--- title: "Budgetdog, the personal finance educational program, uses Whop to accept payments and run ads" slug: budgetdog excerpt: "With Whop handling payments and advertising, Brennan can focus on the mission. " customExcerpt: "With Whop handling payments and advertising, Brennan can focus on the mission. " featureImage: "https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/budgetdog2.png" featured: true status: published publishedAt: "2026-06-11T09:04:00.000Z" updatedAt: "2026-06-11T11:00:58.000Z" createdAt: "2026-06-11T09:05:34.517Z" tags: - { name: Case studies, slug: seller-stories } - { name: "#Payment Processing", slug: hash-paymentprocessing } authors: - { name: Keisha Singleton, slug: keisha } - { name: Colin McDermott, slug: colin } --- # Budgetdog, the personal finance educational program, uses Whop to accept payments and run ads ## Key takeaways - Budgetdog teaches that the real goal isn't wealth but the freedom and security that financial control provides. - Combining an automated system with active accountability coaching helps students stick with financial change. - Whop powers Budgetdog's payment acceptance, flexible financing, and advertising so Brennan can focus on his mission. Brennan Schlagbaum was a CPA living in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he and his wife Erin started building what would become Budgetdog: a personal finance education program built on the belief that the goal isn't wealth, it's the freedom that comes with it. A decade later, Budgetdog is a USA Today national bestselling brand, a podcast, a coaching program, and a business that has helped more than 3,200 families take control of their finances. Now, Budgetdog runs its sales and advertising through Whop. Here's how Brennan built Budgetdog: and how Whop keeps it moving. ## "We don't talk about money" Growing up, money was never discussed in the Schlagbaum household. So like nearly half of all college graduates, Brennan left with a heap of debt, and very little idea of what to do with it. But what Brennan *did* have was a CPA qualification and a job at Deloitte that gave him more financial literacy than most people would ever have access to. He began to apply his professional expertise to his personal life. Instead of accepting that it would take 20 years to pay off his debt, he and Erin built a system to eliminate it much sooner. Over five years, they paid off not just the college debt but two cars, an engagement ring, the bed they slept in, and their mortgage: **$304,000 in total. **By year seven, Brennan and Erin weren't just debt free, but financially free. Brennan had hit a net worth of $1 million on a standard six-figure salary. ### Making the private public Remember, Brennan hadn't been taught any of this growing up. There were no money talks around the dining room table, and he knew the same could be said for millions of other people. It was Erin who convinced Brennan to take the leap. *"Just do it,"* she kept telling him. *"You love what you do."* [Budgetdog](https://budgetdog.com/) was born. ![nico the dog](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/nico-the-dog-1.jpg) *Nico - the namesake of Budgetdog* He didn't even put his own face on it at first. The account was named after his dog, Nico, and the first post was a side profile of Nico's face. *"I had no idea what to name this,"* Brennan says. *"I was not a very public figure. Like I was not very public. I like to stay private, keep my details private. But I just did it one day and the rest was history."* The account took off, and by around 5,000 followers, he swapped Nico's photo for his own. ![budgedog instagram](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/budgetdog-insta-1.png) What followed was two years of building Budgetdog alongside his day job, with a personal deadline in mind: 12 consecutive months earning at or above his Deloitte salary online, and then he'd leave. Brennan was on month 10 when Deloitte made the decision for him. They pulled him aside, told him they knew about the account, and gave him an ultimatum: stop running it, or leave.  *"Is this a conflict of interest?"* he kept asking. They never gave him a clear answer. After a week and a half of back-and-forth with HR, Brennan handed in his notice. *"If you're just going to tell me I can't do something, I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it very well." * ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/image-11-1.png) The same week, he and Erin paid off their house. Three weeks later, their first daughter, Logan, was born. *"It felt like I was on cloud nine,"* Brennan says. *"And then October happened and reality set in – holy s***, now it's on me."* ## The Budgetdog method The Budgetdog program is built around three things: track your money, grow your money, protect your money.  