Episode three sixty seven Best Budgeting Tips for twenty twenty four.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver it your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast.
My name is Jen, my name is Jill.
And today our last episode in twenty twenty three, as we prepare for twenty twenty four, we want to help you succeed with your budget more often in twenty twenty four. It's not going to be perfect. You are never going to have a perfect budget, but you can succeed week to week more often if you have some of these practical tips and these are not regurgitated tips from the internet. You could google best budgeting tips, and I assure you you will probably not see these on there.
I love that hot take to close out twenty twenty three. We're doing it. We usually when we record episodes, look to the internet. What's a search going to reveal on Google? And we kind of go through and give you the top two articles what they say, our take on it. This one, This one's straight from us. It's something else
we're doing because you know what, it's our podcast. And also we've been doing this for nearly six years, so this is a curated list of everything we've learned what we think will be the heavy hitters in twenty twenty four, just for you, just to close out this year.
Yes, but first, this episode is brought to you by No Spend January. If you got a little caught up in holiday shopping fomo and made some purchases that you didn't necessary really need, you bought some white elephant gifts that were maybe too nice for the party, and if you want to do a no spend challenge to get back on track, if you want to do a no spend challenge with friends who've done it before, then welcome to No Spend January.
Friends.
We are doing No Spend January with you all month, so every issue of the Friend Letter will have helpful tips three times a week. I Jen will be posting on the Frugal Friends podcast Instagram and Modern Frugality on TikTok, and we will be navigating together the thoughts, challenges successes
of a no spend challenge. So this is us holding your hand and doing a no spend challenge that is not just for the sake of saving money recouping some of the losses from November and December, but also will help you identify what are the spending habits that I created in twenty twenty three that I don't love and what do I need to work on in twenty twenty four to make my spending and my money work better for me? And that's really what a no spend challenge is.
It helps you just identify the things you need to work on faster.
So that you can reach your goals that much faster.
So head to frugalfriendspodcast dot com to get the friend letter. You're going to get all of those tips in there. And then also if you're already on the friend friend letter, head to Instagram, get on the Frugal Friends podcast account, follow Modern Frugality on TikTok and Instagram, and you'll be able to see everything in those places. We're coming at you both of the places that you spend the most time because we want to help you as much as possible.
It's a great way to kick off twenty twenty four. So it's like your this is a bonus to this episode. A lot of times when we do challenges, we're not always doing them exactly side by side with you. This time we are Jenna and I both need it too. We need to know spuddy January. So we're gonna do it. We're going to encourage you to do it. Let's do it together. It's more fun that way.
M hm. Yes.
So if you are interested in getting your money right in twenty twenty four, getting on track with budgeting, then we have a ton of budgeting episodes that are very specific to types of budgeting, making more forgiving less restrictive budgets. One of our favorites is episode two thirty seven, Kukipo kokebo.
I don't know how to pronounce it.
I'm so sorry, but it's the Japanese art of mindful budgeting and we love this Japanese philosophy on budgeting. It is something we talk about quite frequently, and so we dive deep into it into thirty seven. We also did episode three ten while I was on maternity leave. Our friend Alison from Inspired Budget came in to fill in for me and did this episode with Jill what We've
learned from seventy five plus real people budgets. She reviews budgets every week on her Inspired Budget Instagram accounts, so she has a lot of insight to what people are doing with their budgets. And we also are our episode from last year, episode two seventy one, the best money saving tips for twenty twenty three still applied to twenty twenty four. That episode holds up. Yeah, it aged well,
and so it's still a good one. We're not also, we're not giving the same tips that we gave in that episode, So that one's a good one to listen to.
Yeah, but stay here because we're talking about twenty twenty four. Now that's where we're at.
Yes, and so we're we're going into this episode with the mindset of we want to help you, not just plan your money better, because the plan is custom to you, it's unique to you. We can't tell you to do like a fifty to thirty twenty budget, to spend fifty percent of your money here, thirty percent here, twenty percent here. Nobody can really tell you that because if you're in a high cost of living area, your housing is probably more than fifty percent. So these things don't necessarily apply
to you. So you really have to determine the ratios of what you save what you spend. The tips that we are going to give you today are going to help you expand your budget more so, you're making the plan. But sometimes the plan does not work. And so when the plan's not working, what do we do? Where do we go? And those four tips are what we're going to give you today. If you do even just one of them, you will be on the path to a more successful twenty twenty four. If you do all four
of them, call us up. We want to talk to you, and we want to celebrate with you.
Yes, and then we'll invoice. You just cannot invoice. We won't. No, we definitely don't do that. We don't do that to any of our listeners, not a single one. Yes.
And this episode was really inspired by a quote that I read in an article when I was doing some research. And this is from a guy who says, I bought a very modest house and did all these things that we felt like we were supposed to do, like live within our means, don't overspend, save, and it all just keeps getting further away from being able to take the next step. And this is a guy from Dayton, Ohio
who is an analytics engineer. And when someone with a like white collar job is saying like I did everything right right. I bought this starter house like they told me to, I put this much down, I did all these things that these financial podcasts were telling me to do. But the current state of where we are, it just feels like it's getting further and further away from what reality is. And so we can't give you any groundbreaking advice.
