How To Save Your First $100K

Published May 20, 2022, 7:00 AM

 โ€œLower your expenses, Increase your incomeโ€ is a piece of advice we might have already seen in articles that talk about achieving financial goals. However, nothing ever comes easy when you are saving your first $100K and moving forward. In this episode, we break down realistic and attainable ways to save your first $100K, while also setting bigger goals for you.

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Episode how to Save your first hundred thousand dollars. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rights, and liver with your life. Here your host Jen and Jill. Woo woo, whoo, whoo, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jail, and today we are talking about the most difficult amount of money that you will save, your first hundred K. How do you feel about saving a hundred thousand dollars Jill, Well, if you can't tell by my little intro song, I feel excited, challenged, like I got an actual goal in mind. I think it's great, especially for those who might be finished with debt payoff. If you're not, that's totally fine. That is still a fantastic goal. But I think once we get to debt payoff, we can wonder, well, now, what do I do with all of these frugal skills that I've built and an ability to reach a goal. And this feels it feels in some ways lofty but yet also attainable, especially after having perused these articles. So I'm excited to get into it and inspire myself and inspired the first. Yes, but first our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by the Spending Symposium June through Who. So, if you guys were with us last year, you remember we had a Frugal Living Summit last July. It's in June this year. But it is four days of interviews. We have over twenty speakers with us, and we are honing in on spending. That's literally all we are talking about for four days. Why do we spend? How do we spend better? How do we optimize our spending. It's all around that aspect to try and help you either conquer over spending, feel better about spending in your budget, whatever issues you have with spending. And so it's four days just talking about that. So registration opens in two weeks and this is a free event, so be sure if you're not already on our email list, head to Frugal Living Summit dot com to get on the wait list to be the first to know when registration opens. But we are so excited. June is going to be an awesome, awesome month that caps off with this great event, and it's so fun. It's all virtual, so no worries, if you're traveling or you need to be home, you can jump on Engage as you're able. And we've got live Happy hours that have and each night, so if you want to join us live, that can happen too, but all from the comfort of your computer or your phone for free. Yes, So if you are as excited about saving a hundred thousand dollars as I am, that was a huge milestone for us to do, and I know that it is the hardest for most people. So if you want to queue up a few other inspirational and informational episodes to play after this one, we love episode one sixty five where to Save your Money, because we're gonna what we're going to be talking about today is a little bit different from what we talked about that both are kind of essential. And then episode two oh four how to transition from spender to saver, because that's a skill you're going to need if you want to save a hundred thousand dollars. But now now let's let's get into our articles for the week. This first one is from four Pillar Freedom and it's called the Math that explains why net Worth goes crazy after the first hundred k. So we wanted to put it first out why it's so hard, why it's so important, and some of the math that goes behind it. What do you think of this one, Jill? So, I have a confession to make to you, Jen, and I'm going to do it publicly on this podcast that this article opened my eyes too. We were talking a while back about our membership that we have that we get to enjoy just more relationship, more community over in that membership, and you were expressing a goal at one point that you want to help women get to their first one hundred thousand dollars in savings, and I was so on board. I'm like, how beautiful, Jen, this is amazing. You know that's that sounds so cool helping women get to a hundred k and savings or net worth awesome, let's do it. But to it kind of felt like just a cool arbitrary number, like sure, we found we were aiming at six figures. That sounds like something people might want to do. Let's go for it. I support you, and I don't think it wasn't until I read this article that there's actual math and reasoning behind that six figure number. And I really like how this particular article explains that in the beginning that they noticed this trend of people who saved their first one hundred thousand dollars. Now they're talking about savings and investments, but how they didn't really see exponential growth in that or a huge dent in their savings until they got to that six figure mark. So saving up until that point is still valuable and worthwhile, but we're not really going to see the benefit of compound interest until that one hundred thousand mark, until we see the scales start to turn. So it's not just an arbitrary number. There's a reason to aim at that number in order to see a noticeable impact in the wealth building and what our future can look like. And what a what a remarkable aim to put our frugal skill set to to be able to notice something profound for our future And it doesn't even have to be that distant of a future if we can start aiming at this now. So that's my confession and my reaction to this article that it really helps something click for me of Oh, this is why, this is why it's a decent aim. It's at that point that we really see a big shift in our ability to make more money. Yeah, I don't always do a good job of explaining why I think things are important. I just I'm