s a very specialized time. Yeah.
Speaker B [00:08:17]:
All right, so you thought you were gonna be Dr.
Amy Stone [00:08:17]:
Jules. You’ve got this econ degree, you’re looking down the road, and you’re like, I’m not sold if this is the way to go. I have a question about the curriculum that you had as an econ student in college, and then what we’re going to talk about today. Was there part of the economic studies that you were doing that was about personal finance, instruction curriculum on budgeting, debt, like on the personal side? Was that part of the econ major at all?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:08:53]:
No, it wasn’t. Not like very, not very specifically. I would say like, you know, the overarching topics and just, you know, this is what you have and this is what you can do with what you have. And then if you need more, you make more or you don’t overspend. There’s no such thing as free lunch. You know, some of these, these things that we hear, you know, throughout life, but it wasn’t necessarily a structured, this is how you create a household budget and this is how you create, you know, income to pay your bills. skills and that type of stuff. So, um, yeah, I always think that’s very interesting what is taught, whether it’s in, you know, elementary and secondary school and then college. And it’s just one of these things that we’re— we feel like we’re supposed to know how to do, but it’s never really spelled out and taught in a very practical way.
Amy Stone [00:09:43]:
Yeah, I did have in a math class at some point, there was an assignment where we we were clipping coupons and pretend shopping, right? Like, and, and like, it was, it was a ledger, like a checkbook kind of thing.
Speaker B [00:09:58]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:09:58]:
I remember that assignment. One of the funny things, like, this is not a— this is that I have shifted. So I’m 52. I used to like have this category of things that I was like, I don’t know that they taught that. And now I openly admit that it’s very possible that I was daydreaming or talking in the back of the classroom for some of this stuff. Because, you know, like, that’s just sort of the way it is. Is, you know, they have a whole lifetime of experiences being like, wait, did they say when this meeting is? Like, I don’t know. And they’re like, yes, they said you were gabbing in the back, Kim. And I’m like, oh, okay. So, you know, that’s maybe they talked, maybe they offered it to me at some point. I was like, just not paying attention. Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:10:38]:
But yes, I’m forever a great student talks too much in class. So I just, that is, you’re in good company.
Amy Stone [00:10:45]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, it does get in my own way. So I will definitely say it. But every single time my children came home with reports that they talked too much in class, I was like, I’m preaching to the choir. I know the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. The, so econ then was not really a study of personal finance and budgeting. It was more of, what is it then? Theory of how money moves or?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:11:12]:
Yeah. And then just overall banking systems. And so, you know, how the, you know, treasury works and and things like that. Like, it was, um, so there’s micro and macro. So there’s, you know, the supply of goods. One of the things that I found super interesting, and especially, um, during the pandemic, I really saw it come to affect day-to-day life, was the supply chain management side of things.
Amy Stone [00:11:37]:
Oh.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:11:37]:
And that was super interesting. I had one professor that, uh, he was really passionate about that. And so I thought that was a, a, a study that I was going to go down. But, you know, plot twist changed my mind. How goods get from, you know, the manufacturer to, to the consumer.
Amy Stone [00:11:55]:
Yes.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:11:55]:
I think that part is very interesting because, you know, there’s so many things that, you know, play into that— the what the item is, how much it weighs, you know, what makes sense. Amazon has figured it out. And so I’m like, I wanna, I wanna go work there and find out. Like, I wanna see. I just think it’s so interesting how things go from point A to point B, um, in the most efficient way possible.
Amy Stone [00:12:16]:
It’s gotta be totally different than in the 1980s. Like, that’s gotta be—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:12:21]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:12:22]:
And I had never heard of— like, now I know a bunch of people who specialize in supply system construct. You know, they’re like engineers of those system kind of things.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:12:32]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:12:32]:
But I had never even heard of that until, you know, say the past 5 or 7 years. All right. So the reason I was digging in so much to the background of this is that it It, it, it parlays into our conversation. Um, you end up with over 6 figures in consumer debt. So, yeah, share with us what— because I think I know this, but I don’t want to assume. Share with us, what does consumer debt mean?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:13:03]:
So anything that’s not your first mortgage. Okay. So not your, your primary mortgage. So, um, cars, credit cards, you know, personal loans, medical debt, um, student loans. So ironically, um, only $2,500 of that was my student loan. So I did— I was really lucky that, um, part of my— most of my college, my parents said, we’ll pay for 4 years. Um, because, well, this is kind of a crazy little weird story. I— my mom entered me in a baby contest, a photo contest back in the day, and I won. And that annuity that prize was an annuity, and that grew to a large amount. So it paid for my college and part of my sister’s. But my parents said, hey, for 4 years, we’ll pay for 4 years of college. And then after that, I got an opportunity to study abroad. So that was what my— I had to pay for that last quarter of school myself.