But hopefully if you can take away a few changes, a few lifestyle changes from this episode, then hopefully it will help you feel like you're treading water a little better, or that you're treading less. That these are lifestyle changes that will will help you maybe feel like you're on solid footing soon.
Treading water in the shallow end of the pool where when you get hired you can stand up for a little bit.
Yes, right, So our first tip, our first budgeting tip for twenty twenty four drum roll please.
But that was my mouth. It wasn't a drum. I know, It's like, oh, it sounded so much like drums.
I didn't even know if I wasn't listening to you. Our first ship is to earn more money.
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that.
We don't like to talk about that I know you don't expect it.
In frugality, right overspending, we say this, overspending will destroy you, but saving money won't save you. So we think about this in the eighty twenty rule, twenty percent of your effort will get you eighty percent of your results. Twenty percent of your effort is going to produce eighty percent of the change that you see in your budget. Like, look at your budget. The income section is so small, yet it dictates the size of every other section, and
so you can't forget about the eighty percent. But you have to focus on that vital twenty percent. And another term for the eighty twenty rule is the vital few and the useful men. As frugal people, sometimes we want to focus on the useful many because they are useful, they do make a difference, and they have low barriers to entry. Honestly, it's easier to do a lot of the money saving tips that we give you, and that's great.
Starting with those things is great, But if we forget about these vital few, we start to feel like we are treading water because the small things add up. But we have to the price of goods has increased too quickly over the last two years to still be making what you made two years ago, or to still be
content with a three to five percent income increase. The retirement savings will you set in twenty nineteen is probably no longer enough because that usually accounts for a three percent increase in inflation, right, and we know we've seen way more than that triple that in some cases. So if you haven't reevaluated what you're earning or even what you're saving for retirement, now is the time to do it. Because the income goals that you had maybe four years ago,
they need to be higher. And so I know, I know a lot of people listen to our show because they don't want to increase their income or think they can't increase an income. So we've kind of pivoted a lot of our content to be about sparking creativity and creating a mindset about to say how before I can't? So like, how can I save money on this? Instead
of I can't save money on this? Because training those like creative and resourceful muscles with savings will help you when it comes to these harder things like increasing your income. It'll help you get gain the skills that you need to get creative and resourceful with your income.
Yeah, I think this is one that can feel uncomfortable, especially in this space, like you just said, Jen, where people might be coming to frugality as kind of this way to not need to increase and identify contentment and enough, And we're also advocating for those things. But I think going back to the statement that you said at the very beginning this quote about I was doing all of the right things, and it just feels like I'm still on this hamster wheel, to paraphrase, And I think a
lot of us can relate. I've heard from people in the upper middle class financial bracket, middle middle class, lower middle class kind of everybody feels impacted by what has transpired economically over the last couple of years. And what it meant five years ago to make an annual household income of one hundred thousand dollars is not the same as what it meant now. It doesn't mean the same as what it meant five years ago. So I think we have to be willing to look at this too.
When we talk about holding the tension and living in the radical middle, it's going to be looking at practices of saving. But also practices of spending and earning more. We can also look at other ways to earn money creatively that maybe don't require a heavy mental, emotional, physical load from me, but allows me to be able to have some of that excess income that is required this day and age. Not advocating for hustle culture rat race,
you're never going to get off that hamster wheel. But if you are in this point of seeing, man, what was enough is not enough anymore? This salary is not cutting it. This is also an encouragement to say you're not alone and you're not wrong, and it's not like you're doing something error. If you're finding that suddenly things feel like a bit of a pinch. It's not as if to say, yeah, you just you've got to cut, cut, cut,
cut cut. Sometimes we can't cut anymore. And this is the side of the spectrum that we need to look at of where can we make more? But it doesn't always necessarily mean that you've got to hustle more. We can be implementing some of this creativity that eighty twenty rule that could allow us to earn more but not require backbreaking labor of us. And that's kind of all the rest of our archive, but I think it's worth mentioning, especially for twenty twenty four, that we might need to
consider earning more. I think this is a very useful, helpful tip.
Yeah, and I definitely want to reiterate what Jill said is that we don't advocate for hustle culture. It's toxic to some extent. If you want to be an entreprene newer, if you feel like you are not, you don't want to work for someone for the rest of your life, then you should definitely start a side hustle. Starting a side hustle is a great way to transition from working
for someone to working for yourself. But I think we've gotten so caught up with all these side hustles that it has given employers an excuse not to pay more.
And I think there are creative ways to extract more money from the career path, the nine to five career path you've chosen, especially if you don't want to become an entrepreneur, and so I would really encourage you when you're thinking about increasing your income, don't jump straight to side hustles, because that's been what everybody on every podcast has been talking about for years, Like five to ten years.
At this point, let's stop for just a minute, stop thinking about side hustles until you've extracted every last penny available from your chosen career path. So for a while that we were recommending job hopping, and for some industries that's still good. For others it's not. Uh, But there are a lot of ways, through education, through networking, all of these ways to extract a higher salary within your field.
