Episode four fifty nine, five Ways your childhood impacts how you spend money. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life.
Here your host Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about your childhood and your adult money and how the two connect.
Oh so excited.
Jill is so excited.
Jill.
We don't I mean, we don't talk about it a ton, but she is a licensed clinical social worker and so stuff like this is her Jam.
I do enjoy it, which it probably is good to remind. I'm sure our ogs know that about me, but we have. I've gotten some reviews that say, like this is pseudo psychology.
Blah blah blah.
It was a while ago, but I'm like, no, I am licensed to be able to talk about this, but oh wow, so here you have it. I just I keep it under wraps for the most part, but it is really thrilling to me when I get to combine that aspect of my personhood with finances, and of course you see you throughout. For both of us, I think we enjoy looking at ourselves as whole people and exploring the ways that all of the aspects of who we are impact our money decisions and behaviors. Because it is
not just about math. It is not just about putting numbers on a paper and making the exact right decisions. There's so much that plays into really all of our behaviors and our outlook on life, which of course impacts money, and so of course, similar to all the rest of life, our childhood, the way that we were raised impacts how we move through life, for better or worse. There are
some really beautiful things about that. For some of us, there's some things we need to untangle and create new patterns of relating, And the same is true for money. But yet it's one of the areas that I think we talk about and look at the least regarding what did this look like in my childhood and what of those things are spilling over now. So that's what we're going to explore. We're breaking it down into five ways.
Of course, there's more than that. We're primarily looking at just what your understanding of your upbringing can do to help you make better spending decisions now.
But first, this episode is brought to you by the playground. Love them or hate them. The playground is a great place to where your children out so that they come home hired and ready for bed. But we all know sometimes there are really lackluster playgrounds. But sometimes you get to go to a mega playground, and we love the mega playgrounds. They are fenced in, they have the turf. Your toddler is not going to eat mulch, and it's just gonna give your kid more space to wear themselves out.
Just like there's a big difference between savings accounts. The savings account that is tied to your checking account, it's fine, it's gonna do the job. It's gonna hold your money. But a high yield savings account is gonna work your money and you're gonna be able to afford those extra manicures pedicures every month or every quarter, depending how much you got in there. You can afford to go out
to eat. Your highield savings account can pay for that for you if you're keeping your emergency fund in there. So our favorite one right now is that cit you know Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash c it. And if you do not have your money in a highield savings account go do that?
Why would you?
Why would you just stick to the small playground when you have a mega playground right there waiting for you.
Where your kids won't need the mulch. Yes, that's what a high heeld savings account will do that for you.
So it's a real problem. Yeah, it is a problem.
It hurts too when you fall on that mault. It just gets stuck.
Yeah, yeah, you don't think about it, but it's there. We pulled you all.
In the friend letter and asked what do you most wish you learned about money as a kid, and you all, of course, most of you did say how to invest, but there was then a good spread between the rest of the answers of how to spend wisely, best ways to save money, the realities of debt. That was actually second place in the of course how to invest. So really we are kind of all over the map, almost
saying we really wish we just had a financial crash. Course, yeah, a one oh one growing up, and so we feel Yet it's it's really not talked about very often, and that doesn't mean that we have to then settle in that place. It doesn't mean that we can't learn the skill of spending well and managing money well. But it is good to recognize if you weren't taught these things, then how could you expect yourself to know them now and recognizing that and then being kind to yourself by
learning these skills now. No matter what age you are, it's never too late.
Yeah, I think the answer because there were some responses, I think the answer that got me most was from our reader who said, I just wish I hadn't been brushed off every time I asked an adult other than
my mother about anything money related. At least she answered honestly, and she understood more than you'd expect for somebody who never went to college and didn't have any anything but life experience for a teacher, and it's it is kind of signaling how a lot of this is gate kept, and that's what we'll go into that a little bit.
But there are a lot of gaps for us, and they're generational, you know, like you can't you don't know what you don't know, you can't teach we you know you don't know is needed to teach, and so a lot of that is the source of some of these like maybe like money traumas or just money like for you know, forgotten about money lessons that we did not get as kids. But I am very excited to go through this episode.
