All the Money In the World: Interesting Money Questions to Ponder EP 392

Hi.

I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.

Term career goals.

We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in early February of twenty twenty five. We are going to be talking about money. So a fun fact, many many years ago, I wrote a book about money.

It was called All the Money in the World.

It came out in early twenty twelve, so I guess that's thirteen years ago now, which is a while, but I remember it well. And it happened because I had written one hundred and sixty Hours, which is a book about time management. And since I'm still writing about time, you would assume that the path would be linear, but it was not. The book was sort of slow out of the gate and sort of like, well, maybe I should write about a different topic, and like, what should

And we're going to write a personal finance book.

And I wasn't quite as into it as I was into time, and I think maybe that was reflected though I had some fun writing that book.

But anyway, after that.

I went back to time, wrote more about time and writing about time since.

But hey, I still like the topic of money, Sarah. You read All the Money in the World, in which I can't believe. No, it's good.

I mean I I actually thought I had some really refreshing takes that aren't like standard in every money book, and I liked it a lot. So I don't know, Maybe you should write another money book.

Yeah, no, probably not. I don't think I have another one in me.

I seem to always still have another time book in me, but I'm not sure that I have another money book in me. But this episode is going to be about money, but not the normal sort of personal finance tropes. Like nothing in this episode is going to be about cutting out Netflix or lattes. We are going to be asking each other some intriguing questions about money, and we would love to hear your answers as well, so feel free to let us know how you would answer any of

I would say both Josh and I are very disciplined spenders, so we are aware of our spender tendencies. Mine definitely run deep. My allowance never lasted more than like a day or two. When I was growing up, there was always something enticing to get, whether it was like a ski trip for school or a babysitter club book I would find or make up. It didn't matter like if there was money, I was spending it in As adults, we've recognized that would not be a good strategy for

And what do you think your kids are mix?

I don't know if they'd want their tendencies necessarily shared, but I will say there's at least one kid whose allowance patterns look a lot like mine.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, at least you guys got to the allowance part to we never even made it there. For many, many reasons, I was fine with giving an allowance. My husband had a sort of really bad reaction to the idea, and so you know, there are certain battles you pick in a marriage, and that is not one, not a hill I was willing to die on. So we wound up not doing that. Though curiously, the kids do not

Stores all that often.

Maybe I don't know, but even so, I mean, my older kids are aware that there are pricier stores out there and still seem to be okay with buying clothes at like Old Navy and Target and Amazon.

So I am happy about that.

So far, I am more a safer than a spender. I believe Michael is also a saverer to possibly slightly less than me.

But it's hard to know.

I think more it's that I had the adult experience of running my own sort of life and household on a very limited income, which he chose a more higher paying initial career.

Out of school, so I think had less of that.

Experience, which it shapes you. But yeah, I have a very strong tendency to just make do. But you guys do as well. I mean you're driving cars that are old.

Don't give away my frugality secrets because we have another.

Second at Okay, okay, we have to get to yes.

I mean, I think the actual question that's going to be very interesting and telling is the one about like if you got a windfall, because I can think of like, what would fifty different ways I would spend it? And you were like, I don't know what would I do with it?

I mean if it was well, okay, we'll get to that. If it's a big enough windfall, I'd come up with something.

But yeah, yeah, no, I well I was thinking about that, like my computer, not this one i'm using now because I actually have two laptops now because my older ones stopped being able to run any video conferencing programming, which just clearly doesn't work for life in the modern era.

So it's a long story.

Maybe that's a less frugal choice, but anyway, here we are just generally making it do with stuff. So, Sarah, what was one of your earliest money memories.

Yeah, I mean I lived at a very frugal household. I think we both share some of that. My parents really valued saving. I think it was a point of pride, but also kind of like a point that they felt was like non negotiable, like this was the right way to be. It wasn't really out of necessity. I do think that many people with similar income levels spent a lot more money than my parents did, and they did splurge on certain things, which is sort of in some

Mixed bag, mixed bag. Well, one develops a good taste for hotels, so when that tar an initial experience, you're like, I'm not going anywhere where they're putting schwab in the in the shower.