really good at telling you things are important. But yeah, so it's not just an arbitrary number, but part of it is, like you do get a mindset shift because we are used to seeing numbers in like five digits, like annual salaries or like bonuses. That's kind of like five digits are kind of the max for most people. We are not conditioned to see six figure numbers. And so the first time you see a six figure number, not only does the math click, but your reality shifts as well, because it's it's a number that people don't get to until maybe later in life, until they don't have all of the time for compound interest to build. So if we can make that shift earlier with our money and our mindset and get used to six figure numbers, then the change doesn't just compound in the accounts, but it can change in our minds as well. And that's that's a big reason why that six figure number is so important. But it is also the hardest to get because of the math. And if you're in our membership, you'll see the personal Finance simplified course that we have in there. We actually have a lesson about compound interest and investing, and you can see the um it's what James clear refers to as like the plateau of latent potential. And you think that your growth is going to be this linear path, it's just gonna go like straight up. But what we see is that really it's if you zoom out, the first ten twenty years is pretty pretty flat. You're going up a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and then once you hit that ten fifteen year mark, you start to make like crazy growth. And once you hit the twenty year mark, it just it doesn't even go like you know, east west anymore. It's just going straight north like that. That line looks like it's going straight up. It's a slide. You don't want to go down right, Yeah, so it is, but you have to get through that first ten fifteen years where the progress looks pretty flat. And that's where this a hundred thousand mark is. And and we have a graph where it shows you on the path to a million, what that first hundred thousand looks like, and it's the shift is kind of crazy for anyone who has a mortgage, it's it's a similar concept. Those first few years it's primarily interest, and then the last years it's primarily principle. And yeah, you're that's not quite the way that we want to work towards wealth. But it's that kind of concept where there's a lot of heavy lifting at the front and then you just see amazing results towards the end. But even better with saving and investing than with paying down interest on your house. But with the way that they break down the math, I think it was helpful for me to digest and felt attainable. And I also liked how they gave realistic expectation for how long this would take. So they give a basic example of someone investing ten thousand dollars annually with an interest rate of seven percent. Obviously, you're not always guaranteed that this is just the numbers that they're working. With interest rate of seven percent, it would take a little over seven years for you to reach that one hundred thousand dollar mark. But I would say investing saving ten thousand dollars a year is relatively attainable for the average person. Your average salary could potentially do this. Maybe you'd have to add in a side hustle. Maybe it would take you a few years to get to that point, and that's fine too, but it also felt pretty typical, pretty average if you were going, you know, decently hard at saving that amount of money, which, again I like attainable. I like what can be sought after for the typical average person. You know, if the average household is earning collectively sixty thousand dollars, then this is possible. Obviously there are people who that's not the case and it will take longer, but recognize, you know, seven years isn't short, so even if it's ten years, fifteen years, it's still worth aiming at because, like we're describing here, you're gonna see exponential growth once you hit that mark. Ten fifteen years might feel like a long time, but let's still get after it, because once you reach that ten fifteen years, the amount of time that it takes to reach the next one thousand dollars is going to be even shorter than that. So that was helpful for me, that bite size understanding of oh, here's how I can break it down into smaller goals. Yeah, and we don't want to minimize ten thousand dollars a year for somebody who's never invested before, that's a lot. You don't have to start there. It's it's totally okay, like I'm not doing it yet. I will, I'll clarify I'm not doing it yet. It just felt like, oh, okay, in one year, it's less than a thousand dollars a month. Yeah, so you can start with ten dollars a month and work your way up. I think ten years to get to a hundred thousand dollars is a totally reasonable goal. And typically when you set your eyes on something that's ten years away, you end up doing it in a fraction of the time as well. So if you set a ten year goal, you're likely going to reach it in that you know seven point eight four that we're talking that we're seeing here, or even less. You just have to start working towards it. But yeah, so seven point eight four is what they are, and I love the I use the seven percent when I calculate retirement savings too, because a diversified portfolio will usually reach hearn that, So seven point eight four and then your next hundred k. This is the hypothetical Shannon. Shannon is our hypothetical friend who invests ten thousand dollars a year. If Shannon changes nothing and keeps investing for the next ten years or for the next like however many, she reaches her second hundred thousand dollars in five point one years. And so how does that happen. It's because of compound interest. Every time your money can build on other money, it's going to grow faster, and so that's why it always takes. When you're starting at zero, you have nothing to compound on. That's why the first hundred k is going to