We're not going to go deep into that right now because we have two really great podcast episodes that are essentially masterclasses for increasing your income in your chosen profession. The first is Intentional Strategies to Increase your Income with Rich Jones. That's episode three oh five, and then how to negotiate a higher salary in any field with Mandy Woodruff Santo's that's episode two sixty three. So write down episode three oh five episode two sixty three. These are
near required listening for all frugal friends. And Mandy's episode isn't just negotiating higher salary. She gives such wisdom on finding new jobs. She was the one that taught me, like, if you want a really successful career, you don't find jobs by going through the front door, like by going through Indeed and LinkedIn and all these places. You go through the side door, you network, you make connections, and you reach out to people, and you go through the
side door. And that was just like such crazy wisdom. So I really love her episode to sixty three. And they're going to give you a lot of helpful tips to earn more money at your job in twenty twenty four, so that you have more room in your twenty twenty four budget to a make ends meet if that's where you're at, or b to do the rest of the things on this list to you invest.
More all of that. Yes, I have long term takeaways from both of those podcast episodes. Can't recommend that enough. But let's get to number two on our list, our curated list, waste no food, stop doing it. Stop wasting food. When we talk about the eighty twenty rule and what are the vital few and the useful many, the vital few are these most expensive parts of our spending monthly, and food is at the top of that list, alongside
housing and transportation and bills and clothing. And I love this one kind of quote slash statistic from an article. We are going to look at this particular article because it's worth highlighting at the start of this tip. This is from USA to Day. This one really stood out to me and made me chuckle. So they were talking about five facts about food waste revealed from this survey that they did, and the number one fact revealed was that the price of food is the primary food related
concern among eighty one percent of US households. Sidebar, we can affirm this. It is the number one requested type of episode from our listeners. Talk to me about food. Tell me how to reduce my grocery build tell me how I can save on my food. You name it all angles. You all want to know about food. I get it. I love food too. Okay, back to this article.
Yet only thirty three percent are aware that the average American household could save at least at least fifteen hundred dollars a year by eliminating food waste, which is a little comical to me at least. That's how it's landing with me that we all want to know about how to save money on food, and yet we all are wasting various degrees of food and that is easy up. That's one of the things that's eating up our food budget by literally us not eating our food that we
have purchased. To throw another stat at you, in October twenty twenty, the Census Bureau survey showed a four person household spent an average of two hundred and thirty eight dollars a week on food at home. Three years later, so twenty twenty three, to do some quick math, a similar survey showed that that figure had jumped to three hundred and fifteen dollars. That's roughly thirty two percent more.
Part of that has to do with inflation, so that's an extra four thousand dollars extra a year on food at home. We can probably surmise that we're still wasting about the same amount, so that just means that our annual waste amount has increased as well. So I think we really need to be looking at what are we doing with the food that we purchase. Certainly there's things that we can be doing ahead of time of how do I purchase just the things that I need. Other
hacks on how to reduce food waste. We've got episodes i'll talk about in a minute that I can direct you to on that. But then it's what comes next our ability are practicing and growing of that muscle of being able to eat what we already have at home. The largest known representative study of food waste in the United States has revealed that every state's habits when it comes to discarding groceries. Is this that we're wasting households with? And then this is wild too. More statistics for you,
just to fire you up. Households with higher levels of education, higher levels of income, and lower age tend to waste more food. And to go further on, households with children tend to waste more foods per week, more food per week about eight and a half cups than those without children about five point one cups. That makes sense. I get that I don't have kids. This is Jill talking Jen do too. She's collecting them right now. And other
parents that we're friends with. This is a common kind of round the table, living room conversation of man, we don't want to be but we find ourselves throwing away so much food when we have kids in the house. And this isn't to shame you all. None of this
is shame. There are more barriers to reducing food waste and reducing food costs when you've got little ones at home when it's not just you that you're responsible for, but other people who maybe aren't as informed or not as willing to make some of the decisions that you'd make with food and might be picky the food got thrown on the floor. What are you gonna do? I
get it. But I think opening our eyes to this reality as well when we're talking about how to save on groceries, how to save on this big ticket monthly cost, is how can we implement that creativity we've already talked about to make sure that we're eating the food that's in our house. So again, to steer you back to some of the archives, we've got some great episodes on this particular tip. If this seems to be one of the areas that you're like, yeah, that's me, how do
I reduce my food waste? I'm going to steer you to episode two ten, which was Tips to Live Zero Waste Frugally. So we're not just talking about food there, We're talking about all types of waste. But that too is going to lower our bills across the board, from from our food to our miscellaneous budget, cleaning products, you name it. That episode's going to really help. So episode two ten is another good one to queue up. And then we've got episode one seventy six, which is an interview.
We also love our interviews that is zero waste Ish cooking with Debt, Kick and Mom. So we've got this this woman who is also cooking at home, teaching us how to zero waste with our food, make use of all the ingredients that we already have in our house. I'm also going to do another plug for this no spend challenge that we're doing in January again, Get the Fruit,
Get the Friend Letter, Frugal friendspodcast dot com. Follow us on Instagram because that's going to be a big One of the no spend challenge is how do we use up what's in our pantry, in our fridge. How do we keep ourselves from takeout restaurants that kind of a thing. This is this is a big one for our budgets.
