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Episode to eighteen your invitation to Spending Symposium. 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 m. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are so excited, so so very excited. The culmination of months of hard work, months of expert interviews, of promotion, of assembling goodie bags and giveaways and team building and everything that goes into our Frugal Living Summit is about to go down. Bob Bob bow in the best way possible. I mean that's sound like gloom, because this is the opposite of doom and gloom. This is the Spending Symposium, and it starts Monday, twenty speakers and four days of non stop frugal goodness, and not just like general frugality, but four days of helping you understand why you spend impulsively, how to stop spending impulsively, how we can spend better, and how we can optimize once we have developed these integral life skills. But first, our sponsors, m our sponsor. It's one of the same giddy anticipation, that feeling when you are so going forward to something that all your adulthood goes out the window and you just can't hardly contain yourself. That's how we're feeling about this Spending Symposium, which starts Monday. You've heard us June it is again free, a four day virtual event with twenty speakers talking about spending better and a lot of other things. Just join us, you'll see and it all starts Monday, June. There's still time to register at Frugal Living Summit dot com. So do it. Join us in our giddy anticipation. Forget about emotional regulation, responsibilities or logical thinking, roll down that window and just start yelling I can't wait, I can't wait, which is really how I'm feeling. And so today we're going to play you three clips, not full interviews, but clips from the symposium, so you can get just a small taste of what you're going to experience next week and why you want to head to Frugal Living Summit dot com to get your free ticket, your free goodie bag. Joined the Facebook group listen to our live happy hours happening throughout the week, like you are going to want to participate in this virtual event. And the thing is it's virtual and it's free, so you it doesn't matter what you're doing next week, you can participate. Everything can be listened to on your phone, on your laptop at work. It's easily accessible because we want everyone to develop the life skills that we are going to be talking about next week. And if you can't, if you absolutely can't join next week, maybe you're on a cruise and you like just don't have WiFi and you don't want to pay for it. I get it. I didn't talk to my kid for three days because I didn't want to pay for WiFi on a cruise. If you are like me, then you and get the Spending Mastery Bundle, which is lifetime access to all of the sessions with MP three downloads, which definitely were our most downloaded part of last year's bundle, fifteen resources from our speakers, courses, e books, spreadsheets, all kinds of things, and it's cheaper than the what you would pay for the WiFi on a cruise, so definitely check that out after you register. But we want to get into a few of these amazing snippets from over the first three days of the summit. Yes. So the first one is from Alison baggar Lely and you will know her as Inspired Budget on Instagram. She has the Inspired Budget podcast and in this snippet we're talking about like, what is emotional spending because that's a type of impulsive spending and what can trigger it? And listen to her example of her emotional spending. It's so relatable and uh, it will definitely give you some tips on how you can process and act if you are feeling the same way. Allison tell us a little bit about emotional spending. How does this happen? It happens when you least expect it. No, but emotional spending it's basically when you spend money, spending money based on emotions. Whether you're happy, whether you're sad, whether you're glad, whether you're board, whether you're stress, whether you feel like your life is chaotic, and you just want a sense of control. We spend money because we are taking back control of something by spending money. But ultimately, while it might make you feel good in the moment, because that's exactly how it is for me, I do struggle with emotional spending and I also love spending money while it does feel great in the moment, the aftermath of it is really just more shame, more guilt, feeling like I actually don't have control and that the spending money was just a lie to make me believe I have control. Yeah, and I love that. You also pointed out that it's not just negative emotions, but it's positive emotions as well. Very often spend to celebrate, and so it's it's all these emotions in our lives that we use spending to deal with. Yes, And you're absolutely right, Like I'm thinking right now, when I hit a milestone in my business, I immediately wanted to celebrate. And it's so interesting because I can't even see it in my children. I can see their emotional spending in my children. One of my children said, great, let's go get ice cream, and my other kid was like, great, let's go get a hotel room for two nights and go out to eat and play in an indoor swimming pool. And I was like, yeah, you're my kid like that one's fine. I made that it is. It is not. I think a lot of people think that emotional spending just ties to when you're depressed or when you're anxious, but it's not. It's also ties to positive emotions and then just feeling apathy and boredom is a lot of what trick can trigger emotional spinning as well. I think we've not many of us haven't been taught another way to be able to reward ourselves or care for ourselves. It's almost like food. I remember I still distinctly remember a time when there was a parent friend of mine who was making goodie bags for their child's birthday party and they didn't want to put any candy or food items in it. And I had this like visceral reaction, like then, what are you possibly gonna put in it? Like