So the article we're gonna focus on today comes from Tatler. It's titled Wealth with Sophia, How your childhood may have impacted your relationship with money and what you can do about it. We pulled out five five takeaways, although this wasn't explicit within this article. This was a little bit more mining the article for some of these takeaways, and then I added in just a few just that I know about. But I really enjoyed this article and I
think it's it's worth diving into. And they cite at the beginning this research from the University of Cambridge where they found that many of our fundamental money habits are already taking shape by the tender age of seven. By the time we are seven years old, we have formulated in idea and understanding of money, even if it's not been explicitly talked about. And those habits are the very ones that we will carry with us into adulthood. If not then kind of taught or undone or added too.
And if you combine that with the reality that many schools and parents are not teaching their kids about money, if at all, at least usually after seven. You're not usually having these money conversations. For many of us, we didn't. So it's an interesting thing to realize, Wow, there's so much that we pick up on early on and the
information comes so much later than that. And so, yeah, it can really help us to see why we might have some of these habits and behaviors that aren't necessarily benefiting us financially, and what can we do about about it? And how can this help inform those of us who might be parents to be able to teach children to me? And this is maybe the call out to say, yeah, no it's not three, four, five, six, it's not too early. If a lot of this is being picked up by age seven.
Yeah, we just had an episode several weeks ago with Andy Hill about how to make your kid a Millionaire, and most of it was focused on how do we form their mindset around money? How do we help them shape that mindset? And you cannot start too early. As soon as they start to ask about things that require limits or boundaries or consumption like, that's it. That's the starting point. So, yeah, it's if you're wondering when to
start teaching kids about money, it's definitely before seven. But if you haven't yet, it's also not too late.
So the first one that I want to extract from this article as how our upbringing impacts the way that we now engage with money, is our parents are caregivers attitudes towards money. This is something that we certainly pick up on again, whether or not as we sit down and talk about money as as kids with our parents. But what are the general attitudes around money? How did your parents engage with money? What did you watch them do regarding spending and saving? What were beliefs about wealth?
Did they stick to societal norms? Did they kind of operate on the fringe? Were they pushing back against consumerism where they fully engaged in it? How was money kind of approached, understood, talked about? Just general attitudes about money. That this is something that we then can take on, whether we take on the same type of attitudes as our parents, or we choose, you know, maybe to go into the opposite extreme. Either way, it does form some of the foundation of how we even view this thing.
Yeah, it's it's that more is caught than taught thing. That's the first part. So like the way you speak about money, not even in conversation, but just the way that you maybe speak to other people and children are hearing it, or the way your parents would speak about it, or the way they would look at a bill, like you get a bill in the mail and there's like so much turmoil, or watching people, you know, parents just spend money willy nilly, Like money comes in, money comes out.
That's that's the belief.
So like what you caught is significantly going to influence your attitude towards money. So the next one I think is maybe the biggest one, and it follows up kind of on the reader reply that I just read. It's the communication about money.
So this is what.
Your parents actually told you or what they did not tell you, and then if you asked. And this was a big thing in my house. My parents did not want to talk to me about money because they didn't want to quote unquote burden me with that. It was so I picked up that money is a burden. Having money is hard and not having it is a burden, or I wouldn't I didn't even know if we had a lot of money I assumed that we didn't because we didn't have the house and the stuff like other people.
So then I interpreted money as a burden and something to be scared of entering into adulthood, Like cherish, you know this time when you don't have to worry about money because money is a negative thing when you reach adulthood.
Yeah, and I think too, Well, we'll get to experiences, but also the specific time, the environment in which you grew up up and we're living in, and how you saw your parents kind of walk through Like so for you and I Jen, you know, the two thousand and eight you know, housing crisis and different kind of economic downturns through some of those formative years may shift, you know, parental attitudes and the communication about money versus someone who
might have been a child during economic times that were really great. That's going to play a part in this as well. Just even what generation did you grow up in, and what was the parental generation before you? How were they kind of approaching some of these things. Yeah, I decaated a decade.
