Episode four fifty seven, Ten Things You Didn't Know started as marketing campaigns.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill. And today we are talking about some of the things we take for granted in our desires to buy stuff.
It's so interesting looking at the origin stories of what is so commonplace for us, the things we just engage in regularly, to realize this was just invented by somebody who wanted to make more money. Yes, and they've kind of ruins everything.
Yeah, and we hope that this episode will not only entertain you, but will also get you to think about the things you take for granted in your life that you assume you want or assume you love, but is truly a product of carefully crafted marketing and just time time time telling Americans or wherever you are that this is what you should want, and we take that for grand and we don't think about it, and it can really cause us to overspend, an impulse spend in a
lot of ways. So this is kind of a reality check in a fun, lighthearted way.
Yeah, and as promised, we will give you all an update at the end of this episode on kind of how we're doing post hurricane. I know a lot of you all checked in on us since we do live in the Tampa Bay area. We are in Saint Pete and we got hit pretty heavily here, So thank you for checking in, and if you care to know, stay tuned at the end of the episode and we'll give you our little updates. But we're here, obviously you're hearing our voices. So we lived in Bacon. Yeah.
So before we get into the meat of the episode, it's brought to you by bacon and Eggs. So this is actually our first one on our list of ten. You might take it for granted, but bacon and eggs are not originally breakfast foods. Did you know that outside
the US, bacon and eggs aren't really eaten for breakfast. Actually, savory breakfasts are not common, And this episode was literally inspired by bacon and eggs because their popularity didn't happen by accident or just because bacon and eggs are so good, even though they are, which is why we don't think marketing is inherently evil because sometimes it can bring us things like bacon and eggs. But this in particular is brought to you you buy none other than Edward Burne's.
Burne's strategy was to convince the public. He was hired by big Bacon and Big egg. So the way he did it is he had his agency's doctor, who he paid, write a letter two five thousand other doctors and telling them this, and the doctor's responses were published in newspapers and that was the marketing. The campaign was successful, and thus bacon and eggs became a standard part of the American breakfast. And so that was the inspiration for this episode.
And we talk about Edward Burnees and a lot more things in our new book, By What you Love Without Going Broke. So pre order it at Buy what you Loove dot com.
I have one hold a poke in this and it is not with pre ordering our book. Please do that buy what you Love dot Com. Okay, but sweet breakfasts are mainly Americans. Savory breakfast is all over the really one hundred percent were cereal, yeah, eu opinions and cheese. They all do pastries. You can't find savory countries. It is your your savory foods. Yeah, savory savory not sweet. Huh.
We are like there are only one places where you can't get a savory breakfast. It's all a pastry and coffee like in Europe someplaces.
No.
Europe does meats and cheeses, and they do it well, they do so well well.
Some places may do savory breakfast.
Yeah. It's also weird to egg farmers with chickens, Like you don't need a marketing campaign to tell them, like, there's your food. You go out in the morning, you get eggs, there's your food.
Yeah, but it's usually used in like baking, so people baking like cakes and muffins and stuff with eggs. Either way, pre order the book absolutely. The the book is more fact checked maybe than my offhanded comment about breakfasts.
I do love making an eggsit I know, right, anytime a day for me.
So if you're interested in more kind of de influencing and marketing like psychology episodes, we do have episode three sixty eight where we talk about de influencing yourself from social media, and then episode two to one how to identify manipulative advertising and marketing. So definitely two good ones too que up for after this, but let's get started. Let's get into this list. We've got nine more for you.
Yeah, so this article comes from BuzzFeed. It's eighteen things you never knew started as marketing ploys. And the first one for me actually is not on this list. It is something that comes from our book. Well tell the people why, because so many of the things that I was going to talk about from this list were inaccurate. I am on a fact checking role here, so that's why I'm pushing back on the what other countries eat
for breakfast thing? But they listed Father's Day as being a part of a marketing ploy and what was the other one? We'll get there, But they weren't. They were something else other history behind feed for your news, especially when they don't cite sources. Yeah, they had no links in it, so we had to fact check. But everything we're about to tell you is accurate as far as we can tell.
Right, Yeah, we did. We did our own fact checking, and there are some things on the list that are accurate.