After that, yeah, so what about you?

Yeah, well, I mean I was thinking of a couple, but one I realized that it was what you think as a kid, and it's you learn later in life is not true at all. Is that sometimes people choose to buy more stuff and then you think they have more money because.

They have bought more stuff.

So I was under the impression that many people, like other friends of mine, their parents must have had much more money than we did because they always had, for instance, an incredibly well stocked craft closet right like that that there was you know, if you wanted a pipe cleaner, you were getting a pipe cleaner. I don't think we ever bought pipe cleaners in my entire childhood, right, But they'd have like a closet full of construction paper and

At like two fifty.

Trust me, I know, because that's what I was blowing my allowance.

That's what you were blowing your allowance on.

But you know, so this family had bought this girl one hundred Babysitters Club books or however many there were by the time the series had run its course and spending two dollars and fifty cents each, So really we're talking two hundred and fifty dollars, which made me feel that they must be like rolling in it, you know, Or what am I the families that give out the full sized candy bars at Halloween? Right? That is, if you want to know a way to make your late

If that interestingly, not only is there a phenomenon in my neighborhood where some people do it, but they do feel they need to announce it on What's up, So there must be some sort of status they wanted it going on, and that weird do not give those out?

Yeah, which is so funny because again, like it's seventy five dollars, Like, if you had seventy five full size.

Candy in one sitting for a kid, I'm sorry I have Like, Okay, anyway, we'll.

Keep moving on from that.

But you know, later you realize that people just spend their money on different things, and some people choose to spend their money on things that you see or that you might think are really cool as a kid, and it has nothing to do with how much happens to be in somebody's bank account. But yeah, yeah, so let's take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with a couple more money questions. Well, we are back doing an episode on money. We are asking different questions.

Yeah, I would definitely make use of nature, because certain things in our area are really pleasant and either extremely low cost, like you would just pay maybe a couple dollars at the parking garage or free. And so probably a beach morning would be a great way to spend the day. You could bring lunch, bring food, whatever. You might have to spend a couple dollars for parking, but honestly it should be nominal, and then that would be

Yeah, I feel like after we host a kid's birthday party or somenday, because I always overorder pizza, which is me fighting my natural tendency. I would under order the pizza, and that has happened the first one or two times that this did, so that I need to compensate and over order the pizza so I don't run out. But then we wind up with all this extra that we freeze. So yeah, we tend to always have that in the

He was downsizing.

We're like, okay, whatever, So anyway, we have this and we don't drink a lot of wine.

So what I thought would be fun to.

Do is have people over and they could choose bottles and open them and maybe it would be good, maybe they would be terrible, But then I guess you'd open another one and see if you could find a different flavor that didn't mind the sort of slightly fluctuating temperature and storage as much. And then you know, I'd have my guests bring like an appetizer or something, so it would be a party, but without any new cash going out the door.

So maybe that'll be something I.

Will actually do it something it's very fun. Yeah, add that as a goal for the year. I would go for a run or walk with a friend, because, like you said, nature is always or generally mostly free, and there's often a lot of beautiful things you can do. Going to the library because you know, you get the fun of getting new books or DVDs if you're into that, and I guess most people stream these days, but you

Maybe even fill two. We have memberships at.

Longwood Gardens, so that's you know, even if it's winter, they've got the Greenhouse, which is fun to see. We could go to the Zoo, which has a couple indoor warm exhibits for like tropical animals, so that's always kind of a fun wintry thing to do. Or go to the Art Museum, which I also have a membership there.

And here's the thing.

For all three of those, I can get at least if I plan it right, I can get free parking. So Longwood is free because it's a giant parking lot. The Zoo, if you're a member, you can get your parking validated and get free, or else you can usually find a spot on the street near there if you're

We would be out of there.