Also, I think the important thing from that reader replied too, is that this person had acted other people outside of their family like wanted to know and explore, and people wouldn't answer her questions like either because maybe they didn't know and they didn't want to be wrong. Like nobody talks about money, so we don't feel confident in it, right, so nobody would answer questions. So it felt it also
felt like a gate kept thing. And something I see and have been thinking a lot about is how like I just got back from fin Con and so there are definitely a section of people that are moderate income, but you've got people there that are very high income and high net worth. And because we're all money nerds, we everybody intermingles and talks about money and it's not weird,
but at home it's hard. And I find myself doing this when I am with someone I know is doing like at least quarter of a million like in income every year, and I you know, they've got their nice cars, they've got their brand new house and all this stuff, and like they're talking about things I can't relate to, and there's a bit of judgment, like like you are complaining about things that a lot of other people don't have to complain about, and like that just feels icky
to me because I relate on a lower income level. So then in turn, they feel judged and they and I'm internalizing all this, but I assume they feel judged, so they stop hanging out with people who are in that lower income bracket and try to exclusively hang out with, you know, more people in the higher income bracket. So
that alienates high income earners from low income earners. And we have essentially alienated ourselves because of our judgment and it makes it harder to be in relationship with these people who could answer questions for us and not and feel more confident.
They are more.
Confident in those answers. And it's just and the de grows with every generation, Yeah, because in part due to some of our judgmentalness.
Yeah. Well, and I think you're probably also highlighting what our experience could be in childhood as well. With that with where we live again, that environment that we're talking about not just the generation and the time frame in which we were growing up, but also the location. We see this with housing, Like I live in a lower middle class neighborhood, and so that's all I'm surrounded by.
If I had children, that would be the income bracket that we have here, right, most neighborhoods don't have stark differences on the same road of what the houses look like and the socioeconomic status, and so we also then kind of only know what we see what we're surrounded by and the income brackets, and then the attitudes about money and the conversations about money that may or may
not happen. And one of the things that I see and I'm just going to say this anecdotally, this is not like research backed, but it seems to me that those with less talk about money less, those with more will talk about it more. Just as far as financial education, and so you know, we're not learning. Of course, we're talking about maybe not having, but we're not necessarily talking about, oh, how can I improve the situation? How can I make
better decisions? Whereas those in some of these higher income brackets might have more of the knowledge about investing how they got there and are teaching their children more about it. And so there's that cycle that you're talking about of continued disparity because we're not around it, we don't have access to it, no one's teaching us about it, and
it's not our current living situation either. How do we kind of learn new patterns and different ways and the Yeah, the only way I think is exposing ourselves to those things.
Yeah, kind of putting aside some of our maybe judgmentalness or insecurity, some imposter syndrome and kind of breaking that from you know, I was like the poor kid, you know, growing up and putting ourselves in more of those you know, it's baby steps, right, Like we say, when you're trying to say no to impulse spending, you make baby steps. And the more the quicker the successes you have, the
more confident you feel. Right, baby steps. And it's the same way like the more we network with people who have been more successful with money, more successful negotiating career moves and all that, it's going to feel awkward at first, but that's how you break the cycle, is by being a little uncomfortable and putting yourself in these situations so that you have a community where you can ask questions and people who've already sended these baby steps or maybe
just were born ahead of the game and had fewer baby steps to like walk so that you can get your questions answered more confidently.
And I want to clarify, at least for me, the goal isn't so that I end up in a big mansion with beautiful.
Love see cars.
You know, I'm sitting on top of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, and I'm sequestering myself away from like society and culture. Like I would hope that if I did, you know, come upon more money, that it wouldn't change too much about my lifestyle and my community. But I think that there is something to be said for it's okay to want more. It's okay to want to earn a little bit more, to not constantly feel
stretched thin. So of course, talking about I think both you and I have experiences of not having a lot through childhood, so I think, you know, some of this is bringing up our own personal backgrounds and kind of how it's impacted us. But the third thing I want to point out on here is financial stability and that you experienced during childhood. And I would say this would
probably be real or perceived. I think a lot of times our parents and caregivers can kind of create the environment for us that we don't always know what exactly is happening financially, and sometimes that's intentional on our parents' part, sometimes not. But whatever financial stability during childhood you felt, will have an impact on the way that you now approach money, experience your own lifestyle. So whether there was a sense of having enough or constantly feeling like maybe
money was running out. I know, for me growing up, my dad's job, he's an entrepreneur, and it was either feast or famine, and a lot of times and they would even talk to us about this, like, we don't want you to worry about money. Uh, that's that's for mom and dad, that's for us to be worried about. And I respect that. Certainly, there are certainly, you know, adult themes that children just don't need to be concerned about.
