Bills, bills, bills! Who loves paying bills when it holds us back on spending on the things we love and value? Well, it doesn’t always have to be that way! In this episode, Jen and Jill make space on being able to spend guilt free and prioritizing it on our values.
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Episode three nine nine, How to Spend when your values income don't align.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, And how the heck are we three hundred and ninety nine episodes in? Next week?
Is gonna be it? Mean?
I mean, it's not even next week, it's just in it is next week. I guess this is a Friday episode. Is gonna be so fun? I can't wait.
If you know how to count, you know, episode four hundred is coming.
Right, yes, but it's gonna be very fun. So please we're.
Celebrating six years to Yeah.
If you are a longtime listener, new listener, you will find something fun to laugh about. It's not going to be financial, but it's gonna be a really good time.
We'll probably talk about money, well probably, yeah, we will.
But today's episode is about how to spend, How to prioritize your spending when what you love, what you value does the amount that it costs does not align with the amount of income you are currently bringing in.
It sounds so good to spend on your values. That only really works if you have the money to spend. It's like the Marie condo thing, like throw out anything that doesn't bring joys, like, well, I gotta keep my spatula and my pots and pans.
Well, Jill, And so I think this is like that. Yeah, Marie would say, maybe the spatula in itself does not spark joy, but the times you get to cook with your child dispatch lots. So that's kind of the approach.
We're taking a new mindset with it, because, yeah, you may not love paying your electricity bill, but how do we find room for that and begin to prioritize other values and be able to make space for being able to spend guilt free?
Yes, but first, this episode is brought to you by white text on a white background. That makes no sense. Right, If your background is white, you should have text that is literally any other color besides white. Right, But sometimes you have white text on a pink button, and Gmail hides that pink button because images are bad. So today's sponsor wants to apologize. If you've signed up for the friend letter and received your email to confirm your subscription and there's no link there, and you were just like these these girls don't know what they're doing. They have no clue. It is not our problem. It is only half our problem. If you actually highlight all the text on the screen, you will see that there is a white there's white text to confirm your subscription on a white screen. And so we saw were sorry about that. Uh so we urge you to double check your confirmation email. If you are not getting the friend Letter but half signed up, and if you haven't signed up, and maybe you want to see how we've changed for the better, head to frugalfriendspodcast dot com. Sign up for the friend Letter. I changed it to the second worst color, very light blue.
I love this. Yeah, we're six years in, but we still grassroots.
We're still a small business. So thank you and sorry and thank you.
But if you are getting the friend Letter, you know that there are polls at the bottom of every friend letter. Some of them are just goofy because we just feel like being goofy and goofy. Some of them help us to plan the content of our episodes and learn more about you guys. We just sent out a poll recently that asked how do you decide what to spend on when your values and your income don't align? This very episode title essentially, and sixty four percent of you do say that you prioritize what you will buy. We've got a very judicious group of people, yes' soving dirient level.
Yeah, so that's kind of what we're gonna kind of like form this episode to better help you prioritize. So if you're looking for a few other episodes to queue up after this one, episode three twenty eight What to do when you feel broke with a six figure income. This can really be any if you feel like you're making enough. Your budget says you're making enough to cover saving and expenses, but reality is not showing that. That's a really good episode to queue up. And then episode two seventy four, How to align your spending with your values. That is a big values based spending primer that is really a good foundation for what we're talking about here.
Yeah. So this first article comes from Forbes and it is titled how to prioritize your money based on where you are in your financial life. And we want to go through a few of the things on this article because we think it's important to highlight if we're feeling as though our money and our income is not aligning, it's worth the refresher on what are some of the basics that we should be doing with our money can be doing with our money to be able to continue moving closer and closer to really aligning all of our decisions, including money decisions, with the things that we value, the lifestyle we want to be aiming at the person we want to become. So they begin by talking about just the foundation for those kind of just getting started and wondering what even should I be doing with my money? What are the priorities that are going to help me get to this spending in alignment with my values? And it includes the basics of financial literacy, like establishing an emergency fund. So they list an establishment of if you're just beginning about two to three thousand dollars in emergency savings to kind of kickstart what's going to come next for you. I think eventually we want to aim at an emergency savings that is larger than two to three thousand, something that is closer to three to six months of your basic living expenses, taking it into consideration your medical deductible some of these things that you might need access to cash, and you don't necessarily want to put some of these emergencies onto a credit card. This is that buffer that's going to help you. So the two to three thousand dollars is going to help with kind of some un first seen maybe car trouble or home or repair. But eventually we're going to want to get it larger than that, but it is a great place to start.