Okay, so here we go. We're starting with the first one that we learned about through writing this book, and it is women smoking cigarettes became wildly popular out of a marketing effort begun by Edward Burnetz, so the same dude that Jen just mentioned in our fake sponsor at
the beginning. He is considered the father of public relations, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, like the psychology Sigmund Freud, so he learned a lot from his uncle and employed a lot of understanding about human psychology into his marketing practices. So he was hired in nineteen twenty seven by the American Tobacco company and his first strategy was to try
to persuade women to smoke. And as part of this, he was helping this American tobacco company to advertise cigarettes as being helpful to the ideal of Thinness, like equating smoking cigarettes staving off hunger and achieving this Thinness.
Where to be advertising was smoke a cigarette instead of having a suite.
And he also combined smoking cigarettes with the suffrage movement and called cigarettes torches of freedom and that if women were smoking cigarettes, they were we're also out here, vote and just be an independent ladies. And it worked, my friends. Female smoking went up significantly thanks to our guy, Edward Burnees.
He also wrote Propaganda nineteen twenty eight. So he talked about how to literally engineer consent, tapping into people's unconscious impulses to see products as something that they want to have, believing that he could sell middle class consumers products that they didn't actually need. And a lot of our marketing strategies that we see today are built on a lot of Burne's ideas well, because he was so successful.
And yeah, we talk about some of this in the book. So buy what you lovebook dot com and you can understand more of how this marketing came to be and then also like how you can combat it. Again, we don't think marketing is evil. It's knowing when you are being engineered to desire, when desire is being manufactured. That's actually the chapter title name is manufactured Desire. All right. So now we will join the list, and I will start out with number four, which is green bean casserole.
Green bean casserole, Thanksgivings coming up. We love it. It was actually invented by Campbell's to sell more green beans and cream of mushroom soup. And I mean, if they had made those crispy little.
Onions, hats off to that stuff.
But they didn't, so it was to sell more of those two products that they manufacture.
This is what I'm not mad about. Amen.
Green Bean castro, I believe is the best side.
Listen. If you're going to discover something and create a recipe that's just banging and the rest of us fall for.
Then that's good.
That's a win win win, I think, because green bean cast role is also really inexpensive to me, So thanks Campbell. Okay, the next one on my list is kind of a combination of six and seven but also holds to poke. So they originally said that the diamond company to Beers invented or came up with giving a diamond engagement ring in the nineteen thirties as as your proposal, and that's just not true. It actually dates back to like the fourteen hundreds where.
Royalty somebody royal had done.
It, uh huh, given a diamond engagement ring, and then it became popular among European aristocrats. However, what is true is that De Beer's, this large diamond company, was responsible in the nineteen thirties for putting the amount of money
that someone should spend on an engagement ring. They listed one month it should be one month salary should be spent on a diamond engagement ring in particular, and there's also evidence to point at prior to this, diamond engagement rings were not as popular pre nineteen thirties as they were after that. The diamond company going through the depression and really needed to kind of ramp up their efforts of people purchasing diamonds because it just wasn't priority for
people going through the depression. So this was their marketing campaign was here's how much you should be spending on a diamond ring, And the tables did shift a little bit where I think other stones were often used in engagement rings, like the engagement ring wasn't necessarily this brand new concept, but specifically it becoming a diamond engagement ring. It can be linked back to to Beers.
Yeah, but they I mean it threw into up to three months salary like the other diamond companies just took it and ran with it to the point where it got up to the three month rule. But it just started as a one month rule.
And de Beers I saw one of the original ads and it said when it was at two months, when the recommendation was a two month salary, it was like give her a sense of what the next what the future will look like by spending two months salary. So it's like you can see what your future will hold by the size of the diamond that you now have on your hand. And it's a little icky, a little
the comments. Out of all of them, the comments had most pushback on this one because everyone knew it was just like full of it, Like it was extremely marketing heavy. My great grandparents were married during the Great Depression or maybe just before it, and she never did have an engagement ring, only a wedding band. So yeah, I think at least particularly in that time, it was not as common.
Yeah, all right, So the next one for me is number eight. Wedding registries were invented by a Chicago department store. You know, that obligatory feeling to buy things for your friends who are getting married. It started as a kind of quote unquote maybe like altruistic, an altruistic way, because I guess couples before the wedding registry would get duplicates and triplicates of in vogue gifts, and they would get china patterns they didn't want and all of this, Oh
woe is me. So this department store in Chicago created the first wedding registry so couples wouldn't have to fear getting gifts they didn't want. Everyone would get them gifts that they knew they want, and actually it would be easier for the shopper to buy that gift knowing full well, yes the couple wants when I'm getting them, but they
were the only one that had it. So this drew more couples to create registries at this department store so that they would gain more business, and then the registries just snowballed from there. Everyone had a wedding registry, and then people started doing baby registries naturally, and then there were just gift registries. Just like I'm turning thirty nine.