But what I noticed too in that was I would only really become aware of our financial situation when it was starting to run out and we needed to kind of pinch the grocery budget or clip the coupons and do the different things. And so for me, that's one of the pieces of that that financial stability during childhood is I didn't know much, but then when I did, when I was aware of it, it was when there wasn't a lot coming in. And so that's neither good
nor bad. It just was the experience. And so for me understanding that that's what I went, you know, that was my experience. It helps me to kind of know how I experience money now, what running out feels like, and how to plant my feet in reality more than necessarily what I might be experiencing emotionally as a result of that.
Yeah, I think was something that like I am seeing right now, is in somebody else that I know who recently like inherited money and grew up without a lot of money, or at least not the ability to use a.
Lot of money.
And then when he inherited his parents like retirement, it wasn't extravagant, but definitely like a good amount.
And then right.
And now he is just going ape with spending and it'll be a while before it runs out, but it will run out at this rate, and it's and you can get it like you do that rebelling thing, like I didn't get this as a child, and I deserve it now I can afford it, and I'm going to make up for lost time. And we're always making up for lost time with that mindset. And until you decide what is enough, like what is making up for it?
You have to put a line in the sand and decide, Okay, yes, I have deserved this for a while and I haven't gotten it. That's normal. We all deserve a lot more than maybe what we can afford, whether it's you know, circumstantial or intentional or whatever we did. The I deserve mentality is toxic episode, and that's kind of what the gist of it was. But we make the best with what we have and we don't, you know, we try not to be delusional and you know, move outside of that.
But like when you come into this like maybe gift of inheritance or arrays or insurance payout, you can it's good to make up for some of that. It is good, but you have to decide when when have you made up for it? Otherwise you put yourself immediately back in the position of deserving. Well at that point it's then you feel guilty. Then you've got another added layer of guilt for having you know, quote unquote maybe squandered something
that was a gift. So whether that's reality or not, so really figuring out like how to use because I think more of us are going to have this like rebellious experience, like the child the financial stability in childhood is going to be rocky versus having a lot of uber wealth and squadrons. Yeah, I think we're speaking to
a specific audience. But so yeah, figuring out how to use those gifts so that you either like you don't squander them or you don't let the hodonic treadmill of lifestyle inflation get out of hand and you can really like break that cycle again. Yeah, Next for me is h experiences with money. So that would be allowances. Were you given the opportunity to earn an allowance or were you given money to spend whenever you asked for it? And then also earning opportunities outside of like chores. Were
you able to have a job. Did your parents not want you to have a job. Were you not able to have a job because of extracurriculars? So, like, none of it is bad. It's just knowing what your situation was and how it impacted your upbringing. Right, So, like we wanted to tea your kids hard work, So sometimes a parent will decide that's in the form of doing a sport, so there is no work, so there is
no like earning of money. And sometimes a parent will decide that that's a job or it will be chores and so those all come with different experiences of how how did we get the things we wanted in childhood and how does that affect us now? For me, I I wanted a job as soon as I could, and I had to wait, like when I turned sixteen, I had to wait six months because I had band season and I couldn't work during band season, of course, but I wanted financial autonomy.
What did you play, Clearnet? Yeah, I knew that you did, because I can't tell if I knew because you told me, or if I know because I just know you and I know what instrument you'd play.
Could be either at this point.
But so I wanted financial autonomy, like really quickly. That was a personality trait within me. But also I saw my parents struggle financially. They didn't go into debt, they didn't buy more than they could afford, and to me, that translated to the you know, they were poor. That's what I thought at sixteen, and I was like, I want my own money to do whatever I want with it,
because I can't rely on these people. And that's what I've I have taken that into adulthood and know like I cannot rely on my mom financially, I just can't. And that has been something I've learned from childhood, whether it's financial or otherwise, that's what I've internalized. And so I got a job as soon as I could to make my own money and save it.
But they did.
