These husbands went from broke to financially successful. Now they want to help you.

When John Schneider and David Auten were just a year and a half into their relationship, they learned that they had a combined $51,000 in credit card debt. Though they had both worked in finance for nearly 15 years, their “over-the-top, fabulous” lifestyle was leading them to a future where they’d never own a home or have any retirement savings.

“It was that kind of kind of slap across the face that said, ‘Get your financial you-know-what together, if you really want to have any sort of life that you really will enjoy in the future,’” Auten told LGBTQ Nation. Together, they created a plan and paid off their debt in three years.

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But many of their friends were similarly spending above their means to appear successful, and it was then that the couple realized that almost no financial firms or advisors geared their messages towards LGBTQ+ people. To fix this, they self-published a book, began a social media presence under the name Debt Free Guys, and launched their Queer Money podcast to offer financial advice to queers of all income levels.

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The now-husbands have just launched a new video series with Yahoo! Finance called Living Not So Fabulously, in which they talk to LGBTQ+ community leaders about their own financial journeys.

LGBTQ Nation spoke to the couple about their work, the financial issues most common among queer people, and how the LGBTQ+ community can superpower its own financial influence.

(The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

How did you two realize the importance of queer representation in financial marketing and advice?

David Auten: [When] we confessed to each other that we had $51,000 in credit card debt, we kind of had that realization that … we were having lots of fun in the moment, but we were not saving anything for the future. So that was the first step.

[But] we knew so many other people in our circle of friends and in our community who were … [also] spending way more money than they were making…. It was clear that we were all spending to live a certain lifestyle.

So when John and I finally started to get together an idea of what to do, it was first, “Let’s write a book.” We self-published, but we were actually trying to publish it with a traditional publisher, and they said, “Nobody’s going to read your book, it’s just not going to sell because nobody knows who you are.”

So that’s when we started blogging and getting into the personal finance space, and realized that there wasn’t anyone talking to the [LGBTQ+] community, and we kind of felt like that was our responsibility.

John Schneider: That’s why we’re super excited about the unique show we’ve created in partnership with Yahoo Finance, because they’re the biggest platform out there for financial news and market news. We’re really hoping that that captures the attention of the community and sort of acts as a threshold into having the broader discussion about anything from paying off debt, improving your credit score, all the way up to investing and saving for retirement.

Who are some of the people you’ll be talking to on your show?

David Auten: Last week, we interviewed Todd Sears. He’s the CEO of Out Leadership. He was the first financial advisor to really break into serving the LGBTQ+ community space as a financial advisor. Within a year, he had over $100 million of assets under his management, and that caught the attention of Merrill Lynch and caused Merrill Lynch to invest $3 million into the LGBT community…. We also interviewed Michael Selditch, a director. He just premiered his new movie, Happy Clothes.

We already published an episode with Patrick Riley, a field producer for Oprah Winfrey… By 2022, his emergency savings were depleted because he wasn’t getting as many jobs [during the shutdowns of 2021]…. On top of that, then he had a house fire, completely lost everything. So he talks about the struggle of not having adequate emergency savings at that point in time because of decisions he made, he didn’t have adequate homeowners insurance. He talks about how he overcame all that.

Another episode that I’m excited about is an interview with Ruth Jacks. She’s an executive at Wells Fargo… She went from being a homeless single mother to becoming an executive at one of the largest banks in the world, and just how she got there and overcame all her struggles, psychological and real, various challenges to get going from destitution to the successes she’s had.

We are kind of focusing on those individuals that we look up to in our community… to reduce the shame that many of us have around … the things that we’ve done with our own finances.

You’ve worked extensively with LGBTQ+ people across the nation. What are the most common financial issues they face?

David Auten: For two years in a row, we did studies with The Motley Fool where we surveyed 2,000 LGBTQ+ folks…. One of the startling statistics that came back was that, in 2023, 72% of people surveyed said they were dealing with a high amount of financial stress.

Our community is [also] struggling to keep up with the cost of living. [During the shutdowns], 56% of LGBTQ+ folks said that they or someone in their household had either lost their job, been furloughed or had their hours reduced, compared to 44% of non-queer people. So as a queer person, you were more likely to be in that situation where your household was struggling financially.

And what sorts of needs are you seeing among those of us in the community who are a bit more financially well-established?

John Schneider: One of the biggest issues highlighted from our study was that only 10% of respondents either a will or an estate established — that’s, like, 90% of us who don’t have that established… Every person needs to have a will or an estate established. Otherwise, the state’s going to figure out what to do with what is left over, or your family … and you might not have that great of a relationship with your family,

A lot of us don’t get the benefit of inheriting money … because we’re LGBTQ+, we’ve been ostracized or kicked out of our house or our family, so that money doesn’t trickle down to us. It’s exactly the situation that’s going to happen with David here when his parents pass away.