Here's my gift registry at Walmart. Yeah, I used to say, like I used to Walmart had like a wedding registry, baby registry, and then just like a gift registry for like whatever.
As you say, I'm turning thirty nine, here's my registry at Walmart. Wow, goals. I mean we're not there yet, but four years from now, Wow I'm only thirty five.
Yeah goals. But yeah, all these registries were literally made to bring more business to a particular department store, and yeah, they may be a little kind, but it shouldn't pressure us into like overspending on these gifts.
My next one on this list is the Miss America pageant started as a way to bring people to Atlantic City. I fact check this and it's true, Folks, Atlantic City to way to keep people to stay in the area post Labor Day. They wanted people to stay longer, so through like maybe if we make women parade around and dresses, they'll they'll stick around.
And it clearly worked, clearly, but not justin Is it still in Atlantic City?
Like I had no idea it was in Atlantic City. I don't know. The event created in nineteen twenty one to keep tourists coming to the boardwalk past Labor Day. Are you looking it up? It's still in Atlanta City.
What comes up now is Miss Americana the Taylor Sailors.
Yeah, talk about a marketing.
Miss America anymore, talk.
About a true marketer. I mean, Taylor Swift is good, but how she gets people to break the Internet and spend all their money is insane. There are other good musicians out there and they can't do what Taylor Swift is doing.
That's so true. She is also a marketing She's a marketing again. Marketing is an evil. Yeah, I can't tell if it's in Atlantic City, but.
You let us know. If you know, I'm gonna you go your next one. I'll keep the research alive.
All right. So the next one for me, this is this is where we get real spicy ladies. Is number eleven. Women didn't shave their armpits until Gillette told them they should. And this is one hundred percent true. So Gillette was already a household name for men. They were sold in army supply stores, every stroll, every soldier in nineteen oh one had a safety razor from Gillette.
So then we have.
The Industrial Revolution, we have more manufacturing of these really inexpensive items, and so much of big box stores and all this. The reason they were able to gain popularity and really push out mom and pop stores was because of mass production. And so, oh I know, I did the same. The sound You got to turn the sound off on your computer when you're doing research. Mid episode, Oh the way, and we learned this again this is
in the book. I don't want to like beat it over your head, but we talk about how the thing the really important thing for these big companies is the way to stay profitable is that they could no longer just meet demand. They had to manufacture desire. And so what Jellette did is they was they were already in every man's hand, but there was no reason for women to shave. They weren't shaving their heads, or their mustaches or their facial hair, right, so they had to figure out,
how do we get a razor in every woman's hand. Well, we make the idea of having hairy armpits unattractive. And that is how they did it. Gillette manufactured a beautiful female safety razor, and they made the idea of being hairless more attractive than the idea of having hair on your under arms.
Back to Miss America. Still can't totally tell, but it does seem like twenty twenty four, it's going to be in Florida. Oh okay, so it does. It obviously is not always in Atlantic City, but I don't know when that shift happened. And I should probably just pay attention to what we're doing now, which my next one is connected to that women shaving their legs so very similarly kind of manufacturers of hygiene products, so to capitalize on
changing fashion trends. It was Jillette, and so I found this quote from the Smithsonian that underscores what you were just describing, Jen. They said, American beauty standards and marketing of the safety I'm sorry. American beauty standards and practices for women were also affected by the innovation and marketing
of the safety razor. Beginning in the early twentieth century, manufacturers of safety raisers, seeking to expand their market promoted the idea that body hair on women is inherently masculine and in delicate, as well as unhygienic. Jilllett introduce the first razor marketed specifically to women, called the Malady Decollete,
in nineteen fifteen. In the nineteen twenties, the new fashion for sleeveless tops and short dresses meant that legs and armpits of American women were now visible in social situations, and advertisers seize the opportunity to encourage women to shave their legs and their armpits. I also read on the Smithsonian website about how they were really intentional about not using the word shave because the word shave was associated with the male masculine and very masculine to shave your face.
So they use words like smooth, like get smooth legs, be clean, smell good.
Yeah, they used it as hygiene. I mean if I had a malady decollete, I might feel differently too.
You do, You probably do.
You've got lad I know, and I have been conditioned. Honestly, I do like to shave my armpits. I don't have a lot of hair on my legs, so I don't really shave those, but like, yeah, I have been conditioned, and socially now it is it's socially awkward to hair on your legs.