They bought me a car, my mom and dad, so like that was something I didn't have to save for. And I think it also comes down to like maybe knowing your child and their personality point. But I don't know how they could afford the car, and then I just assumed they couldn't afford anything for me. It was obviously my prefrontal cortex was not fully developed. So I think that's another thing. We have to realize, these these things that we learned about money in our childhood.
They may or may not be real.
Yes, yeah, right, our understanding of money may not actually be accurate, which I think I told this story on the podcast before, but for the sake of underscoring that point, I remember my mom would often say we can't afford that. We beat the store and ask for something we can't afford, that can't afford that. Then we get up to the cash register at one point and she pays for something and they ask her if she wants cash back, and she says yes, and so they give her money back,
and in my child's brain, I could not understand. And I said to her, I'm like, well, mom, just go up to the to the cash register and ask them for money like you like you always do, like you just got money from them, and she I think, I don't know if she tried to explain it or was just like that, that's not how it worked. But I couldn't understand, Like, so, wait, you gave them a little bit of money, and then we get our groceries, and then they give you a lot of bit of money back,
and now we leave with more money, more groceries. I don't know why we can't afford stuff.
I think you're lions to me.
So in inaccurate understanding of money as a child. And now I know she probably wasn't lying to me. We really couldn't afford those things. So anyhow, the last and final one for me kind of pulled from this article is our emotional connection with money in childhood. How did we feel about it, how did we see others were feeling about it? What type of attachment do we have with this kind of thing that we are engaging with
pretty regularly, was money associated with stress or conflict. If that's the case, it could lead to multiple things, either over spending now in adulthood or super restrictive spending like
you've already talked about. Gen. Sometimes whatever we experienced, if we perceive it as not great, it could it could lead us to extremes of either I'm going to do the exact opposite of what my parents did, or I'm going to really buckle down harder than what I thought that my parents did so that I don't have to experience like this degree of whatever I perceived as deprivation.
Or maybe there's a great emotional attachment to money and you're just out here making great decisions and that's lovely too, but or you know, with spending associated in childhood with here's how we celebrate, here's how we spend time. I know you and I have talked about that in the past. Gen a lot of times weekend activities were just go and shopping, going to the mall, and and so there's an attachment that can happen with that type of situation of oh, this was a this is a fun thing,
this is how we have fun. This is how we celebrate is through spending money.
Yeah, And I want to just wrap it up with this idea that sometimes how our parents handled money cannot just make us judgmental towards money and impact how we view money. It can also impact how we view our parents, and it can make us judgmental towards them.
I know it has.
Made me judgmental towards my mother for sure. And giving ourselves grace and giving our parents grace. We are all working with the tools that we have, and sometimes it's not a lot of tools, and it is only in our power to pick up more tools for ourselves and to maybe overcome some of these generational like beliefs that are misguided about money or practices that are misguided around money.
All we can control is ourselves and the way we move forward, and we just want to pick up more knowledge so that we have more tools and take action with those tools. And it's not up. We can't control what our parents do with money, whether they pick up tools or not, but we are all working with some kind of generational starting point that we cannot control and to have grace for those around us.
Yeah, well said, I've heard the criticism about psychology and therapy and digging into childhood of you know, oh, just so you can blame everything on your childhood and your upbringing and not take any responsibility for yourself now. And I would say it's that's not the reason for understanding childhood and upbringing. It is so that we can take
our responsibility for ourselves through understanding ourselves better. It's also not to make excuses for parents, but also to recognize, like you said, they were working with the tools that they're working with. There's this concept within therapeutic circles of radical acceptance. And so I think, as I look back, you know, on some of my experiences, and I had both great and not so great experiences, right like all of us, it's this here is what happened, at least
my perception of it. And it's not my job to place blame or to point fingers or to harbor bitterness about some of these pieces, but to just say, this is what was as I experienced it. How is it impacting me now? And what can I do to own myself now in my own decisions, how I approach money, and how I approach my parents like they are whole people too. And their financial decisions were wrapped in all of the other aspects of who they are and how
they were raised. And so like you're saying, giving grace to ourselves, giving grace to our parents, those people who raised us, and now choosing what do we want to do with this? What was good? What do I want to carry with me? And what's not so great, what's not going to be benefiting me? And I can move on from. But I think it does start with understanding this because there's so many puzzle pieces that will help us to explain, Oh, that's what this is connected to.