So follow along there, listen to those episodes two ten, one seventy six and just start taking note of what am I waste, saying how much food is going into the garbage and connecting that to your budget, recognizing that if I can reduce this, it's only going to help my wallet, not to mention all the other peripheral helpful impacts on the environment, on our nutrition, you name it.
Yeah, I want to emphasize that the study that we're referencing is on usable food, consumable food, so not inedible food scraps. So this is thirty percent of food that American homes are wasting. And if you're looking at it from an environmental perspective, like yes, manufacturers do waste far more food than American homes. But if you're looking at it from a budget perspective, forget meal planning, forget groceries,
forget takeout. Just using the food that you have before it goes bad in a creative way so that you actually enjoy it.
It is.
It is life changing to your budget when you can get resourceful and say, like, I'm not too good to eat this three d you know, to repurpose this three day old leftover, I am, you know, gonna look through for the oldest yet not expired sauce in my fridge and I'm gonna use it up today.
Like to look through these things. I think the.
The stat that the households that had the highest levels of education, levels of income, and lowest age. Wasting more food was super convicting to me because like, I don't consider myself like that bougie or like that, you know, scared of eating food, but I still waste food. As somebody who has two kids, I'm very cond just about food waste, and I don't consider myself like too good for three day old leftovers. And I'll push it. To be honest, this is.
Once it hits a week, that's it.
Yeah, but I will I will still waste food. I'll still throw out my own food, not even my kids foods, just because I look at something and I don't want to eat it, and I don't want to repurpose it. And so these skills of repurposing and cooking for you, not for somebody you want to be.
I think that's.
Really going to be what helps with this food waste thing, because we all have like we all want to eat a certain way, but that doesn't mean that you really are they You really are the type of person that eats that way. So start cooking for you, start cooking for your family, and being more concerned with if if your budget is your biggest concern, right, if your health is your biggest concern we're having two different conversations. But if you are eating at home, you are by proxy
eating healthier than takeout, So you're already winning there. But start cooking for you and not for the person you want to be in the future while you're trying to get your food waste under control. And yeah, the now Spend challenge is going to be great for me to go through my pantry and my freezer and kind of do a cleansing of the kitchen. I don't have a big stockpile or anything, but I still have stuff that has been sitting in there and I want to use
it up. I don't want it to sit there anymore. So this is really going to be my January will be my kitchen cleanse, all right. So our next tip for twenty twenty four to free up more space in your budget to make your money plan work for you is to pay off any debt over ten percent and to never pay double digit interest again in twenty twenty
four or any year moving forward. And so we'll look at another article about like we'll cite some facts from this Motley Fool article on average American household debt and while inflation cooled in twenty twenty three, the average debt is up in nearly every category compared to twenty twenty.
So this includes.
Total household debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt, auto loan debt. The debt total is up by over two and a half trillion dollars since twenty twenty and so the Federal
this is all like data from the Federal Reserve. It tracks the nation's household debt payments as a percentage of disposable income, and the most recent debt payment to income ratio that we have for this episode is from the second quarter of twenty twenty three, and it's showing that nine point eight percent of income is used to pay debt in some kind, which honestly is not that bad if you're including mortgage.
Payments in there.
But we're using that percentage to kind of guide our new recommendation. We used to recommend pay off anything over five percent, pay off any debt over five percent, but that's becoming increasingly more difficult to do. So if you're somebody who's bought a house or a car or gone to school recently, then start with ten percent. If you're looking at all your debt and you're like there's no way I have too much debt over five percent. I
can't then start with ten percent. If that's not you, we still do highly recommend that any debt you have over five percent that you payoff quickly. And we don't mean just like prioritize it. I mean pay it off like your pants are on fire. We are not in the camp that all debt is bad, but there is some debt that holds you back more than others, and that's high interest debt.
So pay put it.
Is it behooves you to put your entire life on hold to pay off any debt that's above ten percent first, but if you're able to, then any debt over five percent. And so here are some of the stats from the article. So, the average revolving credit card debt is about six over six thousand dollars. It's about sixty three hundred dollars, and that debt has an average of twenty percent in interest. That your credit card debt should be at zero, and it should be revolving at zero. And so that is
the first priority. If you're having trouble with your budget and you have revolving credit card card debt, that's the first place to focus on. We definitely focus on increasing your income and reducing your food ways, but your number one goal should be to pay off that credit card debt, and the next highest is personal loans. Those will have
a ten to twelve percent rate. People with personal loans have an average about eleven or twelve thousand dollars in that so that would be your next one to pay off. And then not as common but still out there, private student loans. Those can be up to a sixteen percent rate, and people with private student loans usually have about fifty grand. So those are the things that we want to focus
on before we do anything else. And once you have paid off, I would say maybe focus on your credit card debt first if you've got it, and then put yourself in a place to never get in credit card debt again. So that would be an emergency funds so that you don't have to worry about that again. And you may want to save your emergency fund first, that's fine as long as you don't lose the motivation to get rid of that high interest debt. This is what
holds people back from being able to invest. It's what promotes lifestyle inflation that keeps you in this this cycle of paycheck to paycheck living where even if you earn more, you're still living paycheck to paycheck because of these habits that perpetuate high interest debt. And so this is kind of like that kitchen cleanse, but for your finances. This is a financial cleanse to get rid of that high interest debt and they never get it back again.