Practically, that means three financial statements every person should have: a budget, a balance sheet, and an amortization schedule. A budget tracks your cash flow: money in, money out. A balance sheet maps what you own against what you owe. And an amortization schedule lays out the debt payoff timeline: principal, interest, and exactly how long each debt will take to clear.  Once those three things are in place and automated, everything falls into place.* *Brennan says*:* > *"If something is automated*, *you're taking out the human component, the emotion side, and you're bringing in almost a robotic type of way that's just easy for everybody once you set it up."* Upon joining Budgetdog, students go through a six-month coaching engagement that maps out their personal financial roadmap, sets up the automation, and holds them accountable to it. Daily check-ins for the first 30 days, twice-weekly group calls with Brennan personally, and a student success team actively engaged throughout. Brennan is direct about why the accountability piece matters as much as the system itself.  > *"There's shame, there's guilt, there's avoidant behavior around money. If you don't have somebody walking you through that, especially in the beginning, it's why a lot of people stop or quit."* He compares it to the difference between joining a gym alone and having a personal trainer. > *"I can give you the exact food you need to eat. I can deliver it to your home. I can show you the exact workouts. You still have to show up – but it's pretty hard to lose in that situation."* ## Accepting payments and running ads with Whop Selling a high-touch coaching program at scale requires more than a good product. It requires infrastructure that can handle volume, convert at checkout, and remove every possible barrier between a prospective student and a purchase. Brennan already had a payments partner, but kept hearing about Whop through his network. > "It felt like everyone was using Whop. I was like, all right, let's check this out." Now, Budgetdog accepts payments through Whop, sending clients a [checkout link](https://whop.com/blog/create-checkout-links-whop/) that takes them straight to a payment page where they can pay in full or choose a [buy now pay later](https://whop.com/blog/buy-now-pay-later-on-whop/) option. For Budgetdog, this is crucial. The people Brennan is trying to help are *frequently* the same people who struggle to get approved for financing. *"I help people with bad financial situations," *he says. *"If you have the money to pay but can't get approved, that hurts both of us."* For a program built around fixing people's finances, getting them through the door in the first place is part of the job. ![Video thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/whop-bnpl_thumb.jpg) [Watch video](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/media/2026/06/whop-bnpl.mp4) But what Brennan found in Whop went beyond the product. From the start, his customer success manager was actively looking for ways to help Budgetdog grow: making introductions, solving problems, connecting him with a hire. > "Whop Account Managers are almost like consultants. For a business owner who doesn't have a lot of people they can lean on, that's really valuable." Budgetdog also uses [Whop Ads](https://whop.com/blog/watch/whop-ads-launch/): Whop's advertising infrastructure that gives sellers access to agency-tier Meta ad accounts, first-party attribution through Whop's own pixel, and lookalike audiences built from real buyer data across the Whop platform. And, as a business on Whop, Budgetdog also has access to [Whop Cards](https://whop.com/blog/watch/cards/): a Visa card that lets businesses spend their balance instantly, with 5% cashback on Whop Ads. ## Budgetdog: bigger than money ![Brennan and family](https://storage.ghost.io/c/12/7b/127b828b-bdc2-4972-9cf2-de857df9c324/content/images/2026/06/brennan-and-family.jpg) Brennan has a phrase he comes back to often: it's bigger than money. The goal was never to make people wealthy, but to make them financially secure, so they could focus on what actually matters to them. *"I'm trying to get people to a place where they don't need much. Where you actually experience fulfillment, happiness: what life's about. That's really what we're trying to get to."* That mission requires infrastructure that works without him having to think about it. Whop handles the payment acceptance and the advertising, which means Brennan can get on with the mission: teaching people that financial freedom isn't about how much you have, but what you no longer have to worry about. Brennan took the leap. Now more than 3,200 families are financially free because of it. Whatever you're building, Whop gives you the infrastructure you need. **[ Build with Whop](https://whop.com/network/)**