take the longest, and then it's going to get shorter every hundred k from there. So we get five just over five years for the to double the money essentially, and then for the next we go down to three point seven eight years, and then we go down to three years, and then we go down to a hundred thousand dollars in two and a half years. So that's over. Our hypothetical friend Shannon has gone from zero to half a million dollars in twenty two years. But that path, and you can even see right on this graph, it has not been linear. The first seven point eight four of that years was the flattest, and then we get a little bit more curve up for the next hundred k, and a little bit more curve up, and then once we get to a million, that graph just start shooting up. But I thought it was really even like for somebody that has saved it, to see those time blocks get shorter and shorter on this graph is super eye opening and encouraging, especially when I feel like my saving is kind of arbitrary at this point. Yeah. I also really enjoyed the graph that showed what growth on our savings and invest and would look like at different interest rates, because I think that's always the whole that we want to poke in this of oh, well, you you're not gonna get twelve percent interests, you're not gonna get ten percent interest, You're gonna be seven percent interest. So it's helpful to see what the growth looks like. Obviously it's less growth if it's a three percent interest, but it's helpful for my brain to see that chart. Yeah. I also liked that graph because sometimes people will use six, sometimes people will use eight, so you can see depending. I mean, the interest rate is arbitrary because you can't control it, but you can kind of see the difference. Or actually I would say, like the not big difference like how fast you're going to save, But I it's less important to focus on the rate of return and more important to focus on the rate of saving, which is kind of where we get into going through in these like these X charts, let's see yeah, and then the author just says, like the MathWorks at every level. So yeah, and the magic of compound interest doesn't tend to reveal itself until you cross the hundred thousand net worth mark, but then you get to see it at every level. Be on there. So let's talk about how to do this. What are some of the key components If we were to say this is a great aim I want to do this, how do we do it? And so Investor PDA has a really great article breaking some of that down that we're going to go through. Jen would you think so? I liked this article because it was a little different than all the other ones, Like, yes, you're going to get lower your expenses and increase your income. Duh. Every article is going to say that. But there's a few unique perspectives that I think you don't really hear about think about unless you're like entrenched in the personal finance world. So I really wanted to go through all of these two to make sure that, like you know that it's not just about lowering your expenses and increasing your income. Obviously those are the two biggest things, but there is more to it. So the first one here is the right mindset. This was actually the first one on most of the articles, which just brings like back home the point that your mindset is not just like a woo woo thing that you don't have to think about. It is something that directly impacts your ability to do the concrete actions. Um And so for most people, saving, like what I said at the beginning, saving your first hundred thousand dollars is difficult because we don't think in six figure numbers. We don't think that we are capable of those numbers, because as we have not reached them ourselves, we do not have people close to us that have reached them, or people in our outer network that have six figure savings, at least that we know of. I would argue that there are probably people with six figure savings that just don't talk about it because they think it seems like like they're being better than other people. And so I think that's another reason why we need to like expand the personal finance conversation, because if you have a hundred thousand dollars saved, you should feel more free talking about that in a way that lifts other people up and doesn't lift yourself up. And they're for sure our ways to do that. But yeah, we need to have the right mindset and believe that a six figure or seven figure net worth is not only attainable, but it is simple to achieve and it is necessary to achieve. Honestly, a hundred thousand dollars is not going to get you anywhere in retirement, so it is like minimal requirement to get to six figures, and it's just the earlier you get there, the better off you are down the road. Similar to debt payoff, saving your first one thousand dollars is not going to happen accidentally. So we certainly have to have a mindset that corresponds with an ability to do this and the why behind it, why we're doing it, that's going to keep us sustained because at best it's gonna take overset like a little over seven years, and for those of us who live on a little bit lower incomes, it's going to take even longer than that, So that's a marathon, that's not a sprint. It's gonna take a while. So we're gonna have to have a good framework in our in our thought life and how we're going to get after this goal. Of course, the next thing, like we said, it's going to be on all of these articles, but it's worth the reminder that we're gonna need to keep costs low. Again, this is gonna be in a sustainable way. This cannot just be rice and beans forever and always, because again we're talking seven to fifteen years that this could take us to get to this point, usually after we've paid off debt, unless you're combining debt payoff with savings and investing. This is this is long term, So keeping costs low but in a way that's gonna work for you long term. Some of this could mean looking at, of course, your variable expenses, your