Amy Stone [00:13:58]:
So that is— that’s exactly my same story. I wonder if that is a generational thing, because that was my— my parents were like, 4 years, we’ll try and pay for that. And, and when I, when I went to college, tuition was much, much, much, much superlatively much less than it is today. But they were like, and then, you know, then you’re on your own. I don’t know if people still do that today because it is a totally different math equation. But I did my last year of school study abroad and I, you know, like, and it was, and it was, you know, my parents were like, this is a once in, you know, this is the only time in your life you get to do this. It’s worth taking on the debt for it. I wasn’t sure when I asked you, when I wrote this question, I wasn’t sure if student loans counted in this formula because, you know, mortgage, they don’t count that in there. Funny story about debt. So I graduated in the ’90s. When I signed the note for that loan, I was really, really nervous.
Speaker B [00:14:54]:
Mm-hmm.
Amy Stone [00:14:54]:
And my dad, this was on the phone because we were in different states, I think it was on the phone, and my dad said, he’s like, don’t worry. You know, it was 8%, and he was like, this is the lowest interest rate you’ll ever see in your life. So that was, I graduated in ’95, ’96, and the interest rates, like, they tanked for like the next 20 years. Like, it’s never been that high ever again. But my dad, having lived through the ’70s and ’80s, he was like, you’ll never, this is the lowest, you know? It’s like, oh my God, that’s so, it’s just so funny how like things change. Anyway, I don’t know, maybe it’s not a funny story. I think it’s funny because it involves my dad. All right, so.
Speaker B [00:15:31]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:15:32]:
$107,000 in consumer debt. I’m gonna, shift to talking to you about the shame attached that you attached to this. Yeah. But first, I’d love for you to tell as much as you’re willing to share, like, yeah, you know, um, how did you run up that bill? So $2,500 of it was study abroad. Um, yeah. What, what other kind of stuff was in there?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:15:56]:
So, um, a second mortgage on the house. It was cars, it was credit cards, and it wasn’t like we were taking these, you know, I know Amy, you love to travel. We weren’t taking luxury vacations around the world, you know, going to Fiji and stuff like that. It was my, um, we lived here in the Seattle area, and my husband, um, his family is in Northern Kentucky, and as well as his oldest daughter. And so we would travel to go back and see them. But at the time, I was in real estate, and so it was super easy because it was feast or famine. It was right— well, that was like 2006, 2007. So we all know what happened in 2008, and that’s when—
Amy Stone [00:16:35]:
The correction.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:16:35]:
It really Yeah, that’s when everything went real sideways for us. But, um, because once he got out of the Navy, he was selling cars. So we had 2 incomes that were dramatically based on, um, commissions, some big factors in the— yeah.
Amy Stone [00:16:51]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:16:51]:
So, and big factors in the, in the economy, you know, the overall economy. And so, um, things changed a lot for us. But it was just like, I would get a paycheck because I had a closing, and then We prioritized our money differently. Instead of paying, you know, getting the power bill paid, we were like, we’re gonna go see family. And, and it wasn’t because we didn’t, um, we didn’t know what to do. It was just really important to go see family.
Amy Stone [00:17:18]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:17:19]:
And so it got us— it— so that stuff, you know, those, those little bills start to add up, those late fees and all that stuff. And then you put it on a credit card and then you’re balancing, you know, balance transfers, and then the interest shows up. And so it was a lot of little things that just got way out of hand.
Amy Stone [00:17:37]:
And, um, that snowball, that avalanche, if you will, it just, it just, it came for us.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:17:44]:
It just came for us.
Amy Stone [00:17:45]:
Um, that is so interesting. So, I mean, as somebody with, we talked about the curriculum in economics. Did you, like, did you, did you know about compound interest and the formulas? Like, I mean, and obviously you were dealing with mortgages. You were helping people buy a house. You were making them sign on that form, that scary— the scariest form you’ll ever sign in your entire life, which is the form where they show you what you’re actually going to pay, what you will have paid at the end of 30 years or however long your mortgage is.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:18:21]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:18:23]:
It’s a giant number. It’s not the number on the MLS form. So you knew about that, but that was basically what you were doing. You were like prioritizing life today and sort of kicking it down the— not really paying attention to the impact of interest and late fees and that kind of stuff.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:18:44]:
Yeah. I mean, there was— I definitely knew about the compound interest and that stuff, but it was one of these things in my mind that I was like, we’ll figure it out. That’s what we kept telling ourselves. We’ll figure it out. Yeah. And so, yeah, we’ll deal with that tomorrow. We’ll figure it out because this is really important today. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:19:00]:
Okay. Yeah. And there’s another version of that that people run into, right? Which is emergency expenses where that choice is forced on you. It’s like, I have to do this today. I can’t do this other thing, right? So that’s not what we’re talking about today, but that’s another time when that story shows up in storytelling.