Yeah, these foundational these first three foundational things, these are more important than anything you value. So these are the things you want to stop. Like, nothing is more important than these, Nothing you value is more important than these three like foundational things. So stop what you're doing with your spending until you are getting until you have that two thousand dollars emergency savings, and hopefully it doesn't take you that long. If you if your income is a lot lower and your expenses are a lot lower, then your emergency savings doesn't have to be sky high. It may not have to be two or three thousand dollars. But getting something into a high yield savings account that's separate from your regular spending account that can't see set it forget it. That's super important. That's priority one. And then priority two is to take the free money that you get with your four oh one K match. So if that's if you have it available to you, if your employer offers a four oh one K match, to be contributing at least that much into your four oh one K. And if you're not sure, if you don't know how to set it up, then you can contact your HR department and they will walk you through it. A lot of employers are just auto en rolling people into the four oh one K with the match, so a lot of times it's going in there you don't even realize it. So that could be a super easy one. And then the third one is they're saying so prioritizing paying off debt with a high interest rate, and so this article is saying anything above six percent, and so we're because we really believe these foundations should be like first foremost, really go after them. I'm going to say ten anything double digits. So basically credit card debt, like just getting to a place where you're not in recurring credit card debt is so important. So doing something big, drastic, like you know that can get you out of that credit card debt, obviously not cashing out retirement accounts, but looking at your lifestyle and thinking, Okay, I can do this one thing and it will make a huge impact, so I'm going to do it. Those are the three things. I think that they're going to be more important than any monetary thing that we can love or value.
Yeah, and once you've done those things, you consider you can consider yourself to have built the foundation of your finances and you can move beyond that or keep building onto that. And so some of the things that they then reference in this beyond the foundation stage is listing your financial priorities that matter to you. Most really common ones could be I want to buy a house, or I want to grow my family, or I want to get married have a wedding, and putting a monetary value to all of those things. If it's a home, do you want to be able to put twenty percent down? Then calculate what twenty percent of the type of house that you can afford might be. We also know that for first time home buyers you don't have to do that either. So depending on your situation, what is the amount that you want to have for a down payment? If you want to start a family. What do you anticipate the parental costs are going to be, the medical costs, the cost to welcome a new human into the world and into your home. They're listing five to ten thousand dollars. I'm going to imagine it's a little bit more than that for immediate expenses.
Yeah, I would say that's that's about right.
Sure, Yeah, but yeah, depends on your medical deductible. How much do you need for a wedding, So just yeah, what are your financial goals? List them out and attach a monetary amount to them.
Yeah, and so these are this is where we start getting into your values. These are the values. Your financial priorities should be the four f's sort of thing. So family, friends, faith fulfilling work. If you're going after those things, then you are going to have your financial priorities are going to reflect those big things. So we're you know, we're saving for the home, We're saving for the baby, We're saving maybe to you know, quit our job, like build a business, that sort of thing.
I like how they put a calculator in here as well, so they link to this savings calculator. I think a lot of times we can kind of choose a number and then not totally know how to get there. And there is this handy dandy thing on the internet where you can type in what is your goal amount. So let's say I want to save five thousand dollars to be able to take a couple of trips next year, So I've got twelve months. You can type in the time period in which you want to save that amount within months, if you have any current savings that you're already putting towards that goal. And then if these the money is going to be in an account that's returning you like an annual rate of return. Honestly, for checking accounts, it's not going to be much. And they are talking how you don't want to invest for short term or mid term savings goals in the stock market. That's more so we're talking retirement investing. But if you're using a high yield savings account like the one at CIT Forrugal Friends podcast dot com slash cit, you could earn an annual percentage yield back on the money that you put in if you don't need to touch it for a certain amount of time, and we do recommend that, but if it's a very short term goal, it's just going to be sitting in a checking account. It's not going to earn you much all that to say, you plug in all these numbers and it spits back out a monthly required savings. So if I wanted to save five thousand dollars in one year and essentially not banking on any percentage return on my money, it's going to be four hundred and twenty nine dollars a month that I'd have to save. So helpful to kind of put it into perspective, how much am I going to have to set aside? What might I have to rearrange in my spending currently to be able to achieve this goal?