As I can imagine you're getting close to the threshold and you're like, okay, I know you're not gonna last, Like maybe it'd be seventy minutes, but it might as well be fifty nine.

It might be.

Fifty nine, and we were gonna be in the van and out of here.

So I am not paying. I mean, it's like ridiculous.

It's like twenty dollars if you like, don't make the f So the difference between like sixty one minutes and fifty nine is pretty large, so you want to make sure you are out of there, so.

Then there would truly be no new money out the door for that.

This is why we are different, because like I don't even notice, Like I don't even look.

You wouldn't notice that you had to pay twenty.

Dollars to part. I would just be like that's how much part? Like I don't know. I just like, yeah, I wouldn't really register. I'm not saying that's smart, it's just true.

Well, there we go that baby, are our tendency right there? I'm like, oh, it's a game. Let's get out in fifty nine minutes.

All right.

So, Sarah, what is a smart financial move you have made?

Yeah?

So most of these have been in the last five six years, because I'm not sure we were that smart before then.

I have a few.

So one is similar to you, which is we did luck out and get a mortgage under three percent just before everything went really high, which also coincided with the prices in our neighborhoods, thankfully, just before they sort of rose a bit. So that was very helpful. Autopiloting savings like really maxing out four h three b's and four fifty seven's and like being strategic about that, and then also like autopiloting college savings as well. I think those are the big ones.

Yeah, yeah, so I would say, yeah, for one of our biggest ones was moving from New York City, which I love New York City, but you sort of reach a point when you are parenting small children that you realize, you know, what am I doing to enjoy the city, Like not that much. We're not going out to fancy restaurants that often we're not going to Broadway.

We're not.

We are just here with small kids, going to work, in daycare and the park, all of which you can do elsewhere. So neither my husband nor I actually have to live anywhere really, So he has to be.

Said that, what's that, we're not location constricted?

Yeah, I mean, we're not location constricted. He has to go visit clients more often than I would ever do, but like it's really hard to get them all in such a geographical cluster that you would be driving to all of them within an hour anyway, so you're usually on a plane or train or what are Most of his clients are either in Washington, DC or New York, or they're on the West coast, or you know, there's some in our area. But anyway, we could have lived wherever.

So yeah, that was good.

But yeah, we have the three percent mortgage thing was total luck and we are so.

Glad that we purchased at the exact right minute. Well, speaking of purchasing timing, let's talk about financial mistakes.

Yeah, so a couple, I would say when it's sort of silly because this is just opportunity cost. But I was the kind of kid who was reading the newspaper at my neighbor's driveway where I was waiting for the bus in sixth grade.

I don't know, I just looked at their newspaper. I figured they didn't care.

That much if I really knew frugal to read my neighbor's newspaper, but anyway, I would look at it. And so I was following the dow since this would have been nineteen eighty nine, so shortly after the eighty seven crash. If one had bought in at the time where I

But giving them the tools to do that.

I'll give another mistake in a minute, but I want to hear yours first.

Well it's not I mean, well okay, I have one. There's an actual mistake and one that's just like a oh my god, like it just kills me.

To think about.

But the mistake is that we did something very stereotypical and dumb, which is we bought universal life insurance and like twenty twenty five me is like, are you serious? But I don't know twenty thirteen meters was very naive, like you don't get any financial training in med school. And I'm not saying this person was predatory, but I'm sure they knew that we didn't really know much, and we paid into that. It was very expensive for multiple years before I was like, this is so stupid.

We can put this.

Like autopilot into our retirement accounts. It won't get tax, it will grow, and this vehicle is not going to do those things. So we got out and that's good, but it was a mistake. And then the other thing is not really a mistake. This is more like failure to predict the future. But the timing of our sales of our home. We had an episode where I talked about renting you guys, we could not give that house away in Miami Beach. And now, I mean the market

Yeah, yeah, no, we had that too.