all I know for reward is like food. All I know for like what kids are going to enjoy is candy, And I'm like, who wants a pencil eraser? But from term, there are other things that can be given, And similarly with this concept, there are other things we can do. It doesn't mean the absence of celebration or the absence of caring for ourselves when we're down, but learning new ways to do that that isn't going to cost us money if we don't want to spend it as intentional and and on that note, chill, not even just learning the new ways, but being able to recognize the patterns that we don't even see in ourselves. And that's I think one of the biggest things that people need to uncover is looking back at your past spending history and realizing, Okay, did I spend emotionally in this situation, and if I did, what happened before that moment and what caused me to not want to sit in that emotion Because I fully believe that while it's nice to escape uncomfortable emotions or celebrate positive emotions, were meant to sit in our emotions and experience them. And that can be really uncomfortable for a lot of people. And the world has taught us, Hey, you don't need to be uncomfortable. You don't need to sit in that feeling. You just need to go and spend money and replace that feeling with um an adrenaline rush, which is exactly what I did for so many years. I feel like that's maybe the first takeaway from this. There's gonna be like a million takeaways. So just like get your pencils out, but like finding something like just don't even leave it to chance, Just like make start making your lists like, what are the free things I'm gonna do to deal with negative emotions? What are the free things I'm gonna do to like celebrate positive emotions? And then maybe like a budget list, like what are the like low cost ways I'm going to celebrate? What are the low cost ways I'm going to try to distract myself with negative emotions because we don't have to be perfect. You won't be perfect, So I just planned to not be perfect exactly, and so I know patterned thing to like even thinking back to how are these things handled when I was growing up? Because like that's that's the same thing with candy, Like this is what you think I received candy as a kid, and I find myself now I give candy to kids. I know. I know the kid Jill candy, right, we needed? We need? She's like in my white van and I is there something wrong with this? She does she pulls up in her white suv. Same thing. It's just like smotions. And while you're there thinking through and processing how has this been handled in the past? How do I want to handle it? Going forward? Work, which is hard because it requires a self discipline that we haven't taken the time to practice. Before. So the idea that I'm going to be able to tackle this right away and immediately see results is absolutely ridiculous because for years, however many years are you old, you maybe saw this type of behavior in our family, or you've been practicing it yourself, So it's going to take time to you know, develop that sense of self discipline. But here's what I what I would love for anyone who's watching to do is I want you to think back to a time whenever you spent money impulsively, and if it's okay with you, guys, I'd like to actually walk through a situation then when I did this myself. So the first thing I want you to do is I want you to think. And I'm looking over here because I actually just wrote a chapter in my book about this, and so i'm looking at my book right now that I wrote. But the first thing is I want you to basically just list out the experience, what happened. And so I'm going to paint this picture for you of a time whenever I caught myself in the moment emotionally spending and it was back when I had started inspired by jet. It was a business owner, but I was still teaching full time, so I was waking up at six am byt every morning, going to teach you and get my kids up at two kids still do two kids, taking them to school, getting to school teaching. I would be up at the school by seven am. I want to get home from picking up my kids from daycare until five thirty, make dinner, do baths, put everyone to bed. Then I would sit down at this little tiny desk in the corner of my primary bedroom and I would work from about eight to eleven and I would work on my business. I would work on inspired budget and create printables. I'd write blog posts. And that was very overwhelming, and I'll never forget. There was this day and everyone had already gone to bed because it was a school night. I was up. It was maybe ten or ten thirty, my husband sleeping in the room while I'm sitting on my you know, in the dark, with my computer the only lighting source in my room, and I remember looking at my to do list for my business, and I remember just feeling so stressed and overwhelmed, and I felt like I had no control. I was just like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And in that moment, my next reaction, without even thinking about it, was I literally opened up a new tab in my browser and I went to Amazon and I just started scrolling because in that moment, I had no control over myself. I felt so out of control, I felt so overwhelmed. But shopping, I knew and make me happy, and I knew it would bring me joy, and I knew that I would get that that very tiny little adrenaline rush that would kind of perk me up and I could finish my night of work because I had something happy that happened to me in that moment, and I was able to take back control when I felt like it was gone. And so looking back at that experience, when you're able to look back at your experiences and developed and find patterns in them, you can look at three things you can look at when when did it happen? Well, for me, it happened late at night, no one else is awake, right and left my own devices. I have no self control because I've exhausted, right because I was working so much. So when did it happen? Where will it happened at home? It happened when I was, you