Yeah? And then the third part, the most important is to prioritize these goals based on their importance. So if you don't, I mean, if you don't have unlimited income, you're not gonna be able to say for all of these at once, and we don't think you should even if you do have the income. We've seen time and time again, when you set your focus to one thing at a time, you achieve it faster, and you achieve things that you know are really in direction of where you want to go, that you can really take the time time to make sure that your those second, third, fourth priorities are actually priorities and they are where they want to be, because a lot of times they can shift. And when you're trying to put all your money towards all these financial goals all at once, you can sometimes realize you've been saving for something that you don't actually need to be saving as as aggressively for, or maybe at all. Uh So try to so list out these things first, we'd say, like list out the four fs and and under each category, define what that is for you, Define what matters in there for you, and then think about the financial goals you're gonna need to achieve to get to each. So for me, when we were paying off debt, I wasn't into the idea of paying off debt. I didn't want to become debt free. I had no desire to become debt free to say I don't have debt. That was Travis. Travis just didn't like debt. For me, it was wanting to foster eventually, we want to foster kids. I worked in group homes for years, and foster care has always been something that I'm super passionate about. So I know how hard it is to foster. I know the time required is much more and the energy and emotions required is much more than a lot of people realize going into it. And so Travis really like encouraged me that, like, think of how easy, how much easier this really hard thing will be to do if you do not also have the pressure of making a debt payment, therefore having to be beholden too a job that you may not want, and having all these responsibilities around it because of the debt. And that is what got me to that financial goal. For me, It was not paying off debt because I quote unquote should It was because I had that family goal and that fulfilling work goal to push me in that financial direction. So that's why it's important to first prioritize the things money can't buy, and then list out the financial goals you're going to need to accomplish to get to those things.
This next article comes from Psychology Today, and it's you can't do it all, so prioritize your values. This one is not explicitly about financial values or prioritization, but it certainly intersects with all those pieces, because again, we're whole people and just like Jen was describing the four fs, is what can really guide our spending and our financial goals. And so when we can really understand ourselves, know what we've value, we can kind of plan everything else around that.
Yeah, this was written by near Il, which is who's a really really great author. I love his work. So he's he's best known for like productivity. But and I think while in this article he's talking about like core values, we're going to kind of restructure it to be about things you love to buy. So maybe the things outside of the things money can't buy. That next step is just like I like buying lattes because there is literally there's no deeper meaningful reason. There's no like childhood trauma I'm trying to correct by buying a latte.
I just like it.
It's like it's that stuff.
Yeah. So they first describe converting your values into time, so with what we've already talked about here of listing out and categorizing faith, family, friends, fulfilling work, the things that you value most, the things you want to do. And I love the way that this particular article describes values. They summarize it as who you want to become the type of person that you want to be can also help us get at well, then what does that say about what I value? And then be able to talk about from there, what are the tasks that are going to get me there? So, like you just mentioned, Jen, debt payoff is one of the things that will help get me there. For me, flexibility with work is what helps get me the time that I want with the people that I love. But there's obviously monetary decisions that have to go with that of how do I make more or how do I live at this amount and be content with that and it be enough. So all of these things do eventually tight into our money, but then identifying what tasks will help you move towards that and again prioritizing from there and recognizing that that could mean that a task or a goal takes you longer than you thought it was going to take, or you are deciding that that's not for you right now, you'll revisit it later, or you're going to try to determine how to do more with less because of the various things that you have listed out. They talk about categorizing things into work, relationships, and self So still a little bit jacent to the four fs of faith, family, friends, fulfilling work, so whatever kind of seems to resonate with you, but listing out your values in each of those areas and the monetary pieces that would be attached to that.
Yeah, I love the talk about like time boxing. It's very like productivities. But I do find that I think that I am capable of more in a time block than I am actually capable of. And the more that I time block, the more I realize what my actual mental and physical capabilities are. So instead of feeling like a failure for not being able to get everything I think I should get done in a time block, I can then either give myself more time for things or I can expect less of myself in a time block. If you're not measuring that, then you don't. Then you just keep feeling guilty for not getting everything done that you feel like you should get done in a day, Like it's just this continuous like guilt. But if you can measure it through this, then it becomes more of like a learning experience. And maybe that's a little bit of a pivot because I don't have any like tie back to money, But I do appreciate the time boxing well.