food that's a big expense every month, and so certainly making the smaller shifts like dinner at home, not eating out as much. I know it sounds relatively minimal, but over the over a year, over two years, ten years, that is going to add up to thousands of dollars of money savings that if we've got that mindset to support it can go towards that savings and investing. Looking at transportation costs, housing costs. Of course you want to look at the big expenses and the little expenses and trying to keep it as low as possible. I was just thinking, so we say it's a marathon to get to a hundred thousand dollars, but you can run a marathon in a day, Like you can run it in a day a marathon, and when you're trained, like if you're a regular runner, even if I don't run marathons, but I'm a regular runner, like I could run a marathon in a month or two, Like a twenty six point two miles, I could do that in like two months easily. Like this is like a marathon is nothing compared to this, So like think about that when you're using the terminology, like it's it's not a sprint, it's not a marathon. It's like a lifelong Like this is a hall like I don't even know marathon. Yeah, yeah, this is a training for triathle Like at the magnitude of it, like this isn't I know, like fire bloggers and like all these other people will make it seem like it's easy to save money's it is a life like journey mission. I think it's a mission. I think that's the word I'm going to go with. But yeah, so commission, yes, yeah, So, like these changes that you make in your lifestyle to reduce your expenses, is that is significant because you're not This isn't just a I'm gonna eat rice and beans for six months and sprint to see challenge myself to see how much debt I can pay off. I love that. I love that idea, But this is longer, and you need to develop a system of values based spending um and understand yourself and what you want because that's the only way that you're going to make this this type of saving sustainable. So, yes, we love these tips. We've got over two hundred of them in our Modern Frugal Living e book that I'm sure a lot of you've seen. Those are just the start, Like those are the foundation really identifying your values and creating a values based spending system. That's the goal, Like, that's the goal, that's the tool to get here. So I think I think that's like an important perspective that I like literally just came realized on the spot. The second one I really appreciated the way this one was worded. The second one is to reduce your interest burden. I appreciate this line so much because typically you would see pay off your debt, but this is like a mindset shift of why are we paying off a debt? What's the point? Like, yeah, we hear, yeah, I shouldn't have any debt. Let me pay it off. It's evil, it's not. But the reason we pay off our debt is because it is charging us interest. It is costing us to have that money. If it was not costing us to borrow that money, no one would pay off their debt. Nobody has paid off their student loans in the last two years, their federal student loans. Like nobody has done that. Well, I'm sure, I'm so sorry. If you have, I don't want to exclude you, but like most people haven't, if it's not costing you, you won't pay it off. And so the real thing that we're doing by paying off debt is reducing our interest burden. And we want to specifically focus on interest burdens that are higher than the returns that we could get through investing. And so that is a big distinction to make where there are camps where it's like I only want to pay off debt and then I'll invest or. I only want to invest, I don't want to pay off debt, or somewhere in the middle. The real point of paying off debt is to reduce your interest burden. And I like the number seven percent when calculating return like long term investment returns for a diversified portfolio, and so really anything I know David Bach of the Latte effect, he says anything under anything over five So anything over that five to seven percent, that that is a heavy interest burden and should definitely be eliminated. Anything under five percent is kind of like less pants on fire and more like sitting on hot coals sort of thing. So you can if you're thinking about maybe I should have gone with heavy things versus fire, I can't think of anything right now, but and so yeah, if you're thinking about your burden as being fire things that are above what you would get in the in your long term investment, is that's pants on fire, get rid of it, and then below is hot coals. It's definitely diminishing your returns. But it's not like you're not dumb for not getting rid of it. Like, so, we've got so many images, so much imagery happening here, picturing people hopping around the pants. I do not how where in my mind did people take their pants off? Jill nowhere? You said, if your pants are on fire, you want to get out of that. You don't want to get out of that. That would be like like like consolidating your fiery pants put the fire out, Jill, Gosh, your mindset needs to be shifted. We don't want to take the pan if we want to put the fire out on the pants because we like the pants. Okay, Well, eventually the pantsil need to get changed because so move on. The next one is invest in. Okay, and I refused to use this word. Just mean it's better than the word cheap, but I'm not using it invest in. I'm going to say efficient vehicles and products savvy. I don't know to understand what what that is, so we're not using it. So invest in efficient smart vehicles and products. So, once you have begun to ramp up your savings and investing, you've got a plan you want to make sure that you're putting your money in the smartest possible place. So they list out a few things to be considering. We want vehicles and products that are going to help us save on taxes. Some of these tax sheltered investment options include your traditional for oh one K, your traditional I r