I remember begging my mom to shave my legs, Like remember when you were younger and you had to ask your parents for permission to do everything. Sometimes being an adult is better. And she would not let me shave, but I got made fun of. Yeah, all the girls would be like, oh, your mom doesn't let you shave your hairy legs. Your hair so long.
It's it is so bizarre and the only person it benefits is men, because that was all men in that room with that marketing strategy who wanted to sell more razors. Like it is truly the definition of the pink attacks. Yeah, it's it. It's crazy.
Yeah, it is crazy.
All right, moving on, This is number thirteen, and I feel like we missed one or did an extra one. But I'm gonna go, oh, yeah, you only had four. I have five. Okay, I'm gonna do the We're gonna do the last one together because that's a real big one. My next one is Oprah's famous car giveaway was really just a giant ad for General Motors.
No, we all knew that. We knew Oprah wasn't paying for all these.
Vehicles, Yeah we know, but it was for GM to promote Pontiac, which is now defunct. But they're new G six. But what I really wanted to talk about was these gm ads, like really old gm ads, because their ads say things like like so from the nineteen fifties. They show all these gms and they're like the key to a richer life with a little car key.
Next to it.
And then you've got one from nineteen fifty five with a man and a woman they look like maybe they're on a date and it's a Cadillac ad and it says for the sheer joy of living. Oh wow, like it is literally taking this thing that maybe needed by some but definitely isn't needed by everyone. And so if the people who don't need it, they are trying to convince them like, this is how you live your rich life, this is how you enjoy life from the very beginning.
And so now, even across other car companies, we see having a nice car as the key to a good life. That is a status symbol for others and yourself to know you are living a good life even if you can't afford that car.
Related to GM hot take, this is Jill speaking. So if you're mad, take me down. I'm willing. I'm willing to stand on this one. The Barbie movie was a GM ad. I know everybody was out here talking about their love of the Barbie movie. It was fine, it was fun, it was colorful. It was a marketing campaign for General Motors and really themselves because the amount that we then all spent on Barbie paraphernalia, the clothes, the dolls, the resurgence like, it wasn't The advertised characters.
Were in car ads too. Did you know that the character is not a hot take, that's not real?
Yeah? Ye, Like anyone who watched that movie and just didn't feel like they were sitting through a whole commercial is like wild to me.
The reasons they were able to make it with the budget they had is because Mattel gave them so much money.
Yeah, it just was a whole commercial, that's my Everyone's like, did you like the Barbie movie? And Eric and I were like, you mean the General Motors ad that we watched for an hour.
And that's a fantastic movie. Commercials can be fantastic, right, there are some amazing commercials. You just have to know what watching.
It was huge commercial that they primarily did this. Yeah, we got some entertainment out of it, but they did it so that they could get all of our money out of it. And I think that that's that's the awareness piece that I think can help us make more informed decisions. Like and maybe I'm a little bit more stubborn in this, but no, I'm not going to go out and buy a bunch of Mattel products because I
just watched the Barbie movie. I enjoyed being entertained, but I'm not gonna now go and give you all my money.
It is it's the Chevy Blaze, sir. That was a specific car Chevy Blaze.
There was suburban there.
There was all of them, but the chef was the one they were actually in the car commercial.
Oh gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Yeah, but yeah, it was all of them. You're so right.
And speaking of vehicles, I just learned something else recently. Sorry, this this episode was becoming longer than you wanted it to be. Michelin Star restaurants are Actually it was started by Michelin, the tire company, and as part of their marketing ploy a very interesting connection that they made here.
But it was something along the lines of how far the tires can take you and where these tires can take you, And so they started to have these restaurants that they wanted to recommend, and I think they even had like motels that they would partner with, like go here, stay here, and eat here. These are the places that we would recommend for you, so you can your tires can take you to these strong.
Your tires can take you. We want people to drive more so their tires wear out faster, so they replace them more frequently.
Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, and now we all want to flock to these Michelin Star restaurants because a.
Tire company because hire company, your company told us, how crazy? Okay, so we got to do the very last one, and it is the Creme de la Creme. The modern character of Santa was heavily influenced this. This has started by but I want to say heavily influenced and subsidized by Coca Cola. It is, and Coca Cola will tell you they are not shy about sure, they're so proud of it. We made this before Coca Cola, And actually Coca Cola was using Santa Claus ads before this rebrand, before this
glow up, but they had pictures. It's Santa was kind of like a gaunt, maybe elfish guy, right, not the wholesome person you'd take your kids to at the mall. And so Coca Cola was integral in funding artists to rebrand this Santa Claus specifically holding a coke and this led to obviously what we know as having to tell our kids, no, you can't have that, but you can ask Santa for it. And who is Santa? Why does Santa come down my chimney? Santa isn't real, baby, But
oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for saying that. It's a joke, it's a line.
