Recognizing & Reversing Lifestyle Creep

Published Apr 2, 2021, 7:00 AM

Have you ever received a raise only to find yourself purchasing more 'non-essential' items? Or earned a bonus only to blow it on a vacation? Yep, that's lifestyle creep. We're talking all about the sneaky ways our choices can shift as our earning increase and how this can derail all our frugal hard work! Listen in to learn how to prevent and respond to this happening in our own lives!

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Episode one, Recognizing and Reversing Lifestyle Creep. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rights, and liberate your life. Here your host Jen and Jill m. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about lifestyle creep and lifestyle inflation. So yeah, tricky, but not that tricky, not that tricky. We have been seeing a lot of people in the Frugal Friends community on Facebook have been paying off debt like crazy. You guys have been having awesome success. We see you, and we celebrate you. And so this one is specifically for you guys who are there who are working on furthering your other financial goals and maybe close to debt freedom, close to working on other financial goals. This is going to be a really good gut check for you to keep with you moving forward, because I know we're three years out of paying off our student loans and I needed this gut check for sure. When I saw this topic in this outline, I was reading the articles, I'm like, is this for me? Is Jen? Is this like a back door? Right? We're happening here. I think people are going to come in behind the door behind you, Jill, because this is planned. It just comes with the territory. I think, as as we accomplish goals, or even if we earn raises within the jobs that we're in, or we have a career change and we see a different income level, whatever the circumstances are, there are opportunities throughout life where we can experience lifestyle creep. So I'm looking forward to talking about what this is and how to be careful and prevent this. Yes, so first we want to shout out our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Drumroll. Please the Frugal Friends Florida meet up. It is April seventeen. So if you are in Florida, there is no reason you should not be at our meet up in St. Petersburg unless you physically can't get there, right, I mean Florida is a big state, but yeah, you should drive three hours, right or if you have rewards points, you gotta flight. Nobody else plan right now, so come on down. But we are doing a meet up in St. Petersburg. You can get more info about that at Frugal Friends podcast dot com. Slash meet up. It will be outside, it will be safe as safe as we can get it, and we will just be, you know, geeking out about frugality. There will be some food and we're going to write it off on our taxes. So that's that good summer reach out. You're coming. Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash meet Up. This episode is also brought to you by the creep Detector for all those strolls through the park, blind dates, or literally waiting in any line anywhere. It's the extension of your instincts and gives you that added security and clarity when you are, indeed within a fifteen ft radius of a creep creep detector use code Slimy for a ten percent discount. Also, trust your instincts. It was good when I read it, and it's better when I heard you say it. Thank you. Sometimes my fig sponsor is good, sometimes it's mediocre. But I was definitely about this one, like, yeah, well, we are not talking about those types of creeps. Uh, we are talking about lifestyle creep, which isn't a bad thing. Let's like get this out of the way. It is okay when you are increasing your income and lowering your expenses, and you have developed values based spending to spend a little more on the things that you love when you have the capacity too. But we want to avoid falling back into traps that we worked really hard to get out of. Thanks for saying that, Jen, because I think sometimes I can get confused on Oh man, I used to be able to live off of so much less what's happening to me? But it was just the reality that I was living very meek early and now I'm living just a bit more normally or typically. It's kind of unrealistic to expect that my expenses are going to be the same living in a home that I own as when I lived in a vehicle. So yeah, it is helpful to kind of keep into perspective. What is lifestyle creep versus why is just kind of what comes with the territory of maybe taking on some new expenses, but not necessarily unwise expenses. Absolutely, this is where we're going to talk though about when our saving is not keeping up with our spending, as we might see some flux within our income. So we'll get to that. Thanks for that caveat. Of course, let's define for Spaceline, what is lifestyle creep also known as lifestyle inflation. So for the purposes of this episode, it's basically when you kind of get a raise, or even not, maybe it's just your living life and you see other people getting more things just as life progresses, Like I know that it's not even that I'm getting raises, it's just that I'm in my thirties and I see people getting second houses and better cars, and it's I thought I'd be okay, like when I was in my twenties, like when I bought a house, when I upgrade in my car. But now now I'm in the thirties and everybody's buying like new houses now and they're upgrading to like minivans and stuff. That's the lifestyle creep that we're talking about, is just increasing more than what your surplus is. So when we don't keep these two in balance, then we start to develop habits and lifestyles where are spending ken outpace our earning and it's a slow, steady