Speaker B [00:19:19]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:19:19]:
So, okay, so you— that’s how you made this decision. That’s how you ran up the bill. How long did it take to go from You know, 0 to 6 figures in, in debt?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:19:33]:
You know what? I don’t actually know how long it took. I know how long it took us to get away from it. Okay. Yeah, that was 6 years.
Amy Stone [00:19:42]:
So it took you 6 years to get away from it. Okay. So you describe that you had some shame attached to this. Um, and part of that is because you had this educational background as, um, in economics. Shame is a super complicated emotion. I think, um, I’m not an expert on it, but share with us, if you will, what was, what was going on with the shame? How did it feel? Um, do you have any idea where, what was, what was the origin of the shame feeling?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:20:13]:
Really, really good question. And you’re right, it is very a, uh, it’s a big thing. And especially around money. For me, it was, I had this education and I knew about the compound interest and I knew about, you know, the interest rates on credit cards and these late fees and all this stuff. And I was trying so hard to adult and keep it together, especially in my early 20s. And so I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to ask for help because I quote unquote should have known better.
Amy Stone [00:20:44]:
Wow.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:20:44]:
And that was the, that was the thing that played over and over in my head. And so I didn’t even want to share it with my husband at one point because I was like, he was leaning on me because I was the, I was the expert at the time. And I was just like, okay, this isn’t working. And he had, you know, he was putting his trust in me that I was making it happen. And then it just, it just became really, really heavy. And I think that’s the best way to describe it is that it just felt like I had put on this backpack that I couldn’t let go of. I carried around with me everywhere. I carried it with me to work. I carried it with me to bed at night. Um, activities like, you know, hanging out with friends. And so then you’re trying to maintain what you think the rest of the world should think that your life should look like.
Speaker B [00:21:34]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:21:35]:
And you’re also carrying this backpack around that just— you just get exhausted. And so one day I said, we can’t, we can’t do this anymore. Like, this is— we have to, we have to rip the Band-Aid off. We have to figure this out and get rid of this because this is not, um, this is not how I envisioned my life to be. This is not how I want my future to be. And So we got to figure it out, babe. We need— I want to be married to you, and I want to, um, I want to, I want to figure this out. So we decided, you know what, we’d rather be married than have, you know, this, this lifestyle that we thought we needed to maintain. And so we just got to work on creating a plan and getting rid of, getting rid of that debt.
Amy Stone [00:22:15]:
Getting rid of the debt. I think that you said some stuff there that’s really very important. Um, you know, happiness is, and it sounds like shame, happiness is so closely tied to our expectations of what we think should be happening, right? So—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:22:32]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:22:33]:
If we think it should be a sunny day on the day we have a picnic planned, we are more likely to be upset if it doesn’t go that way, you know? Like, so as opposed to, and obviously we don’t have control over the weather, right?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:22:49]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:22:49]:
There’s always the potential. And so that expectation, right? And then today, and this has always been true, but now because we’re bombarded with highlight reels from so many other people, you know, the pressure of comparison and the, I think I’m supposed to be like this, is another dangerous way to see that, like, mismatch. And it sounds to me like you’re saying that it’s similar with the shame. It’s like, I was supposed to know, right? Like, it’s expected that I know. And other people are not having this similar experience, which is so funny because intellectually, right?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:23:31]:
Yes, right.
Amy Stone [00:23:32]:
As somebody who studied economics, you— or just lived as a human being, you probably knew somewhat that, you know, consumer debt and credit card debt, you know, short-term debt.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:23:42]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:23:42]:
It’s a big thing in the United States of America. Like, people borrow a lot of money and we—
Speaker B [00:23:47]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:23:48]:
And then they cannot pay it. it, you know?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:23:50]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:23:50]:
Um, and so here’s a, here’s a throwback question that ties back to education and your origin story. You, you knew and understood the concepts. Had anybody ever given you like, um, direct tips or statements that were like, hey, don’t put something on a credit card that you can’t pay for in 25 days? Like, had people given you those tips, or had that not been a part of your Um, the biggest one that I had—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:24:20]:
so 2 things that, that still stick out in my mind. My dad said, never a borrower nor lender be.
Amy Stone [00:24:25]:
Okay.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:24:26]:
And that plays over and over in my head still to this day. Um, and that was, that was something that he said a lot when I was younger.
Amy Stone [00:24:33]:
Okay.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:24:34]:
And then, um, so that, that played— so that probably did, not because he intended it to, but the way that I received that played a little bit into, um, How I applied that to my life. And, and, you know, and I, I applied that, that statement. Um, and then I had an econ professor that said, just put everything on a credit card and then just pay it off every single month.