I'm sorry. Santa is real. It was just maybe not exactly in the way the Coca Cola and.
Then having Santa in the malls to bring more kids to the mall so they buy more things for Christmas. It's just been integral to the like the catalyst for over consumption around the holidays. It was this one thing they wanted to make the Santa more approachable, more likable, to sell more Coca Cola, and it led to what we see now.
To be fair, I mean so not entirely out of nowhere. They used inspiration from Clement Clark Moore's eighteen twenty two poems. So the Coca Cola's rendition of Santa Claus as we the modern Santa Claus as we know it was like nineteen thirties. But the poem The Night Before Christmas was written in eighteen twenty two and did describe this kind of Saint nick warm, friendly, pleasant plump coming down the chimney. So it's not the whole thing wasn't entirely invented by Coca Cola.
The chimney. It's a poem just wrought with like you just can't how does he get down a chimney.
You have not watched enough Christmas movies. You need to watch the Santa Claus with tol to understand.
I've seen it. Yeah, the nineties were great for justifying inaccuracies, but you know it's not an inaccuracy.
And would have been great in the nineties, would have been great in the two thousands, and here we are in the still is twenties. The bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hello, Jen and Jill. I am so excited to give you a bill of the week. My daughter turns one in August, and I just want you guys to know that I had a whole human for seven hundred and something dollars. I had two insurance policies, one through my employer, one through my husband's employer, and they took care of everything except for a few pre natal things that totaled up to the seven hundred something. So yeah, there you go.
If you have a spouse, get in on their insurance policy and you can have a whole human too, for like less than a thousand bucks. Thanks guys, Bye avery.
But I'm sure it's costing you more than one thousand dollars to have that baby keeping that baby. I know it doesn't actually have to be that expensive to raise a child, but it can be very expensive to have the child.
Yeah, safely, I love your You can have a whole human for under thousand dollars. I feel like the whole thing is such a natural biological thing. It pains me that any of it costs that much money.
Like it does.
You should be able to have your child and not.
It should be a right to have a child safely for free. That's the thing is like people on you know, on social media saying like I don't have any prenatal care or go to a hospital to have my babies. No that's unsafe. Yeah it's free, but it's not safe. But it should be like a human right to the baby should be born safely for free.
I'm so glad that you were a little I was gonna say, are you to issue. It's the libraries, and it's the having whole humans. Yeah for for for free. Well, I'm so happy for you Avery that you were able to hack it, even even without this being an active and right.
But I have proposed to Congress if you all are listening and you want to submit a bill about what your whole human whether they didn't cost a lot, or they are costing a lot, or you don't mind paying a lot for them, or just.
Your name is Bill, or your baby's name is Bill. Frugalfriendspodcast dot com slash Bill. We can't wait to hear it, and now it's time for politu.
Sure, okay, what is something you think desperately needs a marketing glow up, a fresh marketing approach? You let me just get more of those those plosives in there for your ears. Okay, So I think it's dates Midule dates. They are nature's candy, and I have been on a date kick, like dates and peanut butter. I think they're just so good. They're a natural sweet treat, and I have a sweet tooth. I have a sweet tooth like probably my whole mouth sweet tooth, sweeteth.
Here's the thing, though, if it gets a market and glow up. Then doesn't that drive prices up? They kind of don't. I kind of want grungey things to stay grunge if I like it.
This is theoretical, so in reality, yeah, I mean, well, dates are not that cheap like to start.
So imagine what would happen now if Whole Food's got their hands on it. Oh they already.
I mean these are this is a bougie snack. Jill. Dates are bougie. Uh but yeah, they just I haven't seen them in any marketing plans like. I would love to see them glow up.
Yeah.
I would rather see ads for that than ads for half the things I'm seeing, like a course like I could take a course to learn how to start a handyman business. That's I'm getting ads like that. No, I'd rather see an ad for delicious dates, dates with little arms and legs that are dancing, kind of like the Raisin or the Prune commercials. Yeah, yeah, I want to see Prune glow up. Fight me not on that, and I won't fight you on that.
No, all right, Joe, Okay, this might prove that I don't even totally understand marketing, but I'd love to see a glow up for the service industry like baristas. You can't buy barista, you can say them though, Here's why I love working with my hands. Something I've learned about myself over the years is I really enjoy labor, manual, physical labor. And I'm so so sad that these industries don't make enough money to live off of.