increase, but it does make an impact long term. Or you're spending exactly matches your income, and there's no room for any level of increased savings or debt payoff or you name it, and it's tough because on the one hand, it's good to have goals and to have drivers and motivators and be onto the next thing. But sometimes our desire to be onto the next thing decreases our ability to be content in the moment and kind of live within or below our means so as to yeah, get at some of these other goals. So it's that it's that radical middle again of holding on to some motivation and some long term dreams and goals and hopes while also learning contentedness currently. Yeah. So our first article today is from Forbes and it's by christ and mckennet's called The True Cost of Lifestyle Inflation, And so I liked this one because it really dives into like how lifestyle inflation can derail your finances. So you get to the points I'm sure we know, like older adults are parents and stuff, and we're like, how did you get here? How did you get to this place? And this is how So it can overtime small adjustments, so a new car with a down payment and a higher monthly payment, some new furniture, maybe we start paying for laundry service or a cleaning or a better gym membership, all of these things individually not a big deal, but after doing them in compounding, after a few years, ten fifteen years, they make up a lot of our budget. And I'm sure if you've started paying off debt maybe a little later in life, in your thirties or forties, I don't call that later in life. You're still in the primary life, but you can see it. You've already you've already experienced lifestyle creed versus other people who start paying off debt in their twenties. I like how they describe it as when your expenses increase with your income, and that it's mostly an issue when your savings doesn't keep up. They give a lot of really great tangible examples of how something like this might happen and you might be spending more. Let's say somebody gets a raise. The majority of that can often go to what you're describing jen a new car, the gym membership that you name it, and the savings does not increase to the same percentages even though the income has I also want to state here at this point that what we're talking about here doesn't just apply to those who are increasing wealth significantly. This can happen to anyone in any bracket of earnings. Right, Let's say we've got somebody who was making minimum wage and now they earned a dollar extra an hour. Anybody in any situation can experience this lifestyle creep, lifestyle inflation. It's something we all need to keep a pulse on. And as you mentioned at the top of the episode, Jen, it's not even just about earning raises. It might just be about I've paid off debt and so now I've got an increase of spendable money or saveable money, depending on how you're looking at it, So any type of or I decreased my housing expenses and so I've got more available money to me. Maybe it's not even about an income increase. So we're talking to anybody at any life stage in this. It's something we all need to be aware of. I love this um headline from the articles as lifestyle inflation is like running in place, and it's so true. You you think in your twenties, you're like, oh, when I'm finally making like twenty grand more than i'm making now in like twenty years, then I'll really be able to save for retirement. Then I'll really be able to make a dent in my finances. But it's it's so possible to just run in place, and when you're getting that raise, like I've worked so hard, I deserve this, and chances are in a few years when you get another race, you're going to deserve more stuff. It's about what you want from life, and if you it's not a problem to treat yourself when you deserve it, But do you want to deserve things now or do you want to balance it out and deserve things in the future too, like in retirement and possibly early retirement stuff like that. So you just kind of have to balance out when you are treating yourself when you get these races. Jen, it's not about what you deserve, it's about what you want out of life. Mic drop, thank you. I can't, It's understand, and it would be an auditory nightmare. So I like the tips that they give in here. They just give three, and of course we'll get into more tips in the next article, but they do give some ideas on ways that we can and avoid some of this lifestyle inflation, and one of them is to automate savings. It's a really simple one, but a really useful and helpful one because we often aren't going to have sights on oh am I saving for thirty, forty fifty years down the road this week. We're more concerned with what's happening in our current lives right now. So letting these automations do it for us. Automatically saved to your four oh one K, automatically saved to your auth I a automatically save into your savings account. Put these things on automation so that it's happening when you get that raise or when you pay off that debt, Increase the amount that you're giving, max out your retirement savings, and then move on to other savings accounts. Don't just stop there, but put it on automation. That's one of the best tips that we can give to ourselves and one of the best gifts we can give to ourselves. So once you're emergency fund is fully stacked in a high yield savings account, then focus on your rath ira. There is literally like no reason to not max out your rath ira every year unless you just literally don't have the money to pay your bills. But it's such a low minimum given everything else in the scope, like your four O one K is like nineteen five, so it's just six thousand dollars a year in a roth ira. It's so