Speaker B [00:24:56]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:24:58]:
Yeah. Which, if you’re going for reward points, yeah, but you have to be able to pay your bill. The, so then did that result with that lesson from your dad? Did that turn into, um, I, I’m afraid to speak up and tell anybody that I didn’t follow this instruction.
Speaker B [00:25:15]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:25:15]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:25:17]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:25:17]:
And you mentioned that you were at one point even nervous to tell, talk to your husband about it. Did you guys have, and did he, I mean, did you guys share information openly about the budget? Was he unaware of how much debt you guys had, or was it just, you know, like what kind of, how did you guys parse this in terms of who does what in your house? Was there like an information wall?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:25:41]:
Um, we, I mean, we talked about it, but it was some of this like, okay, I’m gonna, you know, I’m the problem solver. I’m going to figure this out. Um, he, this was not his skill set whatsoever.
Amy Stone [00:25:52]:
Okay.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:25:52]:
Um, his money philosophy growing up and, um, and up until, up until we decided that we needed to fix this was spend it as fast as you can before someone comes to take it. And so, um, we had me that was like taught security, you know, and having some savings and planning for the future was important. Um, and then him just wanting to just, you know, slam on the gas, full spend, full send on, on all of the money. And me kind of just going, okay, like, I want to honor him and not make it feel like we’re so restricted and that he is going to, you know, go off the rails. But also knowing that security for me was going to be important, and it was just balancing all of this stuff. And then it just I guess, you know, the best analogy is all those plates in the air.
Amy Stone [00:26:42]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:26:42]:
And then all of a sudden there’s just, you know, there’s just shattered pieces everywhere. And that was kind of, that was that moment for us that it just all came crashing down, that this, that our current system of managing our money wasn’t, wasn’t working.
Amy Stone [00:26:58]:
Yeah. So a through line in a lot of the stories I tell is that there’s like an undercurrent of a slow build, like stuff is happening. But it doesn’t have the attention. Right. And then many stories, not all of them, many stories of transformation have a moment where it becomes— and moment in like quotation marks.
Speaker B [00:27:18]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:27:18]:
Because it can be like a week, a year, a situation, right?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:27:20]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:27:21]:
Where it becomes unignorable. Right. Like you can no longer— you can no longer look away. And that’s, that’s what you hit the point where you had— you were juggling all these things. The other thing I’m hearing in your story is that even though this is a story about debt and money and relationship, there’s, you guys had almost like a money values misalignment.
Speaker B [00:27:42]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:27:43]:
That, and, you know, and bringing that together. And we talk a lot about, in relationships, there’s a lot of talk about values alignment and in family and stuff like that. But I don’t know that people always extend that out into spending and borrowing behavior.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:27:59]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:28:00]:
You know, maybe they do. Maybe they do. It’s like you said. All right. So, um, okay. So how did you work through the shame?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:28:06]:
Um, I started talking about it and it was just kind of like, I’m gonna drop this backpack and I’m going to, I’m gonna, I’m gonna leave it here. And I started talking about it. Um, obviously I started talking about it with my husband and then, um, you know, other people in my life that I, that I trusted. And, um, and I think that’s the thing that our culture because it’s one of those things we’re not supposed to talk about. And then that’s, for me, was added to that shame is that, okay, if I actually say this out loud, then it becomes real and then I have to do something about it. And so it was like, okay, well, we’ll push it off till tomorrow. But saying it out loud was such a relief. It didn’t fix the problem immediately, but it made me feel so much better to just finally say like, okay, this bag This, this bag of rocks, this bag of shame and weight is— I’m, I’m leaving it here and I don’t want to pick it back up again. But we have to figure out, um, a plan to eliminate this because this was not, like I said, not how I wanted to live my life and not the kind of person I wanted to be. Not the kind of wife I wanted to be, but the just human in general. I was like, this just sucks, for lack of a better term. I was like, it was just— Horrible. And so, um, starting to talk about it with the right people, um, you know, and even just saying, you know, sharing it with my parents that I was like, yeah, we’re not in a good spot. And so we even started, you know, with our family said, we want to work on this so much that we’re not going to be giving gifts. So we don’t expect any gifts right now. Um, but it’s really important. This is such a high priority for us to make this change in our life. We’re not going to be doing a lot of extra things because we want to tackle this head-on and just be done with it. So starting to communicate with the people in our lives, especially talking about relationships, that we had to change some of our social relationships too because they were around going out to eat and stuff like that. And basically, it was kind of like a spending— oh gosh, what’s the term? It’s like a spending competition socially. It wasn’t necessarily— we don’t say that, but it just kind of happens. And so a lot of the clients that I work with, that’s something that they really struggle with because they’re like, I want to maintain these relationships with these people, but our thing that we do is we go out to eat or we go to concerts or we do these other things. And it’s not about not doing those things. It’s what’s important to that relationship.