And this one may need to go hand in hand with number one, which was to earn more. Sometimes we will be looking to who increase our income for maybe the sole purpose of paying down debt, and that in that situation might be where if you've exhausted your options in getting every last penny out of your chosen career path, then are there any low barrier to entry flexible side hustles that you could consider for a time. I'm not going to advocate that we all need to have side
hustles indefinitely. Sometimes we choose to get some side work for a purpose, like getting rid of that twenty percent interest credit card debt. Is there something that you could do for three to six to nine months that is really going to make a debt and catapult you for the rest of twenty twenty four into twenty twenty five. So those are the types of circumstances where you'd want to maybe consider a little bit above and beyond for
a huge long term impact. That's the eighty twenty There you go, that's eighty twenty.
Eight for those reasons for these quick side hustles to pay off debt like this, we have a Frugal side Hustle series, So if you need something to do for about six to nine months, we have several These are side hustles that are low costs to start but can have the potential to build into a business if entrepreneurship
is something you're interested. So not every single frugal side hustle that we talk about in the series, we have about I think six to eight at this point is going to be good for paying off debt.
But if it's.
Something you're already like, we have a bookkeeping episode. If you are already familiar with bookkeeping, that's something you could take on as a side hustle, figure out how to take some clients, get the nuts and bolts for them, and then you know, potentially keep doing it if you like it, or once your high interest debt is paid off, you drop it. That's I kind of think our recommendation for this one. There's the debt snowball, the debt avalanche, and we have episodes that go into.
More detail on that.
But I think for high interest debt, we're definitely team avalanche because.
It's so so insane.
The interest rates are so insane right now, So I think your best bet is to focus on your lifestyle habits, not the method.
In which you're paying off debt.
To just do that high interest stuff, real real, real, real fast before you can think.
Better of it.
Yeah, And for our last and final tip for twenty twenty four, that is a heavy hitter for your finances long term is investing. We are going to encourage you to invest every month, no matter how and when we're talking about investing on this particular podcast, it's primarily for the purpose of retirement. We're not talking about kind of short term investments and using that as like a side hustle. That's just not what we do here, investing for retirement.
So what we know about investing is that for those of us who are average income earners, time is on our side. We want to be investing early and often rather than waiting. This can still give us some of the benefits that those who maybe start later but have a ton of money to do it with can have. So if you invest every month for forty years, you only need to save one hundred eighty four thousand dollars of your own income to get one million dollars invested
one hundred eighty four thousand to one million million. And that again is because it's time in the market. That's forty years. For many of us. We may not have started in our twenties. That's not going to be entirely possible, but that doesn't mean it's unattainable for you. If you're in your thirties forties, still start now. We don't have to wait until all of our debt is gone before we're investing again. We the frugal friends are definitely in the camp of we can do multiple things at the
same time, especially when we're utilizing automation. We don't have to have our sits on this all day every day. We can set up some of this automation and be doing multiple things at the same time, just in the background. Versus, if you wait ten years and invest every month for thirty years, you'll need to have two hundred and ninety thousand dollars of your income invested in order to reach
that one million dollars. Still great if you're in your thirties, but as you can see, the number increases pretty pretty hefty to go from investing for thirty years versus forty years. So you could save one hundred and twelve thousand dollars just by investing ten years earlier. So this is just your sign to start now. Time spent in the market is more valuable than trying to time the market.
Yeah, and this is more of a budgeting tip to protect your future budget. So you are going to have bills for the rest of your life. Even if you own a home and you plan for it to be paid off, You're still going to have home insurance, You're still going to have lawn maintenance, You're still going to have taxes.
This is an.
Assurance that in the future you will have an income to budget for these expenses. We don't want to just think about the budget this month in twenty twenty four, we want to change our perspective to be thinking about the budgets in the upcoming months of twenty twenty four. We want to think about our budgets five years from now, and we want to think about our budgets in thirty or forty years from now, and we don't have to dwell on them.
We don't have to. They don't They should not be our biggest focus.
That's why we It behooves us to start earlier, even with a little So I did a couple calculations in preparing for this episode, and the one hundred and eighty four thousand dollars that is, let me pull it up, that is about three hundred and eighty three dollars a month.
So if you contribute three hundred and eighty three, and normally math you would think, okay, if I start at twenty five and I contribute three hundred and eighty three dollars a month to my roth IRA, then I am going to have to invest more than if I start in ten years, because the extra ten years will be
more money. When the alternative is true, If you just contribute three hundred and eighty three dollars a month for forty years at a seven percent rate of return, that is a million dollars, whereas the thirty five that jumps up to eight hundred and twenty one dollars a month. That you would have to contribute every month, and at that point you're beyond an IRA and you have to split it between the four oh one K and the IRA.
So it it's so important. Even if you can't do three hundred dollars right now, if you're working on that high interest debt, I think that's more of a priority than investing. But once you get that high interest anything over ten percent paid off, even if you're not completely debt free, start investing.
Do something.