good, and you might think like, hey, I don't have enough to max out my rath all right, that's five dollars a month. I don't have that. It is going to be so much easier to do it earlier in life than to do it later in life. You have to invest so much less the earlier you start versus if you start later. A lot of people don't realize this, but this is how compound interest works. Like if I am investing, you know, a hundred dollars a month right now, and I slowly start to increase that and I'm maxing it out, you know, by the end of the year, then I can invest Gosh. Sometimes I actually did the math on this the other day. It can be like a hundred thousand dollars less and still get to the point of a million dollars at the same time. You know, if you start when you're twenty, you're going to spend like a hundred thousand dollars less than somebody who starts at thirty or something. The math is not correct on that, but you get what I'm saying. Time in the market is much more powerful than the amount invested. And so even if you feel that it is difficult to save, do it anyway. Do what you can with what you have, and automated so you don't have to think about it. It's that whole notion of pay yourself first, that's what we're talking about. And if you just have that automatically coming out every time you get paid or whatever, then you don't notice it. So when your income goes up, like if you're already maxing out your roth IRA, you can't do anymore. So if I get twenty extra bucks a month, I don't have to feel guilty about spending all of that because I'm already doing what I can with what i have. So stuff like that. Setting yourself up maybe suffering for like a year or two on a tight budget so that you can utilize those raises and stuff when they come and enjoy them nice. And the third tip on here is to spend responsibly. There's not much more I'm going to say on this, because we're gonna get into more tips in the next article. Certainly lots of Frugal Friends podcast episodes on this mindful spending being more in tune with the decisions, understanding ourselves and what might lead to some of those impulse purchases, and really being a whole lot more intentional to spend responsibly, being a good steward of our money, so that we don't find ourselves in this place of lifestyle creep m. And if for some reason you do have more money to invest beyond your rath EIRA, it also says on here to invest outside of your retirement accounts, So definitely focus on your tax advantage accounts first, because why wouldn't you You save a lot of money in taxes with them. So um RATH IIRA if you're eligible RATH four oh one K, regular four oh one k, stuff like that. Depending on what your income is and what you're you know, what you plan to do in the future, that's going to determine whether you do RATH or regular. But beyond that, you can invest for some things, mainly real estate and homes I think is probably what I would say. Or if you are maybe like a doctor or something, you want to buy a practice down the road something like that, but you can open just a brokerage and save in a really conservative index fund and save like that. And this says it's for like high earners, so this is definitely not the norm. I think most people will just be focusing on their retirement guts, but it is an option. The article does mention it. M hm. So let's talk about our next article, which we're going to dive into actual tangible tips to avoid lifestyle creep. And this is from sabology dot com. It's Lifestyle Creep one O one. Eight Ways to Avoid Lifestyle Creep by Chris Borgison. Would you like about this one, Jill? This is a great one. I like all of the tips on here. I think, of course, they pair beautifully with so many of our frugality concepts. There's a quote in here that I just want to read aloud because I think it helps us to get a grasp on this. They say getting a raise and increasing your income should be looked at as an opportunity to improve your savings right and retirement accounts. Instead, it's often perceived as an open invitation to spend more and to spend often. And I what stood out to me about this quote is the perspective shift. I think we talked about that so much much as we look at our spending and our habits and how to live a more frugal lifestyle. This is it that shifting some of those thought patterns to when more money comes in or when I see an opening in my income, that my mind should immediately go to what is the best way to utilize this money? Where can I be saving this? Where can I be investing this? Or what debt can I be paying off with this? Rather than what what nice luxury item can I get for myself? How can I spend this? How can I get rid of this as fast as I can? On something that is super mindless? So I like that shift to start to train ourselves to think in that way where the long term benefits come first rather than the short term benefits. Yeah. I read a statistic the other day that says most side hustlers, most people that have a side gig or something, are just doing it for extra spending money, And how crazy is that. The the first uh TikTok video that I had that went uber viral was how you could make a million dollars with any side hustle, but it involved you had to make a hundred and fifty bucks a week with your side hustle. If for some reason you're a W two at your side hustle, you could do a hundred and fifteen dollars a week. But if you just find a side hustle that makes you a hundred fifty dollars a week, and instead of spending that hundred and fifty dollars a week on eating out and stuff, instead you invest it in a rath I A and SMP five hundred index fund, and in thirty five years you would have one million dollars from that side hustle alone, and only two thousand