We sold our first apartment in New York in basically two thousand and eight, yes, right, like in the financial crash, and New York was like ooohh. We didn't lose money on it, right, Like, you sold it for like a couple like a little bit more than what we paid for it, and it took a while for it to come back. Like I'm not sad that we didn't hold on to it trying to rent it out or anything, because I think it would have been quite a.

Hassle to do that.

But yeah, it was definitely the bottom of the market when that one went out, So yeah, you can't time these things. I Mean the upside then is and we bought this house right before prices took off, so it was in the low of the pandemic, and that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Yeah, thankfully, I will say I think we did pretty well with the purchase. We waited a little bit and we got it just in time, so at least we didn't kind of get it on both Yeah.

Yeah, And in terms of a smaller one, I've definitely bought things on sale that turn out not to be that great, but it's just like, oh, but it's on sale, but it's still money out the door. So the fact that you got a one hundred dollar item or what they're calling one hundred dollar item for twenty five dollars, like, if.

It's not actually really truly worth.

Twenty five dollars to you, then it's it's still a waste of twenty five dollars. So I just always try to tell myself, and I've gotten better about it. If you would pay full price for this and then you get a discount, that is good.

But if you are only buying.

It because it is on a discount, you probably don't really want it.

Totally agree. I basically never buy clothing on sale. I think the only situation I would is if I wanted a duplicate of something I already owned and it happened to go on sale and I already know I loved it.

That's like it Yeah, well, this is the one where my husband's sort of funny tendencies come out because he buys stuff at the Nordstrom anniversary sale every year. What if it happen like twice a year or something, and it's always like he likes Hugo bas and it's like but he will buy whatever was on sale, and so it's like it won't even fit him.

I mean, it will literally be a shirt that does not fit him.

Or there's just like some blazer that had like weird trim on it that like didn't you know, so you either have to return it or then you know, one case, we want to like donating stuff, and it's just like okay, like if you want something from there, just buy a few things from there. Like don't buy whatever was left over that they're getting out on the sale.

You don't even it's not gonna Work's.

Totally agree first bender, I'm either like I'm buying nothing or I'm buying like exactly what I want and like not that in between gray area and I've made those mistakes as a younger person, but not in the last decade or so.

Yeah, all right, we're gonna take one more quick ad break and then we'll be back with a little bit more about money.

Well, we are back.

We were talking all things finances. We're doing money questions, but nothing that involves giving up Netflix or lattes. So, Sarah, this may be our different question here. If you received a windfall, what would you change about your life? And then I realized I hadn't put a dollar amount, so it's left up to personal decision.

How much is this windfall?

It's a million dollars, It's a million dollars, Okay, all right, I would do a lot.

Okay, all right, what are we doing with our millions?

Sarah?

I'd probably convince my husband to replace his car, okay, because it's old. I would surprising people. I would actually get nicer furniture for our house because I don't want to spend my money on it. But if I happen to like have extra money, I think it might be nice. I would hire an organizer.

Oh wait, wait, here's the thing, because once the money came in, it is your money, right, Like, this is the But are we saying, like Daddy Warbucks is out there being like, I will run my card for this furniture, Like.

What is million showing up and like to be spent? Okay, I'd hire an organizer. I would what did I write? Oh, take more lavish vacations. I mean I would take similar vacations that we take, but like instead of kind of maybe doing a cheaper one in between fancy ones, they would just all be really nice.

Yeah.

I would definitely be like four seasons, nice hotels, et cetera. And I would get weekly massages. Yeah, that's nice. A weekly massages sounds good.

But the prom is, Sarah, it's the time, like two time time in your schedule.

Okay, you do have time in your schedule for a week.

I would find it.

You would find the time.

I would go on one less run, but.

You don't want to go on one less run. You still want to Boston qualify. Like here's the problem. So this is okay, because this is where we get to why am I?

Okay?

If I got like one hundred billion dollars, Like, would it be fun to own the Phillies?