Even if it's fifty dollars a month, one hundred dollars a month, just make it a point to get one percent better every month. So or whatever percentage. I'm not going to do exact percentages, but maybe it's fifty dollars this month, it's seventy five dollars next month, we're going to eighty the next month. Get a little bit better every month. But start today, start.
Now, And for anyone who has not been listening to us for a while, we're talking about our four to oh one k's getting the employee match if it's offered at your place of employment, your roth iras or traditional iras, that these are what we're talking about investing in for retirement. We've got episodes that go more into that how to invest simply, so definitely go back into the archives for that as well.
Yeah, I think the the idea that we want to get across to our listeners in twenty twenty four and this is how we're planning our episodes in twenty twenty four. And you can be part of that. If you're one of our friend letter subscribers. Then we do a poll in every newsletter where we get feedback from you on what you want to hear on the show, how you want the information presented, what's most valuable to you. But the direction that we kind of want to guide you
in is to just take little actions. Now, let's forget this mindset that has been drilled into us that we have to go all or nothing, that in order to change we have to overhaul our entire life. That if we're not following a perfect budget, then we're not capable of budgeting that one percent better is better. That we need to make budgets that fit our life, not fit
our lives to a perfect budget. And so if you can look at what you're spending, and this is why we love to you know, telling people do a ninety day transaction inventory. Look at what you spent over the last ninety days. That's going to tell you who you are right now, for better or for wisp whether you like it or not.
What you've spent over the.
Last ninety days tells you who you are, and then you get to decide from there. Do I like what I see? Do I love what I see? Am I buying what I love? If you're not, then you can change it. But you get to decide what you love. Nobody else decides for you. Don't just like you. You shouldn't meal plan or cook for somebody else or somebody you want to be. You shouldn't budget for somebody who you are not. I know people say fake it till you make it, or dress for the job you want.
That doesn't here.
We really have to be looking at who we are and then looking how can I get better? How can I get my definition of better? How can I make my budget look more like something I'm really proud of? Uh, and forget everyone else. I want to be proud, and hopefully that pride includes reaching your financial goals, paying off debt, and investing.
But we can't tell you what that looks like. Hopefully it does.
But I think that's going to be the biggest takeaway we want people to get from this episode and from episodes in twenty twenty four is that one percent better mentality.
And so much of this is the intangibles that what we talk about here is beyond just behaviors and how we can manipulate numbers and percentage points, but our whole person and how this intersects with our financeial selves alongside every other aspect of who we are, how we move through life, how we're showing up in the world, what we want to see for ourselves now and in the future, and that requires digging deeper, that requires individualizing these things,
and it also creates space for so much freedom and flexibility that it's not a one size fits all. But that's why there's no exact hack for how your budget can do better, because it's so much more dynamic than that, and it includes looking at and diving into all aspects
of who we want what we want. And that's the whole archive of the Frugal Friends podcast that we will just continue to talk about in twenty twenty four of how do we integrate all of this together and take what we're learning in every aspect of life and allow our one percent better in our relational life, to allow us to be one percent better in our financial life.
Wherever we are improving ourselves or aiming at our best possible self and well being, it will have a positive impact on our finances also, and I'm here for that, and I'm here for it not being the same for everybody and doing some of that work of what is our thought life filled with what's happening in our emotions. That's going to then play into the actions of the budget and the numbers. But we've got to start there,
and we're here for you. You know what else we're also here for and we're here for ourselves on this one too.
In twenty twenty four and beyond, we will be here for it.
The Villa 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 clean. This is the bill of the week.
Hi Jin and Jill, I am a longtime listener here Rachelle Pond, and I am happy to get back on here and share a new Bill of the week with you guys. Recently, our washing machine was just having like some serious issues. It was making like a burning smell and it was like smoking, and it sounded like it was a rocket ship like about to take off in the space. Like it was so loud, not cleaning their clothes well moldy, just like just like a gross situation.
And my husband out, you know, we contemplated, like what are we gonna do? Are we gonna try to should we just get another one? And you know, I my brain space right now. I'm currently expecting our third child and I need a washing.
Machine as soon as possible.
And so I told my husband, hey, this is exactly why we have an emergency fund. And so we went out and bought a new washer and dryer and it was such an easy choice to make. And this is everybody's reminder to go and get you save an emergency fund because it makes these things less of an inconvenience. But anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to paying that because we worked hard to make that happen. Anyway, Thanks you guys, and I appreciate, appreciate you, Chelle.
So good to hear from you.
Yes, we recognize our long term our long time listeners, and it's always sweet to feel feel like we're having a phone convote with you.
So congrats.
Yes, I think you've left a bill for us in the past. So excited to hear this updated one. And really, there were so many adjectives to describe your washing machine. I mean, all of the things are happening, from burning to mold. It sounded unredeemable. And when you're expecting a
third child, I support you. Sometimes you just need to get the thing that works, and you need it now, and especially when you've already got money set aside because you've prepared for rainy days like this and you're not going into debt for it and you can solve your issue. Sometimes money just solves our issues.
Well, yeah done.