is money that was actually made from the side hustle. The other eight hundred was made from compound interest in the market. So if you could, I mean, that's opportunity cost, right, Like if you can put your excess and your surplus to good use, and it doesn't even have to be like in the stock market, that's just a very common example. But to good use, you will get so much down the road and it will free up other income. I mean, especially if it's a side hustle, it'll free you up with other income that you can spend without guilt. Probably most people weren't expecting the thirty five year piece, but you will thank yourself in thirty five years. Yeah, I mean, and that's using only a rath I RA. That's not counting any four oh one K or any other stock market investing that you do. Like that's just one really low max account. And the reason it's a hundred and fifty is because you have to put some away for taxes and expenses in the side hustle. But yeah, the bath works out and it's crazy. So definitely looking for ways is like how can I use my surplus? Or even when you don't get a raised, maybe you cut an expense and it's like, Okay, how can I be a good steward of this money? Like I don't have debt anymore, I don't have a goal that's immediate, and so what can I do with this money that's going to be good. I don't need to save an emergency funding anymore. So I think it's good to have. I don't think this is one of the eight. But to have shorter terms, oh yeah it is. It's number two. It's the one I'm reading right now. To set and track financial goals. So for me, I think that's like having shorter term financial goals, so not just the goals that are I want to have a million dollars and retire at sixty, but to have like five year goals, like you need goals and even two year goals, like if we don't have those goals that we can get immediately, then it's gonna be a lot harder to stick with them. And I think that's why, like financial independence, the fire movement is really popular with some people, is because it takes that long term goal and it gets it closer and that makes it easier for them to wrap their mind around. But instead, if you don't want to be that gung ho about it, you can keep your retirement age at you know, six, six, five and and just have smaller goals before then the other So we want to go through all eight tips, so I'll jump back to number one. That's fine. It's number one is one time rewards. So it's gonna sound like we're talking out of both sides of our mouths, but bear with us. Where we're talking about not just giving ourselves what we deserve we earned it. No, we can still do that, right if we've accomplished a big goal and that's what's freed up our income, or we changed careers and we got a raise, or we're in our same career and we got a bump in our salary. Fantastic. Those things are worth celebrating. We're not living life if we're not like congratulating ourselves or celebrating some of these things. But the point ain't that this article is making that I agree with, is to say, let's plan for that celebration. Let's celebrate it one time and even go all out, but do it once. This isn't a ongoing. Oh I got a raise, so therefore I can go and do all of the things every day, spend more, spend often. No, We're going to do one thing, will go on a vacation, we will go out to a really nice restaurant, we will you name it, do the thing, get the reward, but then rain it back in and live an ongoing, consistent lifestyle below your means that prioritizes savings rather than the constant rewards. Plan it for one time, love that tip. Yeah, and it can become like if you have a few hard weeks at work and you're like, I'm just gonna I'm gonna treat myself because I've had a hard week. It becomes easier to do that every few weeks and then it's every other week, and then it's every Friday, and before you even realize that you're doing it so many times a month. So being aware and just a little bit of planning goes a long way. Yeah. Yeah, even if you're not outspending your earning, if you're spending a lot. This article gave the example of going out to dinner constantly and spending you know, a hundred dollars or more out to dinner. Yeah, that's even if you can affoard that. Think of the opportunity cost of that where that money could be going, if saved or invested or towards debt, you name it. Think about what you really love about going out to eat too. Maybe if you're treating yourself, maybe you don't need to go to the hundred dollar restaurant. Maybe all you want to do is just have a nice dinner where somebody waits on you and does the dishes. Could you get the same thing done for fifty dollars and then you have that other fifty dollars, So being intentional about that, just like could your spouse or roommate do that for you? You can pay them twenty five ye pay them nothing, just you know, do a trade off. Let us know how go tonight you're cooking and clean and uh so we went through number two, which was set in track financial goals. The number three is budget. You're spending money. You knew it was coming. There's there's no way we're gonna go through raining in spending and not talk about a budget. It's funny every time I put this in our outline, I always think that there's got to be like a new fun way to present what a budget is like. It's always the same. I can't give you anything different. We're just going to keep coming back to this. We've got a budget. We've got a budget or spending money really just to have a snapshot of the money coming in the money going out, to create greater freedom of what we're able to spend, how we're saving. And budgets even serve as a tracking mechanism of where is my money going. Certainly we want to we want budgets to do the