Sure?

Okay, Like, but that's if we're talking more like a million dollars. I mean, it'd be wonderful to be welcome. Sure, I mean I'd take it. I'm not turning it down. But the problem is more like time is optimized right now, and there are very few more levers to push on that, Like I can pay for more childcare now, Like if I want to pay for five more hours of childcare right now, I could do that.

My kids don't want it, like they want to be with.

Me right like, so I need to deal with that reality that I've already have childcare to cover X number of hours and that is what I can do with the amount that my kids still want me to be doing stuff with them. So that's the problem. That's what I kept coming back to. I was like, well, i would like to take more trips, okay, but I'm traveling with the school schedule, like we already travel when the

You know, true, true, Yeah, these are tweaks. I mean, none of this would materially change, right, Like a new car, Like okay, I'd still be driving, but it would be like a little nicer.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean none of this would change. The massages would probably change my lifestyle more than any of the other things I listed. I still think I'd find time.

You'd find time, Okay, well.

Because she'd be less worried about teaching that extra course because or I would.

Oh well, that is an interesting question. Would I do? Would I somehow? I don't think a million dollars would be enough, but if I could somehow like buy myself out of most of call, that would be.

Yeah. Well that's again it comes down to time.

You're right. There's trade offs there, and it's like, oh, I'm not being a team player like my colleagues.

Like you, and you value your relationship.

I do value that, You're right. So these are complicated.

Yeah, I know, I know. That's why I was a It's a great question. It is a big question.

So you know, if somebody wants to give us a million dollars, I'm shore we'll figure out something, all right, So Sarah, next one, Allah the Frugal Girl. All right, so both of us read Kristen the Frugal Girl her blog. It's wonderful she does five frugal things. So what are five frugal things you have done lately.

Yeah, this was fun.

Okay.

Number one. I eat leftovers whenever they are available, because that solves two problems. It's good for the environment, and it's good for the grocery budget. I shop at Trader Joe's. I find this very frugal because honestly, anywhere else I shop seems to cost at least one hundred dollars more every time for like the same stuff. So I find that habit to be frugal.

Oh.

I have frugal fun every morning with the New York Times games. I'm not a subscriber, but Connections is free, the Mini is free, Wordle is free. It's ten really fun minutes of every morning that costs nothing. I love that.

I probably should put that behind the paywall, given I think the proportion of visitors to their website who are going to like play Connections and word all and all that.

Yeah, don't tell.

Them this, okay. Number four? Oh, well, you said this was not going to be about lattes, but you didn't buy a lot I talked to No, We've talked about like my allowance and how I want to buy more, like upgrade my clothes. This year, and I did an analysis of what I was spending last year, and like, I still enjoy Starbucks, but I was going to the point where I wasn't even like enjoying. It was just

I don't know how many dealers are doing it too, for one, specially by one get one not a thing, all right, okay, all right, so I may have to modify mine here, but one my cheaper and faster than takeout meals, So I came up with I tend not to order in all that often, partly just because it

So if you are trying to recreate.

That, you want to make some spice in your meal mixed with the vegetables and mabe chopped up fruit on the side. But anyway, it's ready in ten minutes or less and taste good fills me up. So I have resorted to that several times instead of calling for delivery, I am signing my kids up for vacation Bible camp.

Of worship.

No, obviously, if you have a completely competing religion, perhaps you do not wish well, you know what I mean, like totally incompatible, because it will be teaching about yes, like the Jesus will come up, I mean, you know, in the course of the week.

But it tends to be pretty inexpensive.

So if you're looking for a week of not putting much money out the door, sending a lot of kids to that is always a win. Although my older two boys are gonna have pretty cheap summers overall.

I am signing.

Sam up for two courses that are run through our school district for summer school, so that's very cheap since obviously we are members of the school district, and I think Jasper is going to be working. So that's It's the opposite of yeah, the opposite, the opposite of expensive, So yay for that.