Because you'd be a barista.
Catch me working with my hands as my very favorite job. I can't know. It would not be Starbucks. You all know it would not be Staro.
I would not.
I just yeah, I wish that these industries were like more highly valued or able to be paid more because I love I'd love that career.
Okay, I don't know if you do understand marketing, but I love where your head went Like that is truly lovely. Yes, I agree, yeah, if we just you know, I also don't. I don't think coffee needs a glow up. Coffee doesn't need to be more expensive. I think we just need to keep more of it out of the hands of the C suite and pay baristas more.
Yeah, I think deinfluencing needs needs a marketing campaign. I like seeing it, but I wonder at what point is this going to get sushed, shushed and silenced because we're out here trying to influence people from buying things. But that's not gonna make anybody money. Yeah, but I am loving to see the content. We're not the only ones talking about it, and I just wonder when it's all gonna end.
That's the thing I love about podcasting is we don't have an algorithm, so we can't chase an algorithm. But we also like don't have any fear. Oh that's true of being pushed down because of it, and like even the recommendations for podcasts, like based on others you've watched, are sometimes totally random. None of it makes sense, and I love that. We love that, Okay, I do love the chaos of it.
Yeah, okay, well there you have it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We hope that you at least understand more about marketing than maybe I do. We love, love love reading your reviews, like this one who comes from Commy Kannie thirty one one of my faves five stars. This is one of my favorite podcasts, not just one of my favorite ones about budget and finance, but over all, these two keep it Real, are super authentic and extremely relatable.
Their tips, tricks and advice always get me excited. They bring on top notch. I'm gonna assume guests, I'm assume that word meant to be there. This is one of the podcasts I always recommend to friends. Thank you so much, Comic Connie thirty one.
Yeah, we love being your favorites. Thank you if you feel like we also offer relatable tips, tricks, advice. If you loved this episode and you were like, oh my gosh, I'd learned something new today, please leave us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple and let other people know that this is valuable to listen to.
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Gorugle Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. Alrighty, well, we have kept the people waiting long enough. So Helene Helene than Milton than Milton. I think we have more stories about Milton because we did record an episode after Helene.
Uh.
But yeah, it's it's been wild. I even friends from out of state have asked like, how are you doing? And I think what I've come to is it's really hard to put words to exactly what it feels like or how we're recovering when you face losing your house and everything you own and pack everything up and move back in two times within ten days. Yeah, like it just there was such a stress toll. And then to watch everyone around you. And that's the interesting thing ab
on a natural disaster is you're all in it. It's not an individual crisis. It's a communal crisis, and there's something really bonding about that, and there's something really overwhelming when you're in it and the whole world feels like your world. What you can see is collapsing and is absolutely devastated. There was no food at the grocery stores, and many of our friends did lose everything. House is flooded three to four feet, and communities just absolutely decimated.
And then you kind of get that trauma response where you're just like sucked in and so it's all we're talking about. It's all we're watching on the news because we do also have to be prepared. You go to the store and everybody's frantic and they're out of everything, and the supplies are gone.
Before the hurricane and after, it was so hard to find gas for cars in generation.
Yeah, just in it was insanity.
Yeah, it was Okay, So my family's story for Milton was quite an adventure. We evacuated to my in laws. They have a farm, so they have a walk in freezer, big generator to power that walk in freezer. Wine like. They have all the things you need for a hurricane. And it was an hour north, so the Milton kept tracking a little bit more south, so we went north.
And they'd never flooded forty years they've owned the property, never flooded, and within twenty four hours there was two feet of water in their winery, and the next day, by lunchtime, it had risen a foot because they opened a levee to relieve flooding elsewhere, and that created flooding in my in law's neighborhood. And so by the afternoon after the hurricane, I didn't know what was happening. At my house. There was three feet of water in the winery.
All their crops were covered. Travis dropped his phone in the floodwater, totally lost it. And there's six inches of water in the house's kitchen, which is a little lower than the rest of the house. So the rest of the house was fine, but the generator flooded, so all of their food for their business completely gone. There was no like potable water. There was no flushing of toilets
like it was. We were very much stranded on an island with nothing, and so Travis and my brother in law are just like kayaking around because what do you do, right, And they found a guy who was rescuing people, and there were some people that had like little john boats, and so we had to be literally rescued from the property via a little boat and then via a monster truck because it wasn't just the farm that was flooded, it was the road and they had to make in
order to get emergency services in. They actually had to create a new pathway into the community through people's like private property. We had to leave our car there because we had moved it to higher ground before the water. You know, while the water was like, you know raising, the next day it was beautiful weather outside. It was just the water kept rising and it was a week before we could go back and get the van because the water was so high we wouldn't have been able
to drive it out. And we still wouldn't have been able to drive it out during the through the road. We had to take that back route.