next step of telling our money where it's going, but it certainly does act as a nice way to track as well. Am I spending in certain categories more than I want to be spending? Can I be spending more wisely? Saving? More wisely, it's absolutely going to be a part of keeping a handle on keeping the reins on not experiencing lifestyle inflation. Yeah, and I think, Jill, you do a really good job of sustainable budgeting. Is like doing the budget and then doing every two weeks doing the check in. I feel like that's really good. Once you've paid off your debt and you've got your emergency funding, you're kind of just living. Then you don't have to be super vigilant about your budget. It says it's that's not a sustainable lifestyle, and I know for me that is why gets hard. I don't love budgeting, and so it's hard for me to keep track. But last night, She'll, you'd be so proud of me. We did go through our expenses for the first half of the month. We did it. You're having an amazing week so far that you crushed it this morning between exercise and showering and budgeting last night. My goodness. Yeah, but I thought about you, and you'd be proud of me. I am proud of you, Jen, I'm always proud of you. But I will say, when you are frugal and when you are intentionable about not allowing lifestyle creep to come into your life. You don't have to be so strict about your budget. You're literally just checking in to make sure there's nothing weird in your accounts, like there's no like identity theft, or there's no weird transactions. You're doing like a just a five minute check. And that's the benefit of being frugal is that you don't have to worry about so much. That is a benefit of budgeting. We just in the last my last two week check in, I saw some charges that I didn't recognize, and sure enough my card had been compromised, so I was able to be on top of that immediately. I mean, thankfully my card reimburses that money. I've not lost it, but it was a whole lot less to go through because I am keeping a pulse on it regularly and was able to remedy it quickly. So the fourth one on here I've already talked about, it's max out your retirement funds and so this is a good short term goal. So first getting a match if it's available to you, Second, getting your IRA a maxed out that's just six thousand dollars a year, and then going back to your four oh, one k if that's what you want to do, and that's again nineteen five. So if you are lucky enough to be able to go beyond that, then you can definitely invest in a regular brokerage. But um, I think for most people the goal of just maxing out retirement funds is absolutely sufficient, and depending on when you start, you may eat not even need to max but it's definitely a great goal. Yeah, and beyond that, once you've maxed out retirement funds, if you are fortunate enough to be earning an income where there's extra money above and beyond that, you can certainly consider investing that extra money. This article mentions beefing up your emergency fund. Certainly we would recommend three to six months living expenses. Well, that's a little bit beyond an emergency fund, but depending on your circumstances, that might be what you want to see. Six months is reasonable. Now, Yeah, nobody is blinking an eye had a six month emergency fund. Now that's becoming the standard. And a high interest account for your sinking funds. There's a lot of different places that we can be putting our money before we're just blowing it on things we don't actually need. Absolutely six is to avoid dramatic life changes. And this is interesting because you can't. You can't always avoid dramatic life changes. I don't. I mean, if I could avoid dramatic life changes, I absolutely would, But most of the time you cannot. So I guess if you love drama, just try not to put too much in your life. I took that one to mean just because you might earn more income doesn't mean that you should go out and drastically change your lifestyle. Meaning just because you could afford a brand new, really nice car, don't just because you could afford to now increase your the square footage of your living space, don't. That's how I took that. A lot of times, when we do earn, you know, increases in salary, it's like, let me go out and do this dramatic thing in my life that now I'm going to have to keep up with. I'm going to have to keep up with this higher mortgage, this higher car payment, you name it, which actually is what we will be seeing now. A lot of people are getting houses at low interest rates, and they may be getting more house than they can afford, and we may see people struggling with mortgage payments in the future. So this is definitely a time, like if you're getting if you've got a mortgage payment that you feel like is a stretch, this is definitely the time to lower your expenses, just in case your salary doesn't pace on track with what you think it will, because I mean, most people are not making fifty dollars and then going out and getting a hundred thousand dollar job. They're getting three percent raises, So I think definitely. I mean, if you do come into money, um, whether it's from a life insurance pay out or something, Yeah, don't make dramatic life changes. If you have a like mental breakdown, which is these are totally normal, it's nothing to be ashamed of. But if you are experiencing, you know, emotional things where you're like, I need to change everything, definitely seek help before you start spending money. Yeah, anytime we experience a big transition, it's not the time that we want to be making big decisions wherever possible. We want to kind of maintain stability. Yeah, So if you've got a transition in your career, it's not the time to also be going out and