This I don't know, this is sort of a mixed bag.

We decided not to travel over President's Day weekend, and in the past we have done sort of bigger trips over that, either skiing or we've gone to Disney, but it was just like we couldn't get ourselves excited about anything this year, not everyone wanted to go on a big ski trip, so we're probably just going to do like local day trips to a couple of the Pocono ski places. So we already have the the season pass for Blue Mountain on the Epic Pass goes to a

So I guess that is.

I mean, we're not making the memories of going to Utah together as a family, but.

Maybe we can make memories of the Poconos.

I have lots of memories of the Pokemon, memories of the Pocados, Sarah.

And then I'll throw one in that is not really frugal.

But so we've done Eagles tickets lately to go to the game, and I was watching they've made the playoffs.

This is after as well.

Who knows how it turned out for all us, But I was watching the resale sites very very carefully and knew roughly what the prices were, and I managed to find tickets that were quite a bit under what some of the others were, and I knew that they were going to go immediately.

So as soon as I saw them, I bought them.

But the outside is that I am I paid probably half what other people in the section will pay.

You traded time and attention for money, and in that case it was worth it.

In that case.

That case is where it is a big ticket item. So I think it was you know, if it was something you wanted to do.

Oh yeah, you were doing it anyway, and you were like much, I'm going to invest at least whatever hours of checking and then see if it pays off and you roll the dice in it.

And it wasn't that many hours, like because you know, I mean, like there's only a week between knowing somebody's going to the next round of the playoffs and then, so you know, you couldn't spend that much time on it. But in terms of spending.

An hour on it, it was a good hour.

Yes, probably probably a decent hourly rate. Actually, yes, a decent hourly rate. I don't want to call that girl moth.

But it's not quite as much as if I were up on stage giving a speech. But for a regular hour of work, yes, yes, definitely worth it.

All right.

Well, moving to the question part of this, So this question is that Laura tracks time but not spending. Sarah trecks spending, but usually not time. She has done it on occasion.

Discuss it's very helpful for us to track spending because, as I said, we sort of need that conscious layer, like I like particularly I mean on certain categories. I'm not sure it matters as much. It just makes me feel more comfortable, like knowing that like the pieces do

Yeah, yeah, well, I just find time sort of interesting because you're always working with the same amount every week, and so it's like you keep getting that opportunity to play around with the same pieces. I mean, income is more variable, I guess for us, so it doesn't have that same satisfying like these are the same pieces I

Really that much.

I don't know, my life is not frugal versus like I'm sure what I mean. You know, we have full time childcare, kids are in a ton of activities, but in terms of sort of smaller expenses, I guess that just doesn't seem to be where the money goes out, and so I haven't bothered tracking it.

Yeah, No, that makes sense.

Yeah, all right, Well, Leff of the week, I guess we've been talking about a lot of different Love of the weeks. I'm going to say coupon codes, which it's less of a thing now than during the glory days of internet shopping, you know, the early times of it, where you would hunt around and find a coupon code. But if I have actually gotten to the checkout spot

I see.

Their prices must not be like what their actual prices are. They're like, let's see if anyone ever pays this.

The best Shutterfly coupon is the one that's unlimited book pages, because often that's actually like eighty percent off. It's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, if you're doing like one hundred page book, that's a yeah. I don't know. If you didn't put that in, you.

Would really be We did do like three books once for what it had told us one book would cost.

I will also sign up for the free not free like you know when they say, oh, twenty percent off if you sign up for texts. So I'll sign up for text, get the code, and then immediately right stop so the texts go away. But like, hey, I'm playing the game, playing the game, all right, what do you have, Sarah, Lululemon socks. I'm not sure how for who they are, but they are just they just last and last and last, and they're my favorite socks. I wear them all the time.

Yeah, excellent.

All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking all the money in the world. In case anyone who wants to check out that book that I wrote in twenty twelve, you might be able to find it on Amazon at least, but anyway, we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.