That's the thing about having an emergency fund and having at least some cushion so that you don't have to go into high interest debt. These situations are not emergencies. They just become inconveniences. And that is financial freedom. It's not just having money in the bank. It's the freedom. It's the emotional and mental freedom from the stress that money brings. That's financial freedom. And that's what a financial cushion,
an emergency fund does for you. It takes the things we are used to being, these emergencies, these traumatic events, these crises where we make really poor decisions because we're so stressed on top of everything else we've got going on. It just double down on the bad decisions. It takes those and just turns them into like annoyances. And I will take an annoyance over an emergency any day. That's financial freedom. So well done, Rachelle.
If you all listening have been a lot long time listener, or your brand spanking new, if you've got a gross washing machine or you'll love your washing machine, if you've got an emergency fund, or you don't have an emergency fund, or your name is just Bill, call us up, leave us your bill of the week. The more vague, the better. Also, if it's a useful tip, we're here for it. If it's celebratory, that's great. Fugal friendspodcast dot com slash Bill, we cannot wait to hear it. And now it's time.
For you, all right.
So in our vulnerability around this week, we are talking about our own personal biggest money lessons of twenty twenty three, because if you're not growing, you're dead.
And if you're not learning, you are sad sadness.
Wow, So jieh, I did lord to learn this year? Well this, I learned this. It's not related to money. Your feet and your ears keep growing throughout life. They don't stop growing. And I think your nose is that true too. I might be spouting off facts that aren't listen. I don't do it, aren't real. Yeah, it's what we do over here at the podcast.
Definitely grow when you are pregnant. That is one hundred percent fact. And sometimes they don't grow back, they don't degrow.
Okay, money lesson, A little bit of money. Action. For me, my money lesson was action. I Twenty twenty three was the year I kind of started to get it together. I know I've said that I've been doing this.
Podcast show Jill started getting things together in twenty twenty three.
Maybe don't listen to any episodes for this year.
Getting it together in some in some real ways for sure. I think I finally had the mental space in twenty twenty three to do some of the tasks of personal finance, like really getting an eye on where I'm banking, moving some things around into better banking situations. For example, I a high yield savings account. Don't be sleeping on this, everybody, don't be sleeping How.
Skill to get a high yield savings account? For five years?
Oh? And I would have told it everybody else to do it? Do it?
Do it?
Get yourself off highield savings account? Was I doing it? No? Because I was so maxed out? And you know what if that's you two, I get it, I get it, but hey, there's a few more days left in the holiday and in twenty twenty three, do it. Do not sleep on this, because here here's the thing, friends, high old savings account is just it sounds like it's a
savings account. You can put money in, you can take money out, there's no rules about how long you got to keep money in, there's no restrictions on being able to take money out of it. This is where your emergency fund should be. This is where any extra savings should be housed. We are loving CIIT. I mean, they're not entirely sponsoring us, but they are an affiliate. But we also do believe in them for all friends podcast
dot com slash ciit. That does help us out. But also they are offering the best interests back on your money. So they've got last time I checked, which was yesterday, because now I'm all on this high old savings account kick. They're offering like four point sixty five very close to five percent back on your money. And it is what it sounds like. So if you've got thousands of dollars in just a regular savings account that is getting you money,
you need to put it here. Because I'm getting like a hundred to two hundred dollars a month just on my money. My money is making me money, and that's not even in like the stock market investment account. This is just a high yield savings account. So I'm probably getting loud and it sounds like I'm yelling at you, But my money lesson can be your money lesson. Get it in order. You know what else I'm doing. This is going to happen before twenty twenty three is over
for me? Term life insurance. Yeah, I tell everyone else to do it.
Yes?
Have I told everyone else to do it? I? Have you've heard me? I've told you to do it? Have I done it? No? You want to know why, because I'm over here, like I don't have kids, this is this is no big deal. And now I'm like, no, if I die, I need to leave some money for my husband and my family, who hopefully will bury me somewhere that is legal to bury a body, and they're going to need money for that. So term life insurance.
And there's more reasons to have money left behind than just burying you and legal places.
But that's that's beautiful.
I I'll be honest. I also don't have term life insurance, but it's for different reasons. But Travis does have term life insurance and because at one point he was more likely to die.
Those lines of blurred.
Now so we've been here for close to six years. We don't know how much longer we'll be here. Right for Friends podcast dot Com slash Ladder, Yes, that is.
The one that we love the most currently.
This is who I'm using.
Yeah, that's amazing. I while we're on the vulnerability train, I do have multiple high yield savings accounts and love them, but my emergency fund has been in an investment account for the last several years. Oh, Jen, right, And which is what nobody should do. Which we tell everyone don't do thish, and this is I'm gonna be I'm gonna be completely honest with you. We are not the only people with personal finance podcasts that are not doing what
we tell people to do. But I am actually gonna try again to get life insurance.
I have waited the.
Amount of days that I think is valid to wait to try again, and I'm gonna use Ladder to try this time. So definitely high old savings accounts and yeah, Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash c I T that's a given, and then life insurance for me my biggest money lesson this year besides don't put your emergency fund an investment account, which is the lesson I've always known.
But you also do have money in a high yield savings account, so you're not. I mean, I think our listeners need to hear that correctly, That it's not as if you don't have money accessible to you when you need it.