spending on these things that you're going to have to keep up with number seven on here is to review and change your circle this one and I know you love to talk about this one, and I do affirm it. While I haven't had to experience this in my personal life, thank goodness for a really great community of friends, I do see this happening that the circle and community that we're in does have a big impact on even just our worldview, our outlook. And so if we're finding ourselves in a community or circle of friends where it's all about the next thing that we're going to spend on keeping up with the Jones, is getting that next car, that next house, spending spending spending, going out to eat constantly, then that is where we want to do an audit on who am I allowing myself to be primarily influenced by. Again, that doesn't mean that we can't be friends with wealthy or unwealthy people, but what are their expectations on us? Are they giving us a hard time guilt tripping for not doing the things that they're doing. That's when we want to maybe introduce some other people into that circle or step away from that circle for a time if it's proving toxic. Not all wealthy or unwealthy people aren't toxic, so right, it's it's a matter of what is the influence of that relationship. Currently, find friends like Jen who are going to stitch it down and say, you need to be investing in a roth Ira. Let me set this up for you right now. Those are the good influences, not only someone who's not going to pressure you into bad things, but someone who's going to pressure you into good things. I'm glad you appreciated that. I didn't appreciate that, And oh my goodness, five year old me is going to appreciate you even more time in the market. So I love this one. It's so nuanced, and yeah, I have experienced it in my life. And I had a fantastic group of friends. They were great then, they are great now. They were great the whole time, but they spend spend money to have fun and I couldn't afford it, or at least not to reach the financial goals I had at the time. And so they weren't pressuring me. They were just doing what they wanted. And if I wasn't going to come along, they weren't going to change for me. They weren't ready, they weren't in a place to do that, and so I had to find other friends, and so I was kind of forced into this mindset. But I found and they're saying that goes like you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And I found that to be true. When I was kind of forced into having other friends that weren't so spending, I spent a lot less and I did just as much stuff as I did before, And now I count all of the people as my friends, like and there's just there's no like people that spend money are not bad people. You just have to be intentional with the people you spend the most time with. That's my two cents on that. So the last one on the list is to create a financial plan and stick to it um And so this is not necessarily a financial plan that you create with a financial planner, though you could. I personally don't think you need one of those until you kind of get closer to retirement, so you could for sure do this on your own at first, but kind of saying like, Okay, what do we want to do in life that's going to cost money? Do I want to work? Do I want to start my own business? Do I want to be a stay at home parent? Do we want to adopt? Like? What are the things that are going to cost money? When do we want to retire? Why do we want to retire at that age? Don't you? Let's just not pick arbitrary numbers for our retirement anymore, Like, let's be intentional with the numbers we choose the age for retirement, So kind of getting a sense of the numbers and creating a savings plan around that and automating it. I really like this one, and I think as we explore this topic, I have gotten more in touch with my own financial story and why I approach money the way that I approach it. I think it's a good exercise for all of us to kind of dig deeper at different points. And being that I am accustomed to having very little money or being in low earning, low income jobs, I never really had to consider these pieces before it was enough to say, am I paying my bills? It wasn't really much about where are the best places to put my money because I didn't have the money to make those decisions with. That mindset works when when you're in a low income earning position, but if your lifestyle changes. These are the things that we need to start thinking about. And I've found myself in that position, thank goodness, some of the decisions that I've made in the ways that I've invested in myself and my education, I am earning more and I'm needing to consider some of these things. The lifestyle that I used to live is not working anymore because I hadn't previously considered where do I put excess money. I didn't have any excess money to consider that with, but yet now kind of reaching that place. And so if that's you, or if you hope that that's you at some point, these are the things that we need to be thinking about, not just a budget, but also what's my financial plan? If I ever do have money, what am I going to do with that? If we don't have a plan going into it, it will go, it will be spent, it will be accounted for if we're not intentional and mindful about it. So I just want to state that for those who might find themselves in a similar place to where I have found myself, recognizing that mindset can be helpful and yeah, moving forward well and even knowing what should I be having my sights on because I've never had to consider this before. Good word, good word. You know what else is a good word? Tell me Jen the we us 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. Tough bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week. Hello, my name is Haley. I wanted to call in my bill of the week, which is my car payment. Um. So this comes with a little bit of a story, but it is a pretty exciting story. Um, with some twist and turns. So here it goes. My husband and I were meant to get married back in May, but of course, due to the pandemic, we had to push our wedding date back, and we pushed it till September. So we had been saving for about a year for all our wedding expenses that we were anticipating. But when August rolled around, we realized that our wedding was still not going to be what we thought it would be, so we made the decision to still get married in September, but we dramatically downsized our wedding guest count to make it safe for everybody who was attending. So dramatically downsizing our wedding discount meant that we were saving a lot of money on our wedding, um that we had an anticipated saving. So after the wedding, we realized we had a lot of leftover money that we didn't end up spending, but we had already saved. So what we decided to do with that was we decided to pay my car off. So right now I'm recording this in my car, which I paid off, which is very exciting. So yeah, due to downsizing our wedding in the pandemic UM, we were able to pay my car off. So that's my bill of the week. Thank you guys so much for what you do, and I love your podcasts and have a great day. Haley. First, I'm so sad that your wedding was not what you pictured, but in five years it won't matter. But you're paid off car will That's awesome. There's so many amazing things in this and I just want to highlight, Haley your choice to focus on some of the gratitude pieces within COVID. I mean, what amazing disappointment it is to have your wedding interrupted by this pandemic, and yet to look at the ways that there's kindnesses in the midst of it and really good things that have come out of some really awful things. So well done in looking at this where there could potentially be lifestyle inflation with your saved money and just paying off your car, what an amazing way to use that extra money. And also to be looking at the bright side and some of the good things that have come out of this time. And congratulations I'm getting married, Yeah, and doing some really great things with that saved money. Awesome. Alright, so our next bill of the week. Hi, Jin and Jill. My name is Rochelle Pond, and I'm so excited to submit a Bill of the week. But first I just want to say that I am so thankful I found you guys over a year ago. You guys have really helped me and my debt free journey and prooval journey, and I've just enjoyed like listening to you guys talk almost every single week. But um, anyway, so back to the bill of the week. My bill of the week is a bill that I am not having to pay today. Um, I am getting my car back from the mechanic and the repair was about a two thousand dollar cost, and it turns out that our warranty was still active and our warranty covered it all except for a one dollar deductible. So my bill of the week is a nineteen hundred dollar bill that I'm not having to pay today. And I'm just so thankful that we got that warranty three and a half years ago and it was still active. That is my bill of a week and I hope you guys have a great day. Another car one. Thanks Michelle. That's amazing well done. So glad the warranty covered that, I imagine, and it was probably a bit of work to look into whether or not that was covered, but it's really paid off pun intended. But thanks for sharing that bill, and thanks for listening in for over a year. So glad to have you part of this community. Yeah, absolutely recognize your name from the Frugal Friends community, so thank you for being active there as well. I'm participating in helping others. So if you want to submit your bill of the week, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill to leave us a bill and now it's time for the lightning round, all right. So today we are getting real and raw with our lifestyle creep experiences. And you just love the vulnerability, don't I. I love I love being bail your stories. I feel like, because you love it so much, John, you should go first. I love it when people are vulnerable on social media, and so I want to be I want to be that for other people. So that's what I'm doing. I am feeling this with small kitchen appliances. So I I've bought my share of small kitchen appliances, and our kitchen is small, and sometimes I wonder, like why do I have like an air fryer instant like a it's a ninja foodie. So it's an air fryer and a pressure cooker and I use it a lot. And then I'm like, but why, Like I have this over here? This is a large stove, Like why do I have this? And then I also have a spiralizer, I have a skillet. I have a airless or smokeless grill that was a gift. I have so many small kitchen appliances. And and the more you have, the more you want, is the thing. And we say this with decluttering all the time. When you declutter it, you actually want less because it feels complete. But like when you have a lot, you always want the next thing, and so that has been me recently. I think I definitely need to go through my kitchen and get rid of stuff in there because that's going to spend me some money. Also got a new bicycle, but like that was worth every penny. That's a nice bike you did, just go on along benefits. That's that's me. Yeah, you really are crushing this week. Oh my goodness, I gotta keep up. The thing is, Jen, you use your I mean not to, I'll let you have your truth, but you use your air friar combo ninja thing, and I can't help but wonder how much that has helped in cooking at home for someone who I know. Hopefully I'm not embarrassing