Q1. Hello, can you please introduce yourselves? Readers would love to know more about the two of you.
Nigel- Absolutely! Thank you for speaking with us! I’m Nigel. My wife and I wrote The Happy Giraffe Budget which talks about our experience of creating a completely new way to budget and manage money. I’m sure we’ll talk more about that later though.
We have 3 kids and it seems like most of our time is spent just trying to keep up with them!
Laura- I feel like we are pretty boring people… Nigel has a 9-5 job, I’m a stay at home mom, we live in Utah, we play board games for fun… but then I think about our 19 years of marriage as a whole and we’ve had some exciting and challenging experiences along the way. We’ve lived in 15 homes, Nigel graduated from 2 different universities, we had miscarriages and a stillborn, traveled, filed bankruptcy, owned a restaurant, wrote a book, created a non-profit, we drive an electric fiat that looks like a coke zero car… that definitely makes us sound more exciting than we really are.
Q2. What were the key challenges you faced while writing your book “The Happy Giraffe Budget”?
Nigel- Well I’m pretty sure I was Laura’s biggest challenge! I wrote a lot of the guts of the book. My writing style is really boring though. So she had her work cut out for her, to turn what I wrote into something people would want to read.
The other big challenge was that neither of us are really writers. I deal with spreadsheets and finances for work. So just getting this all written down and organized was a big task. I would go to local writing classes to learn, but it was obvious that I didn’t fit in. Everyone else was in love with writing. I just wanted to write this one book. But we worked through it. Laura’s work is really what made the book amazing.
Laura- I’d say my biggest challenge was just finding time to do it! When we started this project, I had three little kids and a thousand responsibilities. It was hard to find time that I wanted to spend on editing a book. But we had this idea that we really felt like it could help others, so we wanted to share it. That and seeing Nigel work so hard and have this dream encouraged me to eventually make the time to write it.
Q3. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
Laura- My parents are amazing teachers. They didn’t teach school, but they taught us in our home and taught us at church. My dad taught seminars at certain points in his career, too. I remember that my dad was going to be teaching a seminar in Las Vegas on my 12th birthday, so my parents took me with them on the trip. As the 6th of 8 children, it was exciting to get my parents to myself, even if it was to sit through business meetings all day! But I watched my dad captivate a room full of businessmen/women and professionals. He was entertaining and exciting, and yet informative and helpful. Even I was interested in what he was saying! I realized that using words could be powerful, and that I wanted to do that, too. To be able to change lives with my words.
Nigel- For me it was high school english with Mr. Lyons. He made reading and writing so incredibly interesting. Well written works had so much meaning and…power, as you put it. We analyzed poems and books of all kinds. I’m always grateful that he taught in a way that opened up a whole world of thinking differently.
Q4. What inspired you to write the book “The Happy Giraffe Budget”?
Nigel- I’ll let Laura talk about how we came up with the Happy Giraffe name! In the book we tell our story about how we failed at budgeting many times until we had this idea that ended up working really well for us.
As we talked to other people and looked around, we realized that we had come up with something very unique. I couldn’t find anyone who managed their money or did a budget like we did. We also realized that a lot of people struggle with budgeting. It’s hard to figure out! So we started to feel like it was really important to write this book and help others learn from our experience.
Laura- Like Nigel said, we just really want to help people. We felt like we had experiences that helped us overcome the battle of budgeting and we wanted to share that with others. My grandpa would say “leave people better than how you found them” and I try to do that in my life. Finances are so hard, and I was once so terrible at them. I know how this one aspect of your life can affect everything! If I can help even one person figure that out and live a better life, then it was all worth it.
In processing through how to do that in the most interesting way (because let’s face it… budgeting is not interesting!), we were drawn to the format of “Who Moved My Cheese,” where it’s an almost childlike story and then you pull principles from it. Being that giraffes are born awesome, it seemed like the best animal to use as a main character, and the rest fell in place after that.
Q5. I understand the book is linked to a nonprofit? Tell me how that came about.
Nigel- Yeah! That’s a little different! As we got close to finishing the book we were talking about how to get this out into the world. How do we publish the book and how do we follow it up with teaching and helping people?
We found that most people who teach about budgeting actually charge a lot of money to do it! That felt really wrong to us. These are people who are already having financial troubles. They need help, but it seems like the wrong time to take more money from them.
So we decided to create a nonprofit and help as volunteers. Which has been such a great decision. The hardest part has been convincing people that the help really is free! We have free spreadsheets and everything else people need on HappyGiraffe.org.
Laura- It’s true… we’ve had friends encourage us to charge for our spreadsheets or our services, but that just doesn’t seem right to us. Plus, there’s this cool feeling when you find out how many thousands of people have downloaded your spreadsheet or how someone has been affected by reading your book, that makes you want to keep working and keep helping. Those rewards wouldn’t seem so empowering if they had a dollar sign attached to them.
Q6. What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
Laura- This is not a good question for me… I actually hate self help books! Actually, I think the only one I’ve made it all the way through was by Brene Brown, so let’s go with her. John Bytheway and Hank Smith are also authors/teachers that have greatly influenced my teaching style, and therefore my writing style.
Nigel- Apparently college text books have had the most influence on how I write! I just want to get the facts all out there. No fluff. I liked school that way. You just study and memorize!
Q7 What’s your favorite spot to visit? And what makes it so special to you?
Nigel- I love Reno and Carson City, Nevada. That’s where I met Laura. I was working a summer job and I installed the satellite dish for her and her roommates. Best summer of my life! I came home broke and married!
Laura- I love Carson City/Reno/Tahoe as well. But not because I’m a romantic like Nigel… I just love going to my favorite childhood hangouts and restaurants, and seeing my favorite people.
Q8. On what platforms can readers buy your book?
Nigel- The physical and ebook versions are on Amazon. We just released the audiobook version too! We did that one a little differently so it is also available on Barnes and Noble, I was really excited about that one, and lots of other places.
Ask your local library to get it! We made it cheap for them so more people could have access to it.
Q9. What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given?
Laura- I don’t know if it was advice as much as reprimanding, but when I was in 6th grade my best friend ended up going to a different middle school than me. This was back in the 90s, and sagging your pants had just become a thing, and trying to fit in as an awkward 12 year old, I made an effort to sag my corduroy pants and show off a bit of my plaid boxers. The next time I hung out with my friend I told her about what I had done. She simply looked at me and said “why?” That simple question to my simple mind threw me that day, and I’ve tried to consider it with everything I do since. Why am I doing something or acting a certain way or living a certain way? And if there’s not a good, healthy, answer that involves respecting me and respecting those around me, then I try not to do that thing. Obviously I’m not perfect at it, but I do try to govern my life by the simple question of “why?”
Nigel- That’s a hard question. I like what Laura said! A big change in my life was when I realized that money wasn’t going to fix everything and it isn’t the measure of success. A lot of people have told me that, but I’m glad it eventually sunk in just how true that is.
Q10. What’s next for you? Are you writing more books?
Nigel- I think this was our one book! At least for me! I’ll keep my day job. But I’m hoping to keep growing the nonprofit and help people budget happier! I’m ok that it doesn’t make us any money at all. It’s nice to have something to work on that feels meaningful.
Laura- I agree, maybe not more books… unless we do some type of kids book version. I’d love to help kids understand money better, too. But next is starting up our classes for the non-profit and just moving forward with our crazy lives!
Buy The Happy Giraffe Budget on Amazon
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