Amy Stone [00:30:44]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:30:44]:
And if it’s spending the time with the people, maybe it just means, hey, communicating for this season right now. That’s what we did with our friends. We said, hey, right now this is— we can’t do this, but why don’t we do something else that’s a little bit more, you know, friendly to our budget and to our goals and still maintain that relationship? So—
Amy Stone [00:31:03]:
I was watching a Friends rerun a couple weeks ago. I just was on— I don’t even know if I watched the whole thing or if it was a clip that was served to me, but it was an episode For, you know, the younger audience, Friends was a show in the ’90s.
Speaker B [00:31:17]:
Of course.
Amy Stone [00:31:18]:
And I have a group of friends and some of them had jobs and one of them was an actor and one of them worked in a coffee shop. Anyway, they were out to dinner and there was this sideline conversation where Rachel and Joey and Phoebe were like, oh my God, why do they always want to go to these expensive restaurants when we don’t have any money? And so, you know, it’s a sitcom, so it was like worked out in a Sure. Magical, perfect way. But, you know, that does happen in friend groups where people have different, different, you know, life stages, different spending stages, different priorities, different things. And, and, you know, they don’t always line up. They don’t always line up.
Speaker B [00:32:01]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:32:01]:
So the first person you talked to, was that your husband or did you, did you talk to somebody else?
Speaker B [00:32:07]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:32:07]:
The first person you talked to was your husband. Where did your dad fall into the list of people that you were finally able to talk to about this? Since he had— you had that memory of him being like, don’t do this.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:32:18]:
Yeah. And I mean, in all fairness, too, when it came to buying our house, that was the big expense that took that big chunk was that second mortgage because we didn’t have any money to put down. And my dad was a big encourager of that because, one, we need to live someplace. And so that was part of that generational long-term wealth-building thing. I mean, as far as like, you know, the lending and the borrowing type, you know, aside, like there was, there’s some caveats to that. Um, you know, car payments and things like that were not part of the equation, at least that I was taught growing up. And so, um, having that conversation with him, because I didn’t actually know how much we had racked up until, um, I, till this last couple of years when I sat down and looked at everything. So like we would, you know, knock out chunks at a time. And so I didn’t know what that full amount was. And when I actually sat down and added everything up, I was like, I can’t believe it was that bad. And no wonder why.
Amy Stone [00:33:21]:
No wonder it felt so—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:33:22]:
it was, yeah, so heavy. Because I mean, that’s a, that’s a decent amount of money.
Amy Stone [00:33:26]:
You know, it’s a huge amount of money. Even with inflation, it’s a huge amount of money. That’s super interesting that you didn’t add it all up because that is one of the, like, I’m not an economist or a money coach or any of those things, but like with the money mindset coaching, um, and business stuff, one of the things that people people very often do that is to make sure you’re actually looking at your accounts and that you know what your numbers are. And it is— when people are hesitant about it, I think it comes from a bunch of different places. But for me, it has always been a very liberating feeling to just have the actual information and know what I’m dealing with. But I don’t know if that—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:34:10]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:34:11]:
I think that you’re saying the same thing. It’s like when it’s out and it’s in the public and And you can share the feeling of responsibility, it’s like, hey, this becomes an us thing instead of a—
Julian Kohlbrand [00:34:21]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:34:21]:
I’m just holding on to it.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:34:23]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:34:23]:
All right. So very good. So what impact did working through the shame and talking about your debt have on how you showed up in the world and your family and all of those things?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:34:42]:
Oh, that’s a really good question. I would say it allowed me to— once I kind of felt like, you know, if you carry a secret for a really, really long time, it starts to, um, eat at you and you start to kind of— it becomes all-consuming. And so the other parts of you start to get minimized and you, um, don’t necessarily show up as the person that you think that you are. And so, um, once I finally just like, you know, let it out and said, hey, this is, this is what we’re dealing with. Um, not only did I feel lighter, but our relationships just felt stronger and more connected. Um, because then one of the things that was so interesting— so once we finally raised our hand and said, hey, we’re in a financial disaster, other people said, me too, me too, me too. Oh, oh my gosh, that makes me feel so much better because me too. And so I didn’t realize You know, from the outside, we all look and present a certain way, and then we’re silently struggling with something, um, you know, whether, you know, it’s, it’s money or something else. But, um, once I started having those conversations, it just became— the relationships got so much stronger and better because we were able to be more transparent and open about the things that were going on in our lives versus just presenting a front that was like, Yay, everything’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. You know?