So how are we going to build generational wealth and keep that money within the community… so that the LGBTQ+ folks coming up behind us can start off maybe on a better foot than we did?

David Auten: For folks who do have money and have saved for retirement, there’s a big question mark as to where we can safely retire. We live in the Midwest, and if we don’t want to retire in the Midwest, where do we go? We don’t want to go to Florida. We’re definitely not going to go to Alabama or Louisiana.

There’s this question mark of, “Where can I live, where I can be me, where I can be safe and I don’t have to worry?” As we start to check the boxes of where we can live, all of a sudden we go to states and cities that are becoming more and more and more expensive. That means that what we have saved doesn’t go as far, [and we wonder,] “Am I going to outlive my money because I’ve been forced to live in a place like San Francisco or L.A. or Palm Springs?”

You two have also stressed the importance of using queer wealth to create positive social change. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

David Auten: On average, LGBTQ+ folks, 20 million of us living in the United States, we’re going to donate about $20 a year to LGBTQ+ organizations by the end of our lives — $20. We spend more than that on cocktails on Friday night, right? That is really putting in place all these roadblocks for the community.

Right now, a well-funded, well-heeled group of people on the far right have been building up a warchest of billions of dollars for the last 50 years… They have invested this money, and now that money is growing, and the growth is paying to build this army of lawyers and politicians and organizations that are fighting against us.

Whereas we do a lot of pass-through: We donate to a charity, and that charity immediately spends the money, right? So we don’t have the power of the stock market behind us. So John and I are encouraging, especially individuals who have a little bit extra, to start setting up donor-advised funds so that we can use the market growth as a catalyst or as a fuel to help us be able to fight against those organizations that are trying to take us down as a community.

Some businesses are getting targeted or shamed on social media for supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Others have begun rolling back their DEI commitments. What does this trend mean for the average queer worker or consumer?

John Schneider: I think that in time, the blowback will dissipate…. There’s too much data out there to show that inclusive and accepting workplaces have more ingenuity, more creativity, and there’s actually correlation to a bottom-line growth. Any CEO or business leader who cares about bottom-line growth needs to care about their LGBTQ people and all minority groups if they actually want to create a better organization.

What’s probably going to happen is they’re going to [re-introduce] these DEI efforts, but they’re going to call them something else… they’re not going to start necessarily discriminating against people just because of the blowback.

Our community needs to have sort of a soul-searching moment, because up until maybe last year or the year prior, we were having a lot of discussion accusing brands of “rainbow-washing” [by mainly supporting the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month], and then as soon as they get some blowback and start to roll back some of those efforts, now we’re saying, “Well, where’d you go?”

David Auten: If you’re a CEO or an executive, and you care about the pipeline of growth for your company, you look at the data and you see that 20% of millennials identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community, nearly 33% of Gen Z identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community, you have to be thinking to yourself, “We cannot not tap into that those billions or trillions of dollars that are going to be spent.”

We will maybe have to hold [CEOs] hand to the fire … to start showing that they care about the community…. I think, in the next couple of years, we’re going to see a lot more talk around, “How do we identify companies that are walking the walk, instead of just talking it?”

What makes you feel more optimistic about the LGBTQ+ community’s ability to consolidate, grow, and effectively deploy our influence?

John Schneider: I’m hopeful because I see what’s happening at the association levels and the movement trying to get more queer folks into the decision-making hierarchy in corporations. Organizations — like Out Leadership, Reaching Out, Lesbians Who Tech, Out in Finance — these kinds of associations and groups are organizing around whatever industry they have in common outside of being queer….

I think that that’s going to happen more and more for our community, and we’ll see more queer folks rise in the ranks across America … [and] be in places to be able to make decisions that are beneficial to folks in the community.

One of the things that John and I talk about is something called “cascading homophobia.” … If I’m a gay man and I want to get hired, promoted, or be on a particular project, and the person who is able to make the decision … may have to answer to their boss … [who has] shown themselves to be overtly homophobic or transphobic, the decision-maker is stuck in the middle: “Do I make a decision that benefits the person that I really want to have the job but is gay, or do I listen to what my boss says and protect myself?”

That homophobia oftentimes cascades down to queer individuals not getting the promotion, not getting hired, not getting the project where they get to shine. So, if there isn’t that kind of somebody looking up and saying, “I don’t care what you say, I’m going to promote this person,” like the rest of us would for each other, then we don’t progress right? We don’t make better, bigger paychecks; we don’t have the financial strength; we can’t share it with the community.

So I think that’s one of the things that [feels[ really optimistic: All these organizations are focused on how we as a community can become more powerful as employees, as consumers, as individuals, and the decision-making as that starts to happen is where we’re going to start to see real progress in the community when it comes to our finances and our outlook for the future.

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