I think that some of what this is getting at is the reality that so often what we value we don't have to spend money on. So it's a little bit of a bait and switch on our title of what to do when your money and your values don't align well. In reality, so often we can engage in our values without spending money. So we will most likely find that as we actually list out our values, there are things we can do that really aren't costing us much, and we can get a lot out of this life without needing to hemorrhage cash. And we can realize, oh, I didn't actually need to spend in order to have community, spend time with friends, have an adventure, or I didn't need to spend as much as I thought that I needed to. Again, not advocating for deprivation or never spending, but recognizing that we can get at these things. I can seek to learn a language, read more, spend time with family, have trips, that all of it doesn't need to cost anything or much that maybe I would have thought it needed to if I didn't engage in this process of first identifying values and backtracking from there.
Yes, absolutely, but there will be things outside of your values that outside of your you know your core four that you want to buy. And so they give some good, like tried and true techniques for prioritizing competing values. So the first is give seasons to your life, and we say that all the time. Embrace your seasons. But you can create essentially like time limits, time limits seasons. So they say like ninety days to a year. I would say probably closer to ninety days play into your your limits for instant gratification. For a lot of people, a year is too far into the future to feel like reality. And depending on where you are in your life, if a month for you feels like a month, then maybe three months is okay. If a month for you feels like it's a second, then you know, maybe six months. Whatever stage of life you're in, however fast you feel like it's moving, gauge it. But you can set these limits to where you focus on one thing before moving to the next. So if a vacation is something that you really want to prioritize, then setting a ninety day almost challenge for yourself to save the amount you need for that vacation, that's a really good season to implement. And then you know that you're not just arbitrarily saving, you're saving with a deadline. And so maybe something comes up and you are, you know, tempted to spend at target, and you have the choice to buy the planner or to save the money for your vacation. Without with having this self imposed limit, it's easier for you to say to saving versus spending instead of if you just had like I'm in general in theory saving for this vacation, or I have the rest of the year to save for it because I'm saving for five things at the same time. No, if you've got five things to save for, split them up into two month increments and just save for them. That way, it will it will be much more doable for that instant gratification part of your brain.
I love this tip and I think it's it can make sense probably for a lot of us, because our life is lived in seasons. Maybe you get paid weekly or bi weekly or monthly. That's kind of a version of a financial season. We go through actual weather seasons and seasons of the school year, and so we can kind of harness that lived reality to our money and be able to say, Okay, well, what do I want to do with my money in this season and use that as a goal too. Yeah, the next one on here is to identify what's urgent. We can ask ourselves what matters most right now. There could be five to ten things that you want that all feel really important, But what is the most important? What if nine of them had to leave, what could you absolutely not do without? And that's kind of related to the foundations that we were talking about, Like the most urgent if you don't have it yet, is a two thousand dollars emergency savings and paying down high interest credit card debt. But then beyond that, what's most urgent? For Eric and I? Recently we've been spending a lot of money on just random medical costs. Both of us have kind of come into a season recently where there's just been a lot going on and it has really depleted what we had saved for our deduct the bull which is great that we had it, but now that's the priority to begin saving again to replenish what we've spent. So, yes, I want to go on vacations. Yes, maybe eventually we'll want to buy a second car. There's still more repairs we want to do on the house, but this is the most urgent because our physical health, physical bodies need to be there to even be able to enjoy a vacation or a working door to the patio. So that's just an example, kind of low hanging fruit of what that looks like for me to identify urgency.
M hmm.
Next is to use the bubble sort method. So I had never heard of this. So list your values on a horizontal grid and then ask yourself which of the two values is most important, and then move the most important to the left. Then compare the second and third and move the most important to the left, and can you until your values are in order of importance from left to right. So with your spending, this is a little bit more like honestly, don't know how you do this with core values either. I think it's a little easy to say, hard to practice. But with your spending not everything. You're not going to be saving for the vacation, saving for the medical procedure one hundred percent of the time, right, you need to also balance that or hold the tension of that with instant gratification type stuff like small rewards, So how do we decide what's worth it? Like in your small rewards and what's not And so some of it is being aware of marketing and advertising, knowing like what desires are being manufactured for you and what your true desires are getting swept up by all the advertising on Instagram and TikTok, and using those physical barriers like the thirty day cart, you know, keeping something in your cart for thirty days, but also just kind of going through your ninety day transaction inventory or even a month if this is just something you wanted to kind of you know, gloss overdo kind of semi quickly for the last month and look at what your expenses are. What expenses got you the result that you wanted them to get, like, what gave you the happiness you were after whatever, And what expenses do you not even remember what were a result of poor planning or et cetera, et cetera. So go back and look at your transactions to see what which ones were meaningful and prioritize your past expenses and that'll be very indicative of how you should spend moving forward.