Amy Stone [00:36:13]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a— it’s a— it’s got to be something about the human experience that we, we feel very isolated in things that we then sometimes discover that people very close to us are also experiencing. It’s not always close, but it’s like there’s, there’s something about it that you have to sort of of put a bit of it out there so that you can find the people who, who are experiencing something similar. And, you know, it feels weird and cringy and icky to do it. And there are people who have an oversharing situation going on. So, you know, it’s not like a— we’ve all, we’ve all had those conversations where we’re like, wow, all right, thanks for that. But yeah. All right. So what, what if you remember was What was the very first, like, action step that you would say that you did to begin to make this change?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:37:10]:
Um, I’d say it was, it was kind of a both/and. One, we needed to have some emergency savings so we weren’t adding to our credit card. And so that’s why I say it’s a, it’s a, you know, it’s a 2, 2-part thing because we had to start, or we had to stop one thing and start another at the same time. And so, um, instead of being the credit card is the go-to for our We also had to define what a real emergency was for us because I have a weird shoe size. I’m like a 10.5. So I’m like, oh my gosh, when I find a pair of shoes on sale that are like my size, I want to get them. That’s not an emergency. But at one point in my life, it felt like an emergency that I was justified in spending that. And so we had to define what that looked like so that when we needed to dip into that Um, and not put it on our credit card that we had, we had that defined. So I’d say that’s that, that first step is just, um, plugging the bathtub and not letting the water continue to drain out when you’re trying to fill it up.
Amy Stone [00:38:14]:
And I think the undercurrent though is that there, it sounds like there was a lot of talking and communication between you and your husband.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:38:22]:
Yeah.
Speaker B [00:38:23]:
Okay.
Amy Stone [00:38:24]:
All right. That’s that. I think that’s fair.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:38:25]:
And not just one conversation. It’s, it’s an ongoing, you know, I mean, still to this day, we don’t talk about it as much because, you know, we’re, we’re 18 years into our marriage and we have figured it out. And it’s really amazing too, to see the shift in him. And he says, I mean, we’re a golf family now. And so that’s not necessarily the, the world’s, um, you know, budget-friendly sport, but that’s, you know, he’s, he’s figured out, we talk about, you know, it’s, it’s budgeting feels like the biggest game of would you rather. And so he always, he’s always playing that game in his mind, like, okay. And, but that was not how things started out. Um, but we’ve, you know, figured out that’s a, that’s an easy thing for us. And we’re even teaching our 7-year-old daughter that. And she’s like, I don’t want to do that. I want to do this though, Mom. So—
Amy Stone [00:39:13]:
The would you rather is a really good way to think about it. One of the things that my, uh, parents, I forget which one of them, they were like, they were like, they were like, buying something on sale where it looks like it’s discounted, but putting it on an interest-bearing credit card, you’re not actually like, that’s, that’s a game you’re playing with yourself. Like, that’s like, that’s like false. You’re not getting the discount. Like, you’re paying so much more. So, and I remember that lesson, like, even from a kid, but, you know, like, you know, I’ve ignored plenty of things they told me. So very good. Okay.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:39:44]:
So. We all have.
Amy Stone [00:39:45]:
In every story that I have and every conversation that I share, there’s, there’s like a question that I’ve begun to ask people because I think that it is helpful and maybe significant. One of the choices that you have made is to talk about this publicly and share your story.
Speaker B [00:40:05]:
Mm-hmm.
Amy Stone [00:40:05]:
And to give weight to that, you don’t have to do that. You could have worked on your situation, paid down your debt, done your things. You didn’t have to go public with your story about this. We don’t have to be the main character in the movie of the things we’ve done wrong. What is the— what is your motivation, would you say, to be public about this story? And, you know, the extension of that is, what do you hope that people take away from it when they hear it?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:40:31]:
Yeah, I thank you for asking that question because it is definitely— like you said, I don’t want to be the main character in my story. I want to give people hope and encouragement that, one, it’s possible in today’s day and age to not use debt debt to survive day to day. It’s, um, it’s also— you can know all of the things and still applying them to life can be very challenging. And so, um, kind of a plot twist for my life that I haven’t had— I haven’t shared yet on this, on this episode, but is the last couple of years I was diagnosed with ADHD. And once I started sharing more of that part of my story also, I realized how many people in the ADHD community struggle with money management. And going back to some of those things about, you know, I’ll do it tomorrow.