So crazy with two kids like sent me that message photo of your boys and like car seats in this boat. Oh my gosh, I oh.
Like freaking out because if this is how this flooded. Helene and Milton were so different because Helene was surge, so if you on if you were on the water, you got saltwater. Right. Milton was totally different. Everyone on the coast was totally fine. It was sixteen inches of rain and eighty to one hundred miles per mile hour wind, so there was it was all trees down and not
snapped in half. The ground was so saturated that these trees root systems came up out of the ground, took huge swaths of lawn with them and were falling on houses. And then so much rain, rain is getting in through the roof. Then I was horrified because we have so many trees on our property and it was just And then like Jill and Eric, you you went like and took pictures helped me know that everything was okay because we still were figuring out how do we get back.
Yeah, and you hadn't heard from neighbors what your house looked like. And I was like, oh gosh, we'll go drive there, We'll go tell you what your house looks our.
Neighbors are snowbirds, so they weren't there.
Yeah.
So yeah, you guys like let us know, like gave us peace of mind. Took pictures and I like was spiraling out with anxiety, and those pictures like I cried when I got them because I just knew that the house was okay, Like, yes, there were a lot of trees down, but they fell in the right direction. And then like you texted me and you're like, hey, can what's the coade to your door? I need to use the bathroom And you were at my house cleaning up
debris while I'm still stuck up nor that. And when we were evacuated, we went to my sister in law's house, which was like still up north but had power.
And I mean, I was just like you, I am going to cry now about it, but it was so it was emotionally draining.
I mean that's what friends do. And I felt for you guys so much with what you went through being on the farm, losing so much already being emergency evacuated with kids. We didn't we couldn't figure it all out. But we're like, if we can take the boards off the windows and clear the path to the driveway and clear out the front yard, Like that'll be so nice. I'm like, I would want that for myself if I if I were in your situation. So we had the somehow the time and energy to be able to do that.
But yeah, I mean, we were all out of power for so long, both after Helene then after Milton, we didn't have internet and we were just in like crisis mode. So but thankfully because of the jobs that we have, I was able to just say, we're not working this week, and so we're cleaning up. Yeah, we're cleaning up our own property, and when we're done with that, we're gonna go help neighbors clean up their properties. And I watched other people's kids while they tried to get to work themselves.
Because schools were out for like almost two weeks straight, it was just wild for us. We do live close to the water, so in Helene, we our whole property flooded, like our garage. There was eight inches of water up on our entire house. Thankfully, it was like one inch away from getting into the doors, but it did saturate some of the exterior parts of the house that aren't
block which then started to cause mold issues. So in between Helene and Milton, we were ripping off our siding, pulling out insulation, replacing studs because we were already in our bedroom and bathroom like getting mold issues in the drywall in there. So it was like a race against the clock to seal back up the house, get it all sealed again before Milton hit, and they were guessing
for Milton to be even worse what Helene did. So we packed up everything that was valuable to us, put it five feet you know, up on counters and cabinet tops and all of that, and thankfully, the worst that we got through Milton was two trees fell on our garage and the rest are leaning pretty heavily. So we're hoping insurance. We still don't know though, like a lot of us are still facing that the not knowing what will insurance do. The trees are still on our garage,
we're just parking out front. It's one of those things where it's like, yes, it could be worse, and as you look around you see the worst literally in your own neighborhood, while also recognizing that this was a very difficult, like kind of traumatic time that we all went through and the nuisances are not great.
Either, But it's so it's bizarre to have a whole community trauma tized together. And I mean we were just talking about I think the worst that we've seen was a very large oak tree blue over and was so large and close to the home that its root system uprooted the front sunroom of the house.
It was wild looking at it. Yeah, it was a lot of things combining together where you had that saturation like you described for us, the saltwater kills plants. So to have our property flooded with salt water, We've got these massive live oaks other types of oak trees on our property, and now you know that has killed them, and then Milton comes in with its high winds and just like knocked them out where they might have been
sturdy enough otherwise. So it's this combination that just made for a lot of devastation that we're still recovering from. We're recording this on October thirtieth, and debris and dry wall and people's just belong that got flooded out have not yet been disposed of.