know, working on my business. It happened when I was. I didn't have anyone else to turn to. I didn't have someone that I could just lean on, and you know, I couldn't wake up my husband and say, hey, I'm really stressed about this. And then why and my why in that moment was I felt like my life, my business. I just felt very overwhelmed, and if I could do one thing instead of working on my business and doing one thing there that would bring me back control. I saw out something that was easier and happier, and I wanted to do that one thing to replace that emotion. And so looking back, when you're able to find the patterns in your impulse spending, that's when you can then say, Okay, what boundaries do I need to put in place now so that this is no longer an issue for me? Because when we don't look at the patterns first and we just start throwing, you know, band aids on the problem, it's not going to go away. Allison is so amazing, and we hope that you get to hear her full interview because she shares so many awesome, tangible tips and she is super relatable. I think one of the things that stands out to me about this segment where she's talking about feeling out of control in her business is that it wasn't that she wasn't being responsible, it was that she wanted a reward for all the hard work and responsibilities that she was doing, which I think I can experience that too. Oftentimes will think about impulse spending is just you're not doing much. Maybe there's a connotation of laziness attached to it, you're not thinking about it, But really it was more of a distraction. A reward won a way to say, yes, I'm working really hard for this thing, and I want to feel congratulated in some way. No one else is doing it, so I got to do it for myself. And and I think it's not that, oh, we can't have a reward, it's that we need to be able to find ways that aren't going to hijack our spending in ways that we don't want to be spending, and so finding some of those free ways of celebrating not abandoning celebration or reward all the time. So that was really helpful for me to kind of reorient some of the reasons that we might sabotage our spending habits. And it's not always just because I'm walking through a store and I'm not thinking straight and something finds its way in my cart. Yeah. I always love chatting with Alison, and I am like I am, I'm blessed that I get to do it all the time. She's a really good friend. But she is one of the and I had to text her this after our interview with her. Is one of the best interviewees that we've ever that we we get the chance to talk to because she's so authentic and vulnerable and she goes into even more depth in the rest of the interview. But it is definitely one to check out on day one of the summit. And yeah, I we don't talk about emotional spending as much as we should. We talked more about the small impulses in the grocery store or whatever. But this is something when you can identify it, you can start to work through it and it will make a big difference in how you keep your budget. So our next clip is from Jade Warshaw and she is from More feast Less Famine on Instagram and she also has a great YouTube channel and and we just we loved talking to Jade. She is sharing her debt payoff story on day two, and it's so relatable because like Jade and her husband are musicians, they're artists. They're not engineers, they're not doctors, like they are just trained artists. And so I felt like this was a very relatable debt payoff story and her her her feelings are I heard a lot of my own feelings about my debt payoff story in her. So I hope that you will, if you're going through one, feel about like you'll hear that in your own story too. And that yeah, that guilt and shame is like a big part of it, and it is why like so many people just brush it off to the side, put it in a closet and ignore it. So like, how did you push through that feeling? You know? I think two things. Um, we had the support, you know when I tell people all the time, having when you when you, like you said, you kind of throw the lights on, you open up the closet and you see, Okay, here's the problem. You know. I think in our culture and in our society, we try to do a lot of things alone because if you if you can accomplish this, then you're you're your own hero. And it's not like that like, you need help, and a lot of times in life we just have to acknowledge we need help, we need support, we need to reach out. And you know, for my husband and I, the first of that was looking to each other and going, Okay, if we're gonna get through this, we're gonna get through it together. And then you know from there, you know, and I you know, I say this on my social media all the time, like if you're going to tackle anything, like if you're gonna make any major change, whether it be tackling debt or you know, died and exercise or whatever it is that you're trying to, you know, make strides in I always tell people like, if you can do three p's, then it will help you. If you can find the right people, which are those people who will support you, They will tell you the truth, you know, they'll keep you encouraged. If you can find a purpose, that's the second P. You know that purpose is like that why, like that underline why that drives you. So if you can find your purpose in three if you can find a proven plan, which is something that you has already worked for other people, there's a track record, there's something that you know Okay, if I follow these steps, this can work. I think if you can find those three things, they will push you and motivate you and keep you on moving in the right direction. You know. For me, like I said that, people, my husband, my family, my friends. When when it was time for us to get out of debt, we didn't keep it a secret. We told everybody because we wanted that accountability. We wanted people to know, Hey, we're working on this, you know. And basically, if you see us geting off tracks, say something like, hey, Jade, you know, I'm surprised