The next tip on technique here for prioritization is to tackle the values that are simple to fulfill first. So similar to when we go declutter our houses. We don't want to begin with the most complicated area that feels overwhelming. We don't want to go first to our memory box and start slicing and dicing photos and meaningful cards. We want to go to maybe one junk drawer or.
The packet drawer, the back drawer.
Yes, the food drawer. So we just eat it and declutter it in that way.
Eat snacks. That's the easiest way to declutter. Eat snacks.
But if you've got this whole list of things, start with what's simple too. And that may not mean this is going to be a little bit like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. It may not mean that it is the biggest priority, but if it can give you a quick win, then great. So let's say getting yourself life insurance is on your list of things, that this is something I really want to do with my money, and it might not feel like the highest priority, but it's something easy to accomplish, and you can find an inexpensive term life insurance policy, get it done, automate it. If investing is really important to you, and maybe you don't have all of the money to be able to invest right now, but you can start small and you can invest twenty to one hundred bucks a month, put it on automation. Start there that it doesn't take you a lot of time and isn't going to necessarily cost you a lot of time, energy or money going forward. Give yourself some wins to kind of keep the momentum going, and then identify, Okay, now what comes next. Tackle the maybe the smallest debt first, even if it isn't necessarily the most high interest, although I am going to encourage you high interest at first, but give yourself some wins and be able to take advantage of seeing that and allow it to encourage you to do the next thing.
Yeah, do what you need to do. The first thing I thought of was like, don't save for the vacation first, it's start. If you're new to prioritizing your values with a limited income, then start small. Maybe you just say for a date night and that means a dinner out and a babysitter. That is the first thing we say for because that can be saved for quick, and that's a place where you can spend in alignment with your values and see the result of that very quickly. And once you get that, once you're able to afford a beautiful dinner out with your partner and no kids. Like, once you experience that, you want more of it. Yeah, you want fewer planners from Target and you want more of that good stuff.
And the same strategies that you implemented to be able to set money aside for that will be the exact same strategies for say for maybe a larger goal or wanting to set even more money aside quicker so that you don't have to wait so long to achieve this goal. And that's where all the stuff of earning more, paying attention to the heavy hitters of our spending, and really honing in.
Well that would be helped leads us to our last part is follow the eighty twenty rule. And so he says, you know, identify the twenty percent of your values that contribute to eighty percent of what you want. For us, we use the eighty twenty rule in saving essentially. So I was talking to Haley from a price of avocado toast and I and she was saying, like, when they started paying off their debt, they sold like a high price like paid off car and got a smaller one, so they had like ten grand and that immediately paid off all their credit card debt. That and one other thing, and that was the thing that gave them the motivation to say, like, oh my gosh, I think we can pay off a debt. Before there was so much debt, they didn't think they could. But with a big quick win like that, that's what set them off. And that was the Transportation is one of those eighty twenty things. When you make one decision in a category like housing and transportation, you can make so few other decisions and the impact doesn't matter. And so that's why we like harp On, especially housing and transportation so much, because those are decisions that if you make those right, you make them once every five, ten, fifteen years, and they make a difference every day whether you're making the right decision or not in the day to day. Because you made one decision right, it impacts, you know, for decades later. And so it really gives us like when you're focusing on the twenty percent that makes the biggest impact, then you can just the eighty percent of the time, you can just kind of be at rest, right, Like you don't have to be constantly overanalyzing all of your saving decisions and so that's what we think. And with spending again, if you're doing twenty percent of it right in the highest impact areas, eighty percent can just be whatever and you will still be okay.
It's beautiful. Do you know what I think? Makes two percent of our effort but ninety eight percent of our return and reward.
It is an oversized return for the effort, for sure.
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 Williams.
Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Dust bills, Buffalo bills, Bill clon.
This is the bill of the week.
Hagee and Jill. This is Amber from East Tennessee. My bill of the week is actually my rent because normally this time of year rent goes up, but mine actually went down by six dollars. I was so excited because I was really stressing out about it, and now I don't have to worry as bad. Thanks. I really love what you do here.