Rather than the shame cycle that we can find ourselves on of that why that defensive question, we can ask ourselves, why do I do this?
Why do I keep finding.
Myself in this cycle of arguments with my partner? Okay, how did the way that they perceived money and they were raised impact what they're saying now? And how did the way that I was raised and my experiences with money impact this lot of times when we were able to have those types of conversations and get to the root of it, so much more flexibility and freedom for one another and the pathway forward I think can be found. We can become unstuck when we can put these puzzle pieces together.
Yeah, you know another way we can become unstuck in an episode when it you know, gets to a really good like tipping point.
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.
Duck bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi, Jen and Jill. My bill of the week is mint Mobile for our cell phones. We have four phones on our plan. Last year, at this time we were paying two hundred and twenty seven dollars per month to a certain high flutin you know, very notable mobile plan. Forty dollars of that was for phones, so we had to keep stay with them until December to pay off our phones. But as soon as we paid off our phones,
we switched to mint Mobile. With mint Mobile for four phones, we paid three hundred and forty dollars taxes included for six total months. We got three months free, so service has been great. Then we just renewed our contract with Mint Mobile and for twelve months we'll be getting four phones for three hundred dollars, actually two hundred and ninety five dollars for a three month span, so that equates to about seventy five dollars per phone or twenty five
dollars per phone. You can't beat it. Everybody should switch to Mint Mobile. Thanks you to love listening to you would love to hear my bill of the week on your show.
Thank you, well, Michelle, you got what you wanted. And promise that you are not a plant by Mint because we do love Mint, and I assume that you're not a plant, but they.
Send you to I mean, if that is, that's that's going deep, that is going to Mint Mobile knows us that well is.
On another level with advertising. They're submitting bills of the week. But I mean, we do love Mint and the reason that we shill for Mint so hard is because before we were even on iHeart, everyone was saying how Mint really helped them lower their phone bill. And so you can use mintmobile dot com comp slash Frugal for a deal or Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Mint. Yeah, either of those will work.
It's cool to hear a listener actually do it and see how much it's working for you to go from paying two hundred and thirty seven a month to something like three fifty a month. And I was doing the math on some of the numbers. You said, either way, it's significantly less, yeah than what you were paying. So that's amazing. Thanks for sharing. Michelle kenmanmobile dot com slash frugal because.
Why not if you're listening to this, they didn't pay for this, so you should use Frugal Friends Podcast dot com slash mint.
Okay, because then we get a little kickback. Oh that once.
That's how we hack go.
Yeah, let's ask this how we become millionaires?
Yeah? Okay, if you are listening, if you've got a bill that you want to share about some company we've shilled for in the past and how it has actually helped you save money, or you know, if your name is Bill, we have yet to hear from you, Bill, please call us Frugal Friends Podcast dot com slash Bill can't wait to hear it. And now it's time for the round, all right.
I kind of love this one. What seven year old money habits? Do you still see pop up in your adult Spending today.
Do you have an answer?
I want to hear yours first. Did you make this question?
I did?
Yeah, question, Yeah.
It ties into the article, you know, the seven year old I realized, connected to what I have already shared in my vulnerability throughout this episode of not really talking about money growing up unless we were kind of running out of it has kind of impacted my my own need to kind of hedge my bets, and so I will notice that I will just kind of like stuff away. I'm a little bit of like a.
You are dustar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My desire to like hide a twenty dollars bill on the Christmas tree. I don't know if any of you heard about that. I know that is a seven year old desire, right, that is not an adult desire to like stuff a twenty dollars bill and with the Christmas tree for next year. That's that seven year old Jill.
Oh my gosh, I am dying right now.
That is you know one else I've noticed that I do this with food too. So we just got back from a European vacation, which was very lovely. We'd put money away and saved for this and and then did it, which was awesome. But I noticed along the way because we were traveling with friends. I noticed because no one else did this any place we were that that offered. So like, let's say a continental breakfast, I cannot leave the continental breakfast without taking something with me.
And I'm not the I'm not the big purse.