that you went shopping. I thought you were getting out of debt. You know, I wanted that accountability, you know, with our purpose. You know, for me, I always envisioned the family and I had this vision in my head of you know, being able to walk my kids to cool and being able to go to their soccer games, and where we were that wasn't gonna happen. So I needed to keep that vision in my head of Jade, if you want this, and if you wanted the way that you were envisioning it, you've got to keep going. And then finally, the plan, you know, like I said, for my husband, the plan that worked for us was um, the Ramsey plan. That might not be the plan for you, but whatever it is, find a plan. And what I say is just submit to that plan. Just throw your ego aside, because especially with money, there's just that feeling of, oh, oh, I know what to do here, like I'll just you know, I know what to do. But you have to like have that reality moment of like, if I knew what to do, then I wouldn't be in this mess. So I need to look to something else that has worked more times, you know what I mean. And there's something to that. I mean, I think it's just kind of like I said, putting that ego aside and going, you know what, I've messed up with money, like I haven't haven't gotten it right, So I need to I need to learn. I need to look to something and I need to follow a process that has been proven to work. And if I follow the process and to a t and it still doesn't work, then let's pick another process and and you know, continue to just walk down that path. So I love the accepting that there's room to grow, there's places where learning can come into place. But with the rejection of the guilt and shame. I think sometimes we don't know how to separate the two of I can admit that I didn't do this the exact right way, but it doesn't mean that I'm a complete failure and I can never do better. I mean absolutely, And what you're saying, I mean, let's look at what's happening right now. I mean, you've got to believe that nothing is wasted. You've got to believe that the things that take place, the challenges that you face, are here for no reason alone but to grow you and so you can be a help for others. Like the fact that I'm sitting here, the whole point of me and my husband going through this was the people who are listening right now. It wasn't just for me and for my husband to keep to ourselves and go, okay, like we did this cool thing. Yeah, Yang, it's it's given us now a platform to speak, you know, and help people and motivate people and hopefully give them an encouragement. And that's the reason we go through anything tough, right Like, That's the reason we grow is for that purpose alone. It's not just for us preach, preach, say loud. For the people in the back thank you well, and I say I appreciate you sharing this because it is unusual, probably not unusual where people find themselves in that much debt, but to be to talk about it. You know, often we hear okay, eighty thousand, maybe a hundred thousand, but never do you hear four hundred sixty thousand. And so I think for the people who are in that situation, or to that situation, or any sort of debt, it can help to give that breath of fresh air to say okay, and someone else did it. I have talked with so many people recently who have different barriers to why they can't make shifts in their financial situation. I have heard literally in the last week. Maybe I'm interacting with more people. I don't know, but I'm too old, I am, I'm too set in my ways, I'm too far gone, I'm in too much debt, I'm not interested in finances. Right. There's so many things that we can put on as to why I'm just not willing to do experience growth in this area. And so I'm curious for you, J because this would be the reason. Right, I am nearly half a million dollars in debt. There is no way, like I'm too far gone. This is my life now I'm going to learn to accept it. What what was that like for you to start to get that in order? And I know you've provided great tangibles with the three piece, but just like a first step, like where should someone begin with those barriers? Yeah? Great question. I mean the first thing is getting organized, Like literally, you don't see the room because you're probably not organized. So literally, the first step is listing out all of your expenses, everything that you can think of, because my guess is you're probably not on a budget. And the first step to doing that is just knowing what you have to work with and what you have to pay. So a lot of people I have found they don't even truly know exactly how much money they make. You know, a lot of people don't know exactly how many bills they have. So getting organized and listening out all of your expenses, um, both fixed and variable, listing out what your incomes are coming into the house, and then creating a budget. The budget is like everything because your budget informs, it informs what you can spend, it informs what goals you're putting money towards. You know, a lot of people think that your budget is just a list of bills, and and that's not exactly it. You know, your budget should have the amount of money that you earn each month. So let's say I don't know, Let's say you earn three thousand dollars a month, and after that, you're spending every dime of that on paper on purpose, You're you're you're putting your bills in there, You're putting your variable expenses, which are things like groceries, things like you know, spending on hair or or grooming, things that you can kind of control the amounts, and then you're including your your goals in there, so if there's any money left over, you're putting that towards you know, paying off that first small debt, or you know, putting together a quick emergency fund so that you've got money for a rainy day, and really just planning and organizing your money. You know, a budget is just like taking that that messy closet that's got all that crazy stuff in and you just shove it in there. A budget is putting like that