A. These are things that help to protect and buffer us from some of that tax burden. They will be helpful vehicles for investing. Yeah, it's it's it's helpful. We're not talking about cars. We're talking about investment vehicles and investment products. It's not cars on fire on fire. Yeah. So, um, I think what a lot of people miss. We we talk a lot about low cost investments. We really love index funds and e t s because they're very affordable and user friendly investment options. But people don't think about how much their taxes are. Taxes are higher. They are higher percentage quote unquote fee than any brokerage or managed fund will charge you. So that's kind of the first thing that you want to look at, and you don't get that on the actual investment that's on the account. So that's why we love the tax advantage retirement accounts, your I ra A S and your employer sponsored So those are best if you are. So we had this in our ur Q and A with our membership last night. If you have a I R A and you're maxing that out and you want to invest more and you don't have an employer sponsored plan, where do you go? Well, one of your options is if you have your own business, you can actually open your own like solo for one K or something like that. You would have to see with a W two. There there are several different types of quote unquote employer sponsored plans you can open yourself if you have like your own side hustle. You just have to see how that conflicts with what your W two employer does and doesn't offer. But if you cannot open some kind of e SP employer sponsored plan, then you go to brokerage account like a traditional regular brokerage account as your last resort. But it's going to be you're you're paying taxes on what you've already earned, you're paying capital gains taxes, you're paying taxes later. Like it's not. It's still better than a savings account for sure, especially long term, but it is taxed higher than an I R A or A for a one K you're comparable, So taxes are important. Pay attention to them. Also along the lines of investing in the right types of vehicles, the vehicle not getting not a car that you're driving, but it's what you're in, what you're invested. Second is that's amazing. Is a manager risk appropriately? I know we talk about you hear this a lot, like what's your level of risk? And sometimes we don't know, but generally it's gonna be considering how much time you have, how old are you, how much time do you have until you retire. That's going to dictate some of the risk that you might take. But also how much you know about the investment. Do your own research. Don't just take the information from one per person who's doing something that sounds too good to be true. I know I know way too many people and I'm not going to say what it was or who it was, but just invested in some very risky because it wasn't even something to be investing in, didn't know much about it, just knew that someone who sounded kind of smart is doing this thing, and so like I might as well do it too, and lost a lot of money. And that's not just unlucky. That's like we didn't do our research. So that that's what we mean when we say manage dress. You know what you're investing in, and know how old you are and how much time you have yes to be investing. So I was listening to Scam Fluencers the podcast and they were talking about this Hollywood scam which ended up being a Ponzi scheme. But essentially the guy was taking investments from his friends and then instead of investing it into the actual business he said he had, he was paying off earlier investors and that's a that's a Ponzi scheme. And they were saying in the podcast that people invested their life savings into this, like everything they had parents, grandparents, friends, because this person they thought was their friend, this person they knew, they just thought they trusted. And I was so sad because this. Obviously, investing in businesses is a great way to get a higher return than the stock market, but the people that do that know that they could lose everything. Like venture capital funds expect only twenty of their investments to like make back a return. They just expect those to make back all of the percent of losses. Like that's how it works. You have to have money to lose if you're going to get these bigger gains from these like obscure investments. If you ain't got the money to lose, do it in a safe, safe space. Um, and for all that it's worth, the stock market is a safer space than so many other types of investments, especially if you are in a well diversified have a well diversified portfolio. So that's uh, that's what I learned from scam fluencers this week. Uh. The next is to maximize employee benefits. And so first we think of the matching on the four oh one K, which is always something you should get, um, I think. So we have like a chart in our membership in the investing lesson that gives you savings plans for a hundred thousand, like a five, ten and fifteen year plan, and I think the ten year plan, one of the tenure plans is just it's five eighty five a month and you could do five in I RA A and eight five in your employer sponsored plan and typically that's gonna be like they'll match that too, so it's gonna be you'll get to it even faster. But yeah, so take that for sure, But there are other employee benefits that can help you as well, such as discounts at places. They'll help you lower your expenses. Health savings accounts. This is a great thing if you don't have maybe an employer sponsored plan, but you do have a high deductible health care plan through your employer that has a health savings account, because this can be used kind of exactly like a four oh one K, but with a a little more flexible, much lower limit, so you can save like pre tax just like a four oh one K, and you can use it throughout your life on any qualified medical expenses. But if you don't and you use it like a four oh one K, then um, at gosh, I