Speaker B [00:41:27]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:41:28]:
Um, you know, out of sight, out of mind. And there were so many things that even though I knew all of these things and I should have known better, applying them to my day-to-day life was so hard sometimes because you just want to live in the moment. You know that you should plan for the future. And I know how important it is to plan for retirement because I really would love to get there one day. But I need to figure out how to feed my family now, and I need to figure out how to get to work now and do those things and show up for the people in my life. And so sharing my story of not getting it right and then deciding to get it right and do things differently and giving myself permission to fail, because I still am not perfect at this. I know the things things. I still overspend occasionally, you know, and go, okay, well, we gotta rein it back here and there, you know. But I’m not, um— and one of the things that, that seems very crazy in today’s day and age, we have decided that, um, using a credit card for me was absolutely not in the cards because it felt like I was, um— it was, it was so easy to go back to that, that place. And so the best analogy I have is like, it’s like dropping off an alcoholic at a bar and saying you’re the designated driver. And I was like, this is— this has to be a boundary. And so our family, we don’t use credit cards. And it sounds really, really crazy, but we have— we have a home, we’re working on paying that off. And so, um, as far as like, you know, building credit and all of those things, those— that’s not part of our, our future plan anymore. And so, um, I think just sharing that you can do things differently than, you know, quote unquote everyone else says, or everyone else— we think everyone else is doing, um, I think it’s just so important be able to share that and, um, and that, you know, hear that you can still mess up, you can still succeed. You know what, everything is figureoutable, especially when it comes to finances. Everything is figureoutable. You’re just, um, getting the support and being willing to do the work. That’s the, that’s the, the key.
Amy Stone [00:43:39]:
Absolutely. I love what you just said because there’s a reason that this show is stories of lived experience experience and not stories of academics who’ve studied how things work because they are often different. You know, and some of my examples are, you know, the dentist who tells you that the numbing shot is gonna just be a little prick and then he sticks the needle in your gum and you’re like, oh my God, that hurt a lot.
Speaker B [00:44:12]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:44:12]:
You know?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:44:13]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:44:13]:
So then it’s happened to you and when you tell your friend who goes to the dentist, Believe it. Be ready.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:44:19]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:44:19]:
Right? Experience is not the same as knowledge all the time. They’re both valuable, both important.
Speaker B [00:44:24]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:44:25]:
But having the benefit of the experience of people is really important. Okay. So in a minute we’re gonna wrap this up, but I do want to give you a chance. You’ve talked a little bit about, you’ve mentioned people you work with, but tell folks what you do and an easy way for them to find you online, which those things will all be in the show notes and in the email newsletter.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:44:48]:
Yeah. Um, I love hanging out on Threads, especially now that I have found— I’ve found an amazing community of other people with ADHD. And, um, that has just become such a core part of what I do because, um, I mean, that we just silently struggled. And that’s what, you know, kind of finding this out about myself later in life, that there is an underlying thing that was challenging for my brain to— I understood it, but applying it. And so that’s what I love teaching as a financial coach. That’s what I do. And so Um, I also have podcast Debt Rebel, um, and that’s another place that people can kind of jump in my world and, and hear a little bit more of my story and some more practical tips. But I love hanging out on Threads, Amy. That’s how we met. And so, um, that’s just a really fun place for me. Um, that’s been encouraging to just be with other people that understand that life isn’t perfect. It is absolutely so imperfect and, um, that, that’s okay. And I think that that’s kind of the the big thing. And also, you know, like you, you know, share on your show, like, we’re all just, you know, one day at a time, we’re figuring this out. And age doesn’t matter. That’s the other thing I’ve learned. I’m like, my 7-year-old has a lot more of this stuff figured out already, and she’s asking questions. And I’m like, we joke that we’re raising a 40-year-old woman because she just has so much wisdom already. And so, um, I don’t want to just keep that to myself. Like, obviously I want her to have that, but being able to share that with other people that struggle with money, because it’s— even though I put in a, you know, put in some work and studied this and then applying it to day-to-day life is— those are 2 very different things.
Amy Stone [00:46:28]:
100%. I totally do that. All right, so very good. You have a special offer for the people in the audience, which is a financial self-care journal. It’s normally $27, um, and there’s a link in the show description, the show notes, the email newsletter, which is a coupon that I think makes it free.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:46:46]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:46:47]:
All right, very good. That is a very generous offer. I want to say thank you Thank you very much to that.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:46:53]:
My pleasure.
Amy Stone [00:46:53]:
It’s been super interesting to have this conversation with you, and I loved, like, little things were going off in my head when you pointed out the connection between how we manage money and ADHD, which is usually so tightly connected to decisions and executive functioning and behavior. But I mean, obviously, obviously those behaviors that all of a sudden my mind was like, Of course. Of course that would be a difference. Oh, absolutely. All right. So I’m gonna— we’re gonna do the wrap-up questions. I could talk to you about that all the time, but all right, here we go. Quick, quick, quick. So today information is so accessible all the time, right? You just speak a question into the air, but that’s not the same as, is it a good idea? What is a recommendation for something fun or great in the audience? It could be a good book, a podcast, a movie, an audiobook, something entertainment-based that you’ve done recently that you would recommend for the people in the audience.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:47:49]:
Oh, I love it. This is one of my, my favorite podcasts right now is Movies at Grandma’s House. It is like so nostalgic. And, um, it’s— I think it’s great, one, for just reconnecting with movies that we might have watched as young adults or kids, and then being able to share those with our kids or our grandkids, um, in a, you know, family-friendly way. And so, uh, that’s been a really fun one. I actually met, um, the Um, the show, the show hosts on Threads. And so I think that’s been, that’s been really fun is just be a fan of, of that show and, and reconnect with old movies. I love, oh, I love watching movies with my family.