awesome like organization system in there, right so that when you open the is it it's like your shoes are here, and your belts are here, and your pants are here, and it looks awesome and it's not overwhelming. It's actually something you like looking at and like going into. And I think that with money, it's the same way. Setting it up in an organized way. You get to choose how you spend it. Right, It's not like somebody is saying you must you know you must spend your money. You're choosing. You're saying, you know what. It feels good to know what I have. It feels good to pay feals on time. It feels good to know that, at any given moment exactly how much money I have in my checking account. I really appreciated Jade's entire talk, and I think this part about the budget I really enjoy. No, Jen, you've gone through your own journey with budgeting, but I think the way that Jade highlights how important a budget was for them, and just a way of organizing our fine dances. Again, I think anytime we can find a helpful mindset shift or a perspective shift, it doesn't even mean that we're changing our circumstances that much. Just the way that we're looking at an issue or even a solution can help us, and so I think the way that Jay describes budgeting could be one of those for some people of how can I view this in a way that doesn't feel stifling but actually helpful and beneficial for me. Yeah, she just offers a lot of really helpful tips for people who are are feeling some type of way about like their debt payoff, and it's just like gracious toughness about what you kind of have to do to get your finances together, and but without all the guilt and shame. That's what I really love that she really breaks through what we can feel about a out our debt, about maybe the mess we've gotten into with our finances. The past is the past, and if you choose to be different in the future, then then there is no more guilt, there is no more shame because you're choosing to be someone different and doing something different. And I just it's a refreshing take ye. Jade's also refreshing in the sense that she's still working in the music world. So I think a lot of times we can chat with folks who have started in a different career and now are fully in personal finance, and I think Jade has found her way into that a bit, but she hasn't let go of some of those other things that are really enjoyable for her. So I think that she brings a helpful perspective in that regard because she's still in that world. She's still holding a previous career. It might look different from when she first began. But I think for those of us who might not feel as though, Okay, I gotta switch everything, I'm gonna start blogging about personal finance, like you can still do what you're doing, and pair that with some of these new learnings and ways of approaching budget and debt payoffs. So that's that's a fun thing about Jade's story too. Yeah, She's not one of these people. It's like, oh, I switched to blogging and I make six figures and now I paid off my debt in a year because of all the money I'm making, which is all lies, always all lies. If it sounds too good to be true, it is it is. So I appreciate, Yeah, I I also appreciate that about Jade. Our next segment, our final segment that we're going to play for you, is from day four and it's from Jesse fear On. So this is on day three, and she's talking about how to help your brain make better spending decisions. And so she talks a lot about routines and how different tips for how we can over come decision fatigue. Um, and so I I love this clip, and so I hope you guys will too. So let's dive in and ask you like a big question. And this is a very loaded question, So we'll just skip the pleasant tries and just start out like into it. Why do we do the opposite of what we say we want to do? That's like a major like budgeting, like qualm, that's a major qualm I have with budgeting. I don't know really what the word qualm actually means, but if I did, it's what I would have with that. Like, so, why do I make a budget and then do the opposite of what I say I want to do? Well, it's because you're human? Um. Um, you know we're not robots right um. But you know, I also think it's because a lot of times we get caught up in the living. Someone else is a dream, but we think it's ours, Like we've we've said, oh that's my dream, that's my dream too. But really it's because we haven't actually sat on and defined our dream and what we really want out of life, and instead we just see, oh, Sally over there is just really killing it. So I'm gonna do what she's doing, and I'm gonna have that too, instead of sitting down and getting real with ourselves and discovering for ourselves, like what is important, what's not important? What do we what do I really hope to have achieved? Um in my lifetime. One of the most powerful things that I ever did was at this conference a few years ago and they had us right um our eulogies for our funerals. They made us like write it and so weird, I know, but it really brought into focus like what I hope when I leave this world, what I'm remembered for, and what's actually important to me. And when I was able to do that, was able to bring it back and kind of ask myself, Okay, like am I headed in that direction? Or am I headed in a different direction? And how do I get going in that direction? And so I think that that's where a lot of times it comes from. We we we want to do certain things, but then we do the opposite of it, because maybe a part of us doesn't actually want that thing that we say that we do um or maybe we just want a small part of that, we don't want the whole thing, And so it really comes down to us just sitting down and defining it for ourselves. That's an interesting point that both could be true for why we don't do the things we say we're doing. It couldn't be that the thing we're saying we're doing is not actually what we want, or the thing that we say we're doing we want to do, but then impulse decisions come in and