That's amazing. Take the wins. When you're expecting something to increase in price and it decreases in price, even by six dollars, But if you were anticipating it increased by one hundred, then that's it's a big span.
That's great. Yeah, we just renegotiated for our tenants to stay in our house and I was trying to increase it and all they did was like, hey, we want to stay, but we really needed to stay the same. And I was like, okay, okay, but has a landlord. I just don't want to deal with all of I don't it's going to save me money, honestly, Like it's going to cost me that twelve hundred all of the move out and the time to look for another tenant and stuff like you know, I'm so negotiate with your landlord and yes.
Wow, hopefully they're not listening to this. They're gonna call you up. Can you reduce our rent by six dollars? Like Amber, this is very exciting. Amber, thanks for thinking to call us and celebrate this little win. Here, if you all want to submit your bill of the week, if it has to do with something you thought was going to increase but it decreased instead and you're just over the moon about it, or again, if you're a human who was born with the name Bill. We just love to hear from you, Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. We can't wait for it, and now it's time for around you. All right.
So this this question is kind of like tongue in cheek, But is there a time you really wanted to spend but your finances wouldn't allow it? What did you do? Jill?
I did write this question?
Good for you, Jill, and I I do feel like all the time, like all that's why she wrote this because she wanted to answer it, and you should.
You should be able to ask questions that you want to want to answer just because you want to share the answer to that.
Well, here's the thing though, too. You love vulnerability, and I feel like this is right on par with this. I think we love to say how we have gotten to a place of guilt free spending, but I think it's important to still acknowledge that there are times that I want things that it just isn't for me, and I can feel okay about that. Again, it doesn't feel like deprivation. Sometimes it feels like sacrifice. I've been able to implement creativity to get the things that are important to me. But yeah, even though I would qualify myself as a little bit more of a saver than a spender, I don't really struggle with impulse spending. But there's still things I want and it's just like, yeah, that's not necessarily in my spending plan. So, for example, right now you've heard us talk about this. Jen and I are working on a book. We're in the throes of it. We're in the deep, deep trenches.
My brain hurts of it.
And because of this, we don't really have the time to travel as much. Like this, Jen asked me, Hey, what's your schedule for next month? We need to update our calendar. Blah blah blah. I'm like, we're writing a book. I'm not going anywhere. No one's coming here, We're not doing anything.
Sa We're so used to her blocking out half of the month for recording, so when she says she's like, I'm not going anywhere, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right. We are writing nothing. We are actually writing a book.
I am just I'm just sequestered to my home and and that can feel different to me. And also there's been some other demands for our money that have put a bit of a financial pinch on us, but that's okay. What that means is I had to take a deeper look at what I really like about travel. Like I always say, travel is a value, so I make room for it, and it still is, but what exactly of it? And I think one of the things that I realized was the trying new things, the feeling like I'm having an adventure, the getting out of the house, and then to realize I can still have that. I can get all of those things without needing to buy a plane ticket or get a hotel. I can find those things right here in my area. Hear me. I'm definitely going to be traveling again in the future, but it's created kind of this fun challenge to see what are the things that I can do within driving distance and explore within my area. So Eric and I have checked out a state park that's like two hours away that we've been wanting to check out. I have followed more accounts on Instagram of fun things to do in Florida. We found a race track, an amateur race track in our area where they do bus races in figure eights. And if that's not an adventure and an adrenaline rush.
I don't know what else is.
And so we've been to this race track that you pay in cash and it's really inexpensive to go, and just exploring some things that are pretty low cost but really fun. And I didn't know about until this new kind of experience in my life where I've got these boundaries and these parameters that are telling me that life can't look exactly maybe how it did look a year ago. But then to find ways to lean into that has been really thrilling.
Yeah, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, Like for the purpose of this episode is to take like a critical look on the things that you quote unquote value and really dig deep to think about what are the things about those things that I'm actually after. Because I say this all the time, like people are like I buy experiences, not things, and they're talking about traveling vacations to these destinations. I was like, that's not what it means. You don't want to travel. You want X X or X, Like you want the things that travel brings, and you can have those things an other way. Traveling is not bad. Like we're going to Mexico in June. I love it, but like I am not a big traveler because I've identified like the things that I want, I don't have to like get on a plane for most of the time. Sometimes I do, and I will do that, but I'm not like a digital nomad traveler because I don't I can get experiences without taking a road trip or get on a plane. Those are actually my least favorite things about traveling planes and cars.