Amy Stone [00:48:28]:
Is that movies? I don’t know that. Oh, that’s a wonderful recommendation. Thank you so much for sharing. That’s the reason I ask, because how else would I find out? How would I find out? Okay, now this next section, this may be a terrible question for you, actually. Right. But this is my new favorite thing cuz we do shop online, although I don’t know if you, anyway, unsupervised online shopping. Um, not in terms of a bad purchase, but what is something that you have purchased online recently that you are happy about and you’re like, oh, everybody should know about this. Could be a service, could be a product, could be a treat.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:49:03]:
Oh man. Online shopping. This is like a whole, cuz it feels like this is a whole episode.
Amy Stone [00:49:11]:
Yeah.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:49:11]:
This is a whole episode in itself, Amy. Um, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if everyone else would be excited about this, but I, I bought new golf clubs. Um, because I got, I got rid of ours, or, you know, I got rid of mine. And then our family decided we were— my daughter’s taking golf lessons. And it’s just been like, yeah, was it a little bit, a little bit of money? Absolutely. But it is just bringing so much joy to myself and our family. And so I think that’s also So what, you know, when we feel like some shame and regret about some of our purchases sometimes is like connecting with the emotion of why you bought it in the first place. Sometimes it’s good, but other times if it’s to bring you joy and to create memories and you have the money available, do it.
Amy Stone [00:49:55]:
Love it.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:49:55]:
Life isn’t about, you know, being super restricted. And I think that’s another, another piece of advice or wisdom that I’d love to impart with your audience is that, you know, it’s not about being restricted and not doing things. It’s about prioritizing your values and what matters most to you in life right now, but also being mindful of the future.
Amy Stone [00:50:14]:
So yeah, I love that. And you bought the golf clubs online?
Julian Kohlbrand [00:50:17]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:50:19]:
Love that. Love that. That goes on my list of things I learned today. Didn’t know that that was for sale. I mean, I didn’t know it wasn’t for sale online either. So like, I had not thought about it. But, you know, I was— I think of it as like, you know, you go to the golf pro store. But I love that. All right.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:50:35]:
Sure.
Amy Stone [00:50:35]:
This has been a wonderful conversation today, Julian. And I want to say thank you for being Absolutely.
Julian Kohlbrand [00:50:41]:
Thank you for having me. This has been an absolutely amazing conversation.
Speaker B [00:50:44]:
Thank you for joining me today.
Amy Stone [00:50:48]:
I hope you enjoyed the show.
Speaker B [00:50:50]:
Before I go, I want to encourage you to become a bigger part of the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching the show. That helps my stats. A request from the bottom of my indie creator heart is to please tell your friends about the show. That is the real way new people discover it. If you feel motivated, I would love it if you rated the show or wrote a review on whatever platform you are using. Please be sure to head over to imperfectadulting.com and sign up for the email community. I call this the village. You’ll get some free stuff right away, and you’ll begin to get the weekly emails that I send. This includes the links for special offers from any guests on the show and cool stuff I put together for the community. There’s a lot more going on than just this show, and the only way to find out is to get the emails. Plus, you’re busy, you don’t have time or desire to follow every single tidbit on social media, and you don’t have to because I’m happy to send it to you. If you have a story you’d like to share with the audience, I have an open application for guests, guess where you’ll find it? That’s right, on the website and in the emails. And that’s a wrap for this episode. Until next time, remember that the journey is the destination. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, not me. Well, until just now. I did just say it. But what I want you to hear today is that if your adulting journey isn’t going the way you expected, that just may not mean you’re lost. It may mean that you’re just on your way. And now the The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast and streaming video show is a copyrighted work created and produced by Amy Stone, and Amy says so. The music was written and produced by Todd Thompson at Dharma Bomb Studios. All rights are reserved. Anything expressed on this show is offered as entertainment, and the views of the guests may not always represent the ideas and viewpoints of the host. That’s me. Amy Stone does not intend. hold myself/herself out to provide professional advice or recommendations of any kind. In the end, you and you alone need to make those kinds of decisions based on your personal and individual situation, needs, circumstances, and comfort level. Yeah, it’s a little weird for me to talk about myself in the third person, but you get the idea. This is Amy Stone, signing off.