You can still see entire blocks, Yeah, like in multiple streets where everybody's lives are on their frontlawnes.
It is scary, like it is wild. Ye takeaway is insure yourself, even if you think you don't need it, have insurance. That how many people we've heard through this and what they faced in North Carolina of they didn't have insurance because they're not in a flood zone. Why wouldn't they, And so just yeah, being like protecting yourself
as much as possible. This is why we have emergency funds, and it's why we have community mostly, I mean honestly, where the money isn't actually going to help or insurance isn't actually going to pay out, it's been community that has been so helpful through this.
Yeah, something I was thinking about, like even with an emergency fund, there was no restaurant opened to buy food from. There was no food in the grocery store. The lines were hours long to get gas. You waste your gas just trying to get gas. Like money could not buy the thing. Like it didn't matter if you had money or or anything in it was the world's central kitchen who was bringing hot meals like they were funding food
trucks to make and pass out free meals. And it was like churches helping people with their comeing in, just random people coming in with chainsaws. Because your tree might fall over, the city will not pick it up unless it's cut into like two or three foot chunks and moved into a pile, right, And so it's just people like coming together. And you couldn't even if you wanted to hire a tree service, you couldn't because they were
all like it was. It was, there were so many reasons to believe in community, like above all else we.
Made, we got so much closer to our neighbors through this, which is like, that's I guess a hope filled piece in it. Not that I want to go through devastation like this, but the cool thing in it is the connections that were more solidified and the bonds made through it, which is beautiful. So thanks everyone for checking in on us. We really did appreciate your messages and seeing how we are and sorry it took so long, but again we did not have internet or space whatsoever until now. So
we're here. We're still recovering, but we're so grateful for jobs like this and the flexibility to allow ourselves that space to recover and to be able to help others with some of our time. And flexibility. So if you are looking for a way to support us, I mean truly, it would be in pre ordering our book. Of course, if you come across other opportunities to give money to
help support ongoing volunteer efforts, please do that. If you're looking for ways to support specifically us, your frugal friends, things like pre ordering the book, leaving us kind reviews on Spotify or Apple, this is what helps us to be able to continue doing this, to have the flexibility to be present for our community like this is it truly?
Yeah, I would say if you're looking for a specific place to give, World Central Kitchen was vital to feeding so many people. We lost all of our food. We were out of power for six days and we would show up places and get a free hot meal.
Yeah, and it was.
There was one day they ran out of chicken and it was just like a bowl of rice with some bang bang something. And this is going to show this was probably my lowest point. Maybe we were in the truck on the way home. We had to stop and get milk for Atlas, and we couldn't buy a big
gallon like we normally did every night. We would have to stop and just get a little thing of milk, right, and so we're on our nightly milk hunt and I thought I was going to wait till I get home to eat the rice, and I'm just like in the car eating it with my fingers. Like it was a low point, but like it really World Central Kitchen was really an amazing organization for what they did here and what they're doing for all natural disaster like victims.
That's cool hopeful takeaway too. And you actually highlighted this at one point, like there are people giving food, but it's a lot of hot dogs and pizza. Like we lived off of hot dogs and pizza for too many days. As much as I love hot dogs, I did reach. I reached my point on it. And I remember you said something in between the two hurricanes when we were trying to figure out, like how can we help other people?
And and you were like, healthy, nutritious hot meals is so important during these times because everyone's just eating pizza. Like people are like what can we you know, can we grab you some pizzas it's like no, please, Like is there fresh veggies like anywhere?
Eat it because it's hot and it's fair, right, but like there is so much sodium and fat, Like I started just to feel heavy and tired, and I was already feeling tired and heavy emotions.
Yeah, you'll take what you can get. But when it comes to like I'm even thinking outside of a natural disaster, just when people need meals, I think that is a helpful anchor point of what would be good and welcomed here, Like how can I provide like true nutrition to people whose bodies are very stressed, very worn down? Like what it's gonna be the best sodium in what's gonna be the best fuel? And I think I wouldn't have known
that if I hadn't gone through what we just went through. Granted, yeah, not everything is accessible at that time, but that was That's a helpful thing for me that I'm now keeping in mind, just for even when there are individual crises that happen, like maybe sending pizza isn't the most caring thing, Like maybe it is like some good chicken and veggies if I can swing it.
Yeah, so that's definitely the place I would send money. And again, yeah, if you want to support us directly by what you lovebook dot com.
All right, bye bye,