I love a plane ride because it is the only time I can truly disconnect, Like I don't have Internet, I can't text you or call you. I just feel complete permission to disengage. Lane rides. Yeah, well that's okay. We can enjoy different things, but for now I'm staying put and I'm enjoying it. Yeah. Anyways, do you have an example, Jen, Oh.
Gosh, I kind of forgot about it because I got really invested in.
Your You're listening so well, you're active listening.
Yes, but I think, like, gosh, I let me see if I can remember it. When I really wanted to spend but my finances so okay. So I did want to take a cruise with Kai and Travis this year, but with the end of the renovation nearing, I didn't want to like, I just want to have enough in the bank account to accommodate any unforeseen things happening, and they do, and they do, right, they have a reasonable Yeah, so we said no, even though it's something I've wanted to do for a year, Like I've wanted over a year. I've been wanting to do this, and I didn't intentionally say for it because all the savings have been going to the renovation. It's just not the season for it. It's just not And then yeah with the book, like it's just I haven't had the capacity to plan for any other financial goals other than this renovation and all of my babies dayg medical expenses, gosh, this kid. So so yeah, like we just had to decide that it was not something normally we would do this stuff like when we get quote unquote distributions from the business, which sounds so not for business candidates, when we pay ourselves a living wage. But it's just like not where I budgeted our distribution this time around, which is how are you?
How are you managing that though? Like you wanted to go on a cruise with your family and you're realizing, I just need more, I need that money to just stay in the account.
Well, I use my comforter to cry into. That's why I wash it regularly. But when I'm not doing that, I am. I think we might go to a Disney World, just Travis and I to like the after they have an after hours party with shorter lines and Travis hat's lines.
So which for most people going to Disney World would be the more expensive option than a cruise, but for you, being a Florida resident a day's drive of Disney.
Right, it is actually it is actually cheaper. So that is maybe what we will do instead, Okay, But other than that, I'm just kind of trying to, like, you know, grip my teeth and get through it.
It's lessons and contentment, I do think, and that's an okay lesson to engage in. Yeah, thanks everyone for listening. We really are enjoying reading your reviews. Speaking of things we can do that don't cost us money, reading your reviews and for you writing reviews, that's the way you can support us without spending money. We really liked this one from teeg in one four nine two The Perfect Frugality Podcast, five stars, longtime listener who still enjoys every new episode episode. Food full of relevant tips on how to enjoy a frugal life, whether as a single person or with a large family. Even when I think the episode subject won't apply to me, I always hear accessible tips with a bit of humor thrown in. I especially love the tips and meal planning episodes. Keep up the good work.
I don't know how crying into my comforter is funny to you take it.
And I'm laughing.
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Yeah, remember I cry so when you're writing these reviews.
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Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
You did something really nice today that I'm excited about.
Oh yeah, I'm excited. Well, I did it partly for me, but mostly for you. I was in I was in publics this morning buying my lunch, and I saw I was going to buy some Jalipano kettle chips because we finished your bag yesterday. And but as on my way to the chip aisle, I passed an end cap with chips and saw this special public's brand Jalapanio popper chips kettle cooked, and I'm like, I, well, we have to know, we gotta know, we have to know. Yeah, and so I'm so excited to.
Know, me too. And that was so kind and thoughtful to bring chippies because we realized yesterday when we ate sandwiches together here that because that's a perk, that's a perk of this situation. We can work together, we can have lunch together, we can chit chat and laugh cry into our comforters that we feel it is a tragedy to serve sandwiches without chips. You've got to have the chippies.
It's really it's rude to serve a sandwich without chippies.
And so you should be on the watch list if you're just out here eating sandwiches no chippies.
Well, I was saying, like, I will at home, will make myself a sandwich without chippies. But that's a self worth issue. I would never treat my friends the way I treat myself, and I will always add the chippies for them.
We really work on that. Deserving of chippies.
I deserve them, and I just need to like continually, like believe that just.
A little crunch with the sandwich.
If somebody could write a review and just like expound on how chip worthy like is like five chippies.
Like give us five chips, five chippies, and don't come at me with carrot sticks and apple slices. You can have those too, but you need the chippies.
You need chippies.
Yes, yes,