Like I'm not doing the things that they would that the owners would feel like, Okay, woman, stop, you know, it's just I'm on my way out and I'm gonna grab a croissant.
Yeah, a little sneaky snack.
And I'm on and I'm gonna grab you know, some of those crackers. Actually, the pre workout snack that Eric had this morning was from Switzerland, where I like snagged and hoarded. Yeah, a little bit of nutella and a little cracker. Never ended up eating it, just just in case. I just don't want to be caught without a little snacky, a little stary dollars, a little so there's something somewhere squirreled away.
Oh my gosh, yeah, I love that.
Honestly, there's still little croissant crumbs in my purse because well I said I don't bring the big purse. I did still put the croissant in my purse. Oh my gosh, and it came in handy like five hours later that day.
Yeah, that's just smart on vacation to do Yeah, oh wow.
Okay.
So I think some of my aversion to budgeting comes from my childhood because my parents never budgeted. They never consulted their future to see if what they were doing in the present was a good idea, and so they would just kind of impulse, like impulsively do activities, impulsively buy things. Everything was very impulsive, and now that makes
me almost cherish impulsivity. So I want to if I wanted to take Kai to Starbucks to get a cake pop because he loves cake pops, I want to do that, and I don't want to check a budget in order to that. To me, I don't want anybody to tell me what I can and cannot do, even if that person is me. So that is why I have become a passionate proponent for values based spending. Is because I don't want to consult a piece of paper or an
app for permission to do things. And I also want to keep in check to make sure the things that I'm doing impulsively are truly in line with what I value, and that I can quickly tell the difference even in that fight or flight mode where it's like, you know, just that impulsive thinking like Ooh, I want to do this. No I don't actually do not that that's you know, not what I want. I want to do versus saying yes.
And that for the values based spending and our book By What You Love Without Going Broke has truly been what I wanted to have and what I've needed to not work against my brain, not work against my upbringing, to still value and cherish the things about me that make me me. But how can I do that in a way that also helps me save for the future and save for things like a vacation.
And havin year old money decision.
Right, Like, I don't have to live a light like a half life just to be somebody else's definition of financially stable.
Wow, you've got a really inspirational story. And I'm over here just squirreling on yours.
I love yours. It is my favorite thing today.
Well, thanks everyone so much for listening, and thank you also all of you little gems out here right now. NUS reviews like this one from Daphne or Daphney Daphne Datney gentle guidance instead of finance shouting. We do kind of yell a lot, but I appreciate that five stars. This podcast is the perfect chaser after an intense listen to other financial advice podcasts that tend to be prescriptive and intense.
No idea.
I listened to this weekly to help me keep a steady pace towards my goals. As someone who has used shopping the cure boredom, this is almost like a daily vitamin that boosts my resolve to stay true to what I value and resist spending that doesn't serve me. A great companion. In addition to shows like Choose Fi and Money Guy.
Oh, We're gonna be on in a few weeks, I like.
That you shouted out other podcasts that might be kind of in a similar vain people that do these, then you might listen to us. We did ask for that, and Dapney you responded so thank you so much.
Yes, so please if you have some other podcast recommendations that we are similar to. It helps if somebody has listened to another show like Choose Fire Money Guys and they already like that and you say, this is kind of like that, but with girls, then that helps them see if it's right for them or not.
Thanks everyone, See you next time.
Google Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. You got the squeaky chair. The squeaky chair in the move?
Yeah, in the move, in the post hurricane move.
We're still reeling post hurricane because Jill had to move all her furniture to higher ground and one of our chairs is squeaky, and Jill used to have it, and now I have.
It, then John has it. I'm kind of glad to be without it.
I know you Eric did it. Eric took the chair down right.
Well, I think we first did both pull that chair down. I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't know which order they went. So maybe Eric did it this for you, maybe? Yeah. I wonder how well you can hear it on the audio.
I don't think you probably can hear it.
I don't know.
I mean there has been times where there has been a lot of things going on outside, like cock a doodle doing and you can't really hear any of it on the show. Yeah, from what I haven't gotten any emails about it.
If you do hear the squeaky chair in our episodes, leave us a review, make it five stars.
And say Jen, I'm so sorry for your loss of the non squeaky Share
Prayers and thoughts, thoughts and prayers,