Correct So I guess I could say that that is that has just been in my head marked is my emergency fund, but I could just as easily say this other money over here is the emergency fund, and this money is not you're.
You're just squirreling. You've got you've done for Galaxy squirrel and mindset so well that you you've got a lot of different accounts that you are kind of at the point where you can play a little bit because yeah, we're not talking your paycheck to paycheck and you've got no accessible fund. So that's an important caveat there.
This is true. Thank you, Jill, Thank you for trying to save me.
We we don't want those one stars.
So my biggest money lesson this year has been the just another lesson in I still have scarcity mindset issues that I need to work on. So Travis took a pay cut this year to work a job that was a much better schedule. And this is a job that he can work for one to two years and will give him a lot better. It will give him a totally different skill set in his industry and he can go and take the skills that he's gained from this job and his previous jobs to do something much better.
But we had to make the decision that for a couple years we're going to be living on a pay cut, and that was very hard for me as somebody who loves safety and stability, and had already inflated my lifestyle to a certain extent, part of that extent being formula. I stopped breast feeding, and formula is expensive, but I
hated breastfeeding and I could afford to buy formula. And then Travis wanted to take a picot and I was like, well, I'm already like the ship has sailed from this back, yo, So I kind of had to look at I really had to look at the ways that I had inflated
my lifestyle and deflate it. So this second half of the year has really been spent looking at ways to deflate my lifestyle, not because it hadn't inflated that crazy, just because the price of goods has gone up so much and we're making, you know, a significant amount less, not like crazy, but but it's noticeable. So that has been and that's one of the reasons I'm doing no
spend January too. It was my idea that we do know'spend January because I am actively looking for ways to deflate my lifestyle to no fault of my own, just life circumstances have changed, and I've got to find ways to cut back that will not make me feel deprived.
We both are saying our top tip for twenty twenty four is earn more, and yet simultaneously, both Jen and I are actively earning less in twenty twenty four than we did previously, but it's with a purpose and a
goal in mind. I think there's part of this where we can create some freedom and flexibility for ourselves as we implement on these tips that we've talked about over the past five years that allow for some of that job flexibility, we are able to implement creativity and problem solving to be able to go after careers and jobs and lifestyles that don't require so much. But also for certain times, right there are seasons that we move in
and out of. There may be seasons where we have to earn more because we want that high interest credit card debt gone, or there's seasons where it's actually more important for us to free up our time so we can go after this job that were entrepreneurial. We want to have our own small business, and so it's going to mean some sacrifice in this other area. So this is that no one size fits all situation. While we're talking vulnerability, that's another reason we're doing a no it's been challenge.
So wherever you find yourself, we're here for Google Friends will be making more in twenty twenty four. Yeah, it's just twenty twenty three. We took intentional pay cuts so that in twenty twenty four we would have more space to earn more it.
I love it. We're all moving and shaking, taking what works, leaving the rest behind. There are times when I'm doing all four of these tips we just said, and times when I'm just doing one or two of them. So hopefully you can find yourself there too. Hopefully you'll be along for the ride with us in twenty twenty four, especially that January No Spend Challenge, Frugal friendspodcast dot com, get the friend Letter, follow us on Instagram. Thanks for
listening you all. You know what. We also love reading your kind reviews. So many of you are leaving such thoughtful reviews. This one comes from Hannah M who titled it Dynamic Duo in all caps. We love all caps. We also love alliteration. Thanks Hannah. She said, Jen and Jill are the best. Both my husband and I love listening to them and their fun twist of frugality. They make saving money fun. This year, we've started our journey
to becoming debt free. On days when I just want to go to Target to buy decorative pillows or cozysucks, cue up the pod to keep me motivated and focused on the goal. Thanks Jen and Jill for changing the frugal game. You're welcome, man. I'm here for you. I am here for you keeping you out of Target and away from Starbucks. If that's it.
We are the useful many. We are here for you in your day to day life, and we're so thankful that you keep us around. So thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to leave a rating and review. If you've listened to a specific episode of the podcast that really gave you some new insight or helped you in some way, please cite that episode in the review so people know kind of what shows they might want to queue up first, even if the latest few are not for them.
So thank you so.
Much, See you next time.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.
Jen, what do you think is going to be the hardest part of no Spend January?
Takeout?
Recording videos every single day?
Yeah?
That I think I will not have time to go out and spend money, because I'll be spending so much time overthinking what I'm posting to TikTok and Instagram. I think that's really I think, really that's the lesson that we're going to learn.
By the end of January.
If you want to stop spending money, challenge yourself to post thirty videos in thirty days on Instagram. I really think that's going to be our takeaway. So I think we should do it.
We should.
We should revisit our days of when I was in an RV living in your backyard, and we pulled our food together for dinner almost every night. We did quarantee the beginning of the beginning of the pandemic together and actually there's some fond mems there, so that can help us. We can like, what food do you got? What food do I got? Let's make something of it. Oh my gosh, I.
Miss those I was thinking about those days the other day, and I really think that we should come together pool our resources.
Now you have a bomb kitchen.
It's not a dumpster fire anymore, it's the bomb and we should hang out there.
Umster fire anymore. Oh, such a good thing.
Okay, Yeah, looking forward to it.
Bye bye,