you on this one, but cooking was not previously something that you enjoyed or would have called yourself good at. But you have still you primarily cook at home, and you use that a lot. I can't help but wonder how much that has helped with that. But then I wonder if it's like an entry thing to now what can I do. Could I operate without this? I think it's that because I do use the pressure cook a lot, because I do not look at my oven during the summer in Florida, Like looking at it makes the room hotter. So it does like save there. So it does serve a purpose. But it has been a gateway into like the instant pot was the gateway to the air fyer and then sold those to get the ninja and then that was the gate way into the spiralizer and you know stuff like that. So that's the creep. That's the creep portion. Yeah. It starts with something yeah, and then kind of goes off. It doesn't mean that you're going to get rid of it, just that Okay, this is enough and I'm not gonna go further. Okay, race yourselves. This is a big one, my lifestyle creep. We were not going to talk about this on the podcast. I know, I know. But you open the door and you're making me because you're a good friend. We we bought a boat. Don't say it like that. That was awesome. Okay, Okay, probably benefit didn't love it, I know, right, So maybe are you are you a support in this? Are you? I have to be balanced. I'll to you to invest and then also take rides on your boat. To be fair. It was a used and broken boat, very broken boat. We bought it broken. It still is mostly broken most of the time. Still a boat, still something that we didn't necessarily need. We moved to Florida, there's water all around us, and it's like, well, we can't afford it. We didn't go into debt for it. But what else could we have done with that money. I will say we are now adjusting. I don't know if you know this, Jen, I probably have mentioned it. We are going to sell the boat. The boat is going to go bub Eyes, and we will make money on the boat. Eric has fixed it. He's put a lot of time and energy into fixing this boat, which is part of why we're selling it, because it's like there's not just financially, there's other things that we could be doing with that time and energy that is going towards the boat. As great as it is to be out on the water, We're gonna enjoy our kayaks for the next foreseeable future, make some money on the sale of the boat, learn from our decisions. It's been a great ride, honestly, so it's and you could afford it. It did slow some other things down, but good you experience the lifestyle creep and then you cut it in check. Yeah, there you go. That's the thing, editing and auditing ourselves. It's going to happen. I think, just creating space and opportunity to identify is this what's happening, and how can I course correct? Thankfully we can course correct and make some money in the process. That's not always the case, and that's okay, but better to do that than to consistently ignore what's happening and to keep going to find yourself twenty years down the road. Absolutely not in a great place. Good, proud of you. Thanks. I want one more ride on the boat if I can. Well, yeah, we're gonna have to test it out and make sure that all these fixes actually worked perfect. Glad about that. Thank you for the boat rides, and thank you for listening. Haven't forgotten about you, You're still here. We want to thank you for your kind reviews as well on iTunes and Stitcher, like this one from metal Smith Mama. Hello, fantastic real life advice just happens to be five stars. This is a great podcast with real life advice for being frugal and financial freedom. I started just looking for ways to cut bills, but they have turned me onto so many great ideas for saving money. It's reshaping my relationship with money and saving Thank you, Thank you Metal Smith Mama, what a really thoughtful review. Thanks for leaving that. We also want to thank our friends who share these episodes on social media. So when you share the latest episode and tag us on Facebook or Instagram, we add you to our monthly drawing. Here's what our monthly drawing is. For every five tags and reviews we get each month, we give away a copy of the Frugal Friends workbook just to keep you rolling on those financial goals and accomplishments. So keep leaving us reviews on iTunes and Stitcher, sending the screenshot to Frugal Friends podcast at gmail dot com, and don't forget to tag us on social We do see it. See you next week by Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirian. So when are you selling the boat and when are we going back out? Mm hmm, well Eric still has it apart currently. For the most recent fix that hated to happen, I think he was hoping to have it fixed by this weekend. We'll see, so at least within like the next one or two weeks, we could take it out again. But it is a good time to sell it right now as we turn into the summer. So I would say within the next month, we'll have that thing sold. Okay, Well, let us know the next time you take it out, and I'll make sure that we're honest, we bring snacks and drinks. Not gonna argue with that one. So we can really live up that lifestyle before we go back to being stingy and frugal, not stingy, just not stingy, I know, just you know, without a boat, life without a boat, life without a boat, frugal boat and frugal without a boat. They're still fruit. Yeah, and we can values based spend in the future and be more intentional and planful about getting a boat. This definitely was a bit of an impulse by an excitement just about being near water, and we can call it breaking gale and get these other financial goals. So we'll just we'll do that

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