think it's fifty nine and a half. I could be wrong. I think it might be seventy. I don't know. Check my math, check my facts. It converts to a regular retirement account, so yeah, that health savings account is a great option if you have access to that and not like a four oh one K or something. But but yeah, maximize your employee benefits and whenever you're looking for new jobs to increase your income, compare employee benefits as well. Like ask to look at their four oh one K plan and look in the investments inside of it, see what the fees are on them, ask about their health savings account options like these are things that are also going to impress whoever you're interviewing with, because it means you know your stuff. These last two I'm going to combine because I think that they can go hand in hand. And also, you've heard of this, you know this. This is just your friendly reminder to create short term goals and generate additional income. We are going to be far more likely to get at big, lofty goals if we break them down into bite size, manageable, attainable pieces that allow us to experience winds along the way, celebrate, see the successes, see that we can do it, build our resilience, have muscle memory. Break it down into short term savings goals, and when those savings goals, even in the short term, feel a little bit too beyond your reach, generate additional income. I mean even if they're not beyond your reach, generate additional income because then you can reach all those short term goals faster. So, whether that means talking with your current employer, changing jobs, or starting aside hustle, you name it. It's always going to be a fantastic thing to aim at in how can I increase my income? We're not saying to push yourself to the point of stress overwhell fatigue, but are there creative ways to be bringing in more income that's going to help us get at these short term saving schools and the long term saving schools. Get us to that dollars and then just see the growth from there, and we're here for you along the way. And you know what else, we're also here for I have a follow up statement. We're here for my follow up statement. Chill, Okay. I just wanted to say, like, it's it's no longer an option to only have one stream of income, Like the world is volatile, inflation is insane, and it's no longer acceptable for us to have one stream of income. Like I think we all know that at this point, even if we're trying to avoid the fact. Is it okay? Is it just debatable? Like probably not. But we can sit around and wait for things to change outside of our control, or we can do something about it that's inside of our control now. And if you wait five years, you're gonna wish that you had started five years ago when you heard this, and so I think it's it's important. It's more important than just like, oh, let me get on uber or uber eats and and make some quick cash. I think we all need to be focused on how do I like generate additional income long term? And that's all I have to say about that. So I think a consideration your capacity I'm gonna be. I'm holding attention. I'm holding attention of those tense sticks on all sides because I know that there are some people who work eighty hours a week, even sixty hours a week, and recognize your life season recognize your capacity. But certainly I agree, have your sights on this, whether that means that's not sustainable even if you stay in that job. So that could mean a change in employment that generates additional income, or it could mean, yes, that we find ways that don't overwhelm or over burden us that could bring in additional income. To the permission for creativity in this space, that we don't have to stay in one place and think this is just what I have to base my life around. Make what you set your hands to also work for you. You know what we also make work for us. Jill, You're never gonna be there. It's never gonna be there. You Okay, it's there. The bill of the week. That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week. Hello. So I'm great from Maryland, and I first off love the podcast. But my Bill of the week is that I was like, looking at my budget and everything, I was like, okay, well I could cancel my digital only Weight Watcher subscription. It's like, yeah, they advertise other things in the program as well, like little things you go buy too. So I'm like, how is that really different than my Fitness Pal, which is freeze. You know. I'm like, okay, also, I'll cancel that. I'll switch over to my Fitness Pal. I mean, I sure I enjoy the community and Weight Watchers, but I'm gonna make do save the money. And then as I'm like going through the cancelation process and everything, it's like this discounted price orteen dollars a month, and I'm like no, no, no, no, cancel, cancel. It's like two three months. I'm like, okay, so that's my bill of a week. I got two three months of Weight Watchers because I was like, nam, I'm gonna cancel. So I gave him the fake out although it was actually serious. Anyway, that's my bill of the week. But that's hilarious. I'm so glad that we could help you get that. I love the it was serious, but then it turned into a fake out and the benefit that you can receive from that. So that is both a tip for someone who wants to try and reduce expenses to see what is the company going to give you, because they'd rather have your loyalty than lose you. But also I would encourage you once those two free months are up, see what your life is like without it. Are there things that you can implement beyond that that you don't have to pay for that subscription? Again, when we're talking about getting met some debt payoff for long term savings goals, those are the things that are really going to help us, not keeping those ten dollar dollar, twenty dollar, eight dollar subscriptions, but really honing in on our budget and figuring out free alternatives. We're here for you. We're celebrating that bill. If you all