we just end up doing whatever everybody else is doing. And maybe what's on paper is accurate. I think that can go in both, and it's it's also interesting to me. I think I could know, or at least say verbally, yeah, my life is not other people's lives. I don't have to live with the way other people do. But then rubber meets the road, and I can feel uncomfortable making different decisions, like it was uncomfortable for me the first few times that I said I don't like Target and I don't like Starbucks, and people are like, how good you not? Oh my gosh, And in some ways it's like an offensive thing to say to people because it's where they spend the most of their discretionary funds. And so actually putting that into practice I think can be really difficult. But I think you're giving us some keys and how to do that. Like, I mean, the your eulogy thing is next level. I love. I've heard of that before, and I don't think I haven't actually done it. I don't think we've actually asked our audience to do it before. But that is that is powerful, and I think it's something I think I want to take forward with me. It is because it's so final, because they're like, this is this is the last you know, like you're not coming back from the day to do anything more. So those you know, when you leave this world, what is it that you hope is left behind? Like what mark have you left behind? Um? And so like for me, it just really challenged me in that regard when um of defining what was actually really important to me. Sometimes knowing the big things can help us in the smaller things. But speaking of the smaller things, I think another part of what we're talking about here is just how busy our lives can be, how many choices we have to make, in a day, and how decision fatigue bears weight on the decisions that we make, in whether or not they were intentional decisions that we actually wanted to make for ourselves. Jesse, what would you say, at its core is decision fatigue? What brings it on? Why do we experience it? Um? Well, so to illustrate that, I'm gonna use my own life um so. Ten years ago, right before um actually, while I was in labor getting birth to my oldest child, I was still working away on my laptop in the hospital. Really not funny to think about it, but I was. That's what I was doing. I was a project manager for this engineering company based in it Lantau, but I was on the national side, so I had projects all over the country. I had almost a thousand projects going on at that time that I'm literally in the hospital bed getting birth. Um But I felt fine. I felt very in control over my life. And then flat fash forward ten years and that's not the case anymore. And of course a lot of things have just to change, um in the in the world of like societal things. You know, our phones were so much attached to them. We have so much more digital clutter than we did ten years ago, which have a lot more. And of course I'm now a mom of three kids and two dogs, and you know, and so things have changed dramatically, and so there's all these other little small decisions that I have to make a day in and day out. And um, for a long time, it almost correct me, and I realized part of it is actually because I didn't have a solid daily routine in place. And as a former project manager, I'm speaking a lot to moms here in particular, because we do manage other people's schedules all the time, right or to a spouse who maybe manages their spouses. Um, something I learned is that the whole rest of my family's life to be in control, I had to get my life in control. I had to get my routine built and established. And then that way I could help and manage everybody else's time and help them learn how to get on a routine as well. And UM, that absolutely so much with my decision fatigue and my burnout, because then it took away a lot of those you know, those little fires that pop up all the time, because I actually had a way of being able to deal with them from that forward. Yeah, that is such a great like strategy to to eliminate that because you don't think about, especially with kids, you don't think about all the little micro decisions that you are making all day every day, and like we think we're in control, and then by the end of the day it's all for nothing because our brains are just exhausted from like what am I going to wear? What is my kid gonna wear? What am I going to eat? How much should I eat? Should I stop eating? Now? Like that's that's usually my day. It's like when am I gonna eat? What should I eat? We should stop eating? All of that? So like when am I gonna brush my teeth? Am I brushing my teeth long enough? Like all these tiny little eight questions in my head that by the end of the day it is I am exhausted. But like having a plan and creating, like I just deciding, like I do this at this time for this length of time, it can eliminate like half of those decisions. So like when so when it's at the end of the day and you really have to make actual, like important decisions that are more important about then should I stop eating now? You can actually like make them with wisdom exactly exactly your brain is not so fried. Yeah, besides planning, is there anything else you can do to like reduce decision fatigue? Um? Well, kind of going a little bit back to the to the routine is I think that what's really important is coming up within that routine, Like say, whatever time you're gonna wake up in the morning, at be six o'clock, what are the first thirty minutes of your day are you going to do? Are you gonna be rushing up the order gets work? Are you gonna sit down and have a cup of coffee? Are you gonna pray? Are gonna do are you gonna work out? You're gonna reach by, I be gonna read a book. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna work on your side hustle? What are you gonna do for that first thirty minutes of the day. And then at some point in the middle of the day, with your lunch break, it's your kids nap, you know, nap time, you're sitting in car pool whatever for thirty minutes in the middle of the day, what are you doing? What is being done in that time? Are you cleaning, preparing for dinner? What are you doing um, and then in the evening before you go to bed, that last thirty minutes, what are you doing? That absolutely helped me because then I was able to look over my day and played my day accordingly because I knew I had thirty minutes in the middle of the day that if I you know, I have a cleaning schedule too, like I clean bathrooms on Mondays, so I knew that I could get the bathrooms clean and that thirty minute time window, you know, if I had not had any other time during that day, if I was being pulled in too many different directions, I had thirty minutes because that is the lot of time I had on my little plan, and that was it. And I think that it's really important that maybe sometimes if we break it down to just giving ourselves, like a thirty minute block to do something in whatever it may be, whatever we're gonna catch up on, whatever is important, to put them in those blocks, because then they get done and then you're not just constantly pulled into fifteen million different directions. M I love how time limited that is too. I think finding those thirty minutes can can be reasonable. Maybe we need to start with ten, fift twenty minutes, but hopefully you've got thirty minutes that you can carve out for yourself three times a day, and if not, then maybe that's a warning sign that we evaluate the way that our lives is structured if we can't keep up with anything. Jesse is another person who has revisited our podcast, so that's always fun to bring back faces and perspectives that we know are really amazing. So that was fun, And of course I love the times when we can talk about tangible tips, the low hanging fruit, the things that we can be trying on for size. Of course, what's going to work for one person won't work for all people. But this ability to engage in a routine and see it make a difference in our emotional lives, are spending lives, are relational lives, Like what is being offered here isn't just beneficial for spending and finances, it's across the board. Routines are incredible. I think we as humans are created for some version of routine. We all need it to various degrees. But when we can find what works for us like Jesse is describing, it can really really help eliminate some of those decisions that we need to make throughout the day which makes life go better for us. Yeah, And I know when I first heard like thirty minutes three times a day, I'm like, who has thirty? Who has an hour and a half? And then I'm like, what what do I need to get out of my life to make time for that? Because it's not and I can't. It's a how can I? And if this is something that is going to help me make better decisions and overall, especially spending decisions what we're focusing on this week, If this is something that's going to help me in my life long term, how can I carve out thirty minutes three times a day? Because if you think about it, you should be able to do that theoretically, thirty minutes in the morning, thirty minutes before bed, and thirty minutes at lunch. That should be a thing normal human beings can do. So what do I need to take out of my life that does not serve me in order to make room for a system and to incorporate systems that do um So I hope that I hope that you'll listen to Jesse's talk on day three and that you'll challenge yourself to remove some of the things from your life that allow you to put healthier practice, like replace them with healthier practices. Speaking of healthy practices and something we're not going to remove, there is always time for this always, 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 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 Clint, this is the bill of the week. Hi, my name is Taren. I listened to your podcasts. I'm from the UK. Today. I managed to renew my car insurance and last year it was at a huge price because I was doing it very last minute and I had a few little claims on my car. So I was paying two hundred and fifty five pounds a month but some high risk insurance and I've got it down to sixty two pound a month for next year. So I'm I'm planning to put that money into savings and I'd love to pay for my curuntry once for the whole year. That's my goal next year the following time, and it allows me to put a bit of money into savings because I've recently gone down to part time for better work life balance and studies. That is amazing, Aren, I am so proud of you. A your voice is so soothing, like please please leave more bills of the week please, um sa hint. That is a big jump and you will definitely be able to pay for that next year, like if you're saving the difference, then you'll have no problem. And uh yeah, we're so proud of you, Taren. Thanks for thanks for calling in. Thanks so much, Taren for calling in. If you all listening want to submit your bill of the week, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill leave us your bill. We love them. We just love them. We're never getting rid of them. And actually Bill of the weeks are part of the summit as well. We asked all of our speakers for their bill of the week. So you've got twenty more bills of the week coming at you next week, and only one of them is Bill Curtis. So I'll just preface that, I'll let you guess. Gen's a little just one that one in and we'll move on. And now it's time for right round. So this is a question from Goldie, our podcast manager. She asks would you rather earn lots of money doing a job you hate or not earn much doing a job you love? And I would I was going to replace it with our summit question, but it's at the end of our session, so I don't want to like give any spoilers, so you'll just have We also have a question that we ask every speaker the same question at the very end, so you'll have to tune in to see what the question is. But this is a fun one and it's just a good grab bag. Yeah, well, what do you think? What's your answer? Um? I think I would rather not earn much money doing my job I love, because that's what my life is. I was gonna podcast, Um, and I'm a social worker, so I think, like what I have chosen with my life proves this out. I couldn't say the other thing because it's not been in the cards for me. Yeah. Um, I would love to earn a lot of money doing something I love, and I think that's totally possible, And we actually talked about that. On day four. Janie Torres Rodriguez from Yokiro de Niro talks about creating a side hustle in your margin, and then Taylor Covar from The Money Couple talks about transitioning to full time work that you love. So we've got Janie with the how to start it in your margin and Taylor with the how do we move it into full time? How do we go from a job that makes us money into doing a job we love that may not make a lot of money. So we've got that on day four, um, and so I think that's going to be a really good day, because what is the point of controlling your spending and following a budget if you're just going to you make a lot of money for no reason, Like, there is no point to retiring early, because there's nothing like unless you know what you're retiring early four, which is typically going to be to contribute in some other way. And maybe that is doing something that doesn't make you a lot of money, but it's still less retiring more transitioning to work that you love. And so that is really the point of frugality is to be able to afford a life you love, and that is that's a lot about what we talk about in our session in the summit, is the point of controlling your spending and how to find your why behind it, so you're motivated to keep going. And yeah, like that's the reason we're frugal is so that we can do jobs that don't make a lot. Yeah, I think, what what came first, the chicken or the egg? But yeah, the one necessitates the other. But yet we are seeing great strides in our finances as a result of frugality too. And the motivation and perspective I think similar to what we're what we what you and I just got to experience with the summit, and what people are about to experience alongside of us as they listen to these interviews is the different perspectives and what works for other people and the motivation that can come with that. I think we can't just do it on our own or with one or two other people. That it's a whole community that's going to help us find the things that are going to work for us, find people who are similar to us or different from us, and are going to challenge us in new ways. So I think because of that we can do better and better. You don't have to stay stuck if you don't want to be in the job that you're in, or you want to be in the job you're in, but you do want to earn more money or have more freedom and flexibility. So yeah, it's an amazing thing to learn from others and I'm excited to share that with people. Yeah, so again, had to Frugal Living Summit dot com and get your free ticket. Check out the Spending Mastery bundle after you register. The price of that does go up when the first sessions drop, so that is definitely something to check out. And thanks for listening to this episode. Um, we are going to share one more comment that one of our listeners made about one event. Breathe said, Hey, y'all, just wanted to share my biggest takeaway from the summit so far. Pretty Much, it all comes down to your mindset of what frugal means, and there's a clear difference between cheap and frugal living. A frugal life doesn't have to be boring in order to achieve your dreams, and I'm so thankful to have joined the summit to learn this. Also, best resource for the All Access Pass is the Debt Snowball Calculator. Game changer for anyone, especially those who want to retire early or have a solid debt free date. Oh, thank you so much, Brat. I'm so thrilled you enjoyed last year's and we've got so many more resources coming at you this year too. Oh my gosh. Yes, we have a how much can I afford to invest? Spreadsheet, and we have budgeting spreadsheets, and we have all kinds of debt payoff resources. So are all access pass which is the Spending Mastery bundle is legit. And yeah, we hope to teach you a lot about what frugality can be and how it can work for you. So thanks for listening again. Frugal Living Summit dot com to get your free ticket, your free goodie bag which has the game that will allow you to win prizes every day of the summit, and uh yeah, we will see you guys on Monday. Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. Tell me what will you be drinking at our happy hours each night of the summit, every night, every night for four happy hours? For sure? Water. It's like the only thing I can guarantee you I'm going to drink every night is water. Sure. I'm not saying that there won't be something else also, but I for sure, No, I'll drink water every night. But you made up you made up drinks like themed drinks for the summit. Oh yes, I did. Okay, so I'm gonna be drinking those themed drinks. Tell us the links drinks. Think about it. You're gonna have to You're gonna have to come to the summit. But I'll give you a little I'll give you a little sneak peek at what we did for our that this might not be the same thing, but for our party, for our four year Frugal Friends anniversary party, one of my favorite drinks that we had was called the Arak because Arak that's what we say when we have tech tech difficulties and usually Eric's home and I can just call for him and be like, solve this issue with my mic or my computer anything him to come through the Yeah. Um so anyhow, we've named a drink after that, like we spelled it a I R R I see K. Really, his name is spelled E R I C. But you know when we pronounce it that way. And I think it was just like vodka and club and some lemon, because they enjoys eating drinking that not eating that. I might I might be drinking the gen and Tonic, maybe a good one too. Yeah, and you'll just have to come to the Happy Hour to see what chills drink is water would