listening, have a bill, whether it's a fake out or a real out, or your pants are on fire, we want to hear it. Visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for you. Think that's how their pants gone on fire? They were hit by lightning. Possibly, Gosh, they have more problems than their pants being on fire. So true? Well? Uh. In this episode of questions that Goldie has given us to get vulnerable with you, I like this one. What is the most challenging part of saving for you? Chill competing goals. I have so many things that I want to do with my money, and I have made more money. I have generated additional income, which is so amazing to see that it's possible. From two thousand eight, we've really done it. We have. We've done it, and I hope that we keep doing it. But the goals keep increasing, and the part of that could be lifestyle inflation for sure. But I've got so many things that I want to do and that i want to do right now that it can be tough to get at that that one thing of ten thousand dollars a year. I'm not doing that. I'd love to get to the point of doing that, but I also want to cash flow renovations. I also want to not get into further debt. And the reality is is that, well, I want to avoid a scarcity mindset. My resources are not unlimited. I don't have unlimited money. I'm still like a very typical person, like I don't don't make crazy amounts of money. I mean more than I did five years ago, But I still have to be really thoughtful about what am I going to do with this. So some of that has to do with all, right, can I give myself grace, freedom and permission to take time to even get to that ten thousand dollar of savings idea? But also can I generate more income? So some of this cash flowing renovations is what's going to allow us to generate more income through having short term rentals. So there's a I have to keep reminding myself of why am I doing what I'm doing? How is this helping me get to my goal? I can't do it all everything at once is this still the best thing to be doing with my time, energy resources. Okay, keep going nice. That's my little self talk. I will say, you may have gone first, but I wrote down my answer first, and mine is also goals, So mineus specifically having concrete goals I have, Yeah, I mean competing goals is I think most people's going to be most people's answers, Like, there are so many things pulling for our money, and with every increase in income, we have another financial goal to add somehow. But I think for me, I am still a little burnt out from our debt payoff journey. I know it's been like five years, but those two years were very traumatizing and I have I don't know, and then we just we saved like so fast for our to get to that first hundred K. So I think it hasn't been challenging like stalking away money because our frugality allows us to naturally spend under what we make. We pay less attention to our budget if we have one, because we know what we make and what we want and we just save the excess. And so having a concrete goal, though, does help us save more, Like with the buying the new house that was like a big thing for us, so a big saving school. So I would say, yeah, having the concrete goal. How having the one goal, I think I think we can sum this lightning round up by saying, like, focus on one goal, which is what we always say, focus on one goal at a time. And so if you are paying off debt and you still want to get the clock running on your compound interest, you don't have to choose one or the other, but choose one is your primary goal, and then just maybe do a little excess here and there at the other um And for most people listening, that's usually going to be, like, focus on paying off the debt, especially if it is a heavy interest burden, and then get your employer match every month if you have one, or do a hundred dollars into a roth Ira every month, money that you won't miss that won't make a big difference in your debt payoff, so that you can start to get that ball rolling. But it doesn't feel like these goals are competing. Yeah, having something on in the background that you're not thinking about the the auto payment into that savings, so that your real time energy attention goes to the things that are gonna be necessary for whatever the main goal is at the time. Thanks everyone so much for listening. It's been a pleasure hanging out with you. And many of you know that we have a private community where we do monthly money challenges. This is the community I was talking about through this episode where Jen was like, I have a goal to help people get to this one thousand dollars of savings. So if this sounds intriguing to you, feel free to check it out. But we also offer accountability groups and we want to congratulate people in this community. One of our members just had a big win, Emily, and she titled her announcement up Level. She said, finally opened up a roth Ira for my husband. Now we just need to link his accounts and fund it. I also opened up an online bank account so I can get out of my Shifty account. Oh that's not what she said for them. That was my way of centering get out of her Shifty account. I really need to switch all of our bank accounts and consolidate them, but one step at a time. Next step is a switch to my direct deposit. I'm going to use this thread to update my progress so y'all can hold me accountable. Yes, Okay, well I'm gonna go back in and check that thread, Emily, but congrats. I love all the actual progress that you're making. And yeah, right now, in May, we're doing an investing challenge, so you'll just have to see what our challenges for June amazing. Thanks everyone for listening. If you want to check out our monthly challenge community, head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club to see what challenge we have coming up next. See you all next week. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Syrian.

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