Episode four twenty five, how this couple paid off ninety thousand dollars of debt and didn't sacrifice investing.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are sharing an amazing story of Akiva and Mishak's debt payoff journey and coupling that with investing. So if you are looking to pay off debt, you are not like fully bought into paying it off as fast as you can or even all of it because you really want to prioritize investing at the same time, this one's for.
You because we're still doing that debt free summer. We are coming at you with all of these stories, and we really made it a point with each of these interviews that were originally made for YouTube to capture a wide range of people's experiences, and Akiva and Mishek are just that as well, the ability to kind of do both, and that you can find yourself somewhere on the spectrum
of debt payoff. It doesn't have to look one specific way, and they're a great example of yes, paying down debt, making real concerted efforts towards that, while not sacrificing something that's also really important for them, like investing for retirement, because again, if you're doing this as a young person, the time that you have in the market to invest for retirement is the best thing you can possibly have, and it's unfortunately also the timing when you are paying
off debt. So if you can find a way to hold the tension of both, then that's great. And so I'm excited to share this with you because it helps to give permission absolutely.
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So there they've been your best work, just riffing off the top.
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Didn't forget about the friend letter. You're doing something. So if you're loving these debt free stories, we have a lot of them back in our archives. We actually probably took like a year off from doing debt free story like interviews because we just have so many. So if you're looking back in our early years are archives, you're gonna find a lot of like diverse stories. So single moms, couples, single income families, men, women, teachers, teachers, all kinds of
income levels, so high income, lower income, middle income. So we try our best to give all kinds of pictures of what debt payoff can look like, not just really extravagant like I paid off one hundred thousand dollars of
debt in eighteen months, you know, stuff like that. But Akiva and Mishek have a really close story to that, because they've had up ninety thousand dollars of debt in eighteen months while still prioritizing investing, and so there are a lot of things they did increase their income, did not increase their lifestyle, and then all while balancing debt
payoff and retirement goals. So we are very excited for you to listen to these and then also head back into our archives for the rest of our debt free stories and just all the other stories we have from our first five years of the show.
Let's listen in still new to us and put two people on a couple so they are fellow frugal friends listeners, They've got a debt payoff story to share with us. So welcome Akiva and Mishak. We're so happy to have you.
Of course, so excited to be on.
Yes, welcome, So Akiva Mishaq.
Tell us a little bit about you, where you are, your family, Just let us get to know you a little bit.
Yeah, so my name is Amy. How do I not know my name? My name is Mishak, and this is my wife, Akiva. So we got married back in twenty twenty and that's pretty much when we started our debt payoff journey together. So from the time when we got married up until now, I've spent a little bit over two years now, but in about eighteen months or so, we're able to pay off ninety thousand dollars of our student loan debt. And I don't want to give too much away, so I'll stop there in case you have
any questions. But that is the gist of it. Akiva can fill in my gafs where I'm sure I am leaving some.
Yeah, So we live out in the Greater Boston area. That's where we have been since we've gotten married, and we are living the dink life dual income kids in life situation right now. So we're excited we were able to achieve this goal during this life stage.
That's amazing.
And all of the things stacked on top of one another. Marriage in twenty twenty, I mean, need I say more.
Definitely pay off debt within the first couple of years of marriage and living in the Greater Boston area that's not a low cost of living area, no, Okay, So ninety thousand dollars of debt?
Can you break that down for us? Is there anything else that we should know about what made up this debt.
Yeah, so at the time that we got married, we were just looking at student loan debt. So I had a car note that I had paid off shortly before we had gotten married, and we've never had credit card debt or any other type of debt like that, so we were basically just focused on our student loan debt, and combined we had just over one hundred and sixty thousand dollars with the student loan debt. At the beginning
of our journey, we had I've been making payments. We graduated when we graduated undergrad twenty seventeen, grad school twenty eighteen, so we got married in late twenty twenty, and up until that point, we had been making some payments, but not like heavy payments. My payments were really only enough to cover the interest that was accring, so I really wasn't touching the principle and that was sort of intentional at that stage. And then his payments were like twelve dollars.
Like he was, Like.
I was on a government income driven plan, so I was not paying anything at all.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I'm sure they loved that, just seeing the bare minimum less than interest I'm sure the servicer loved that.
Yeah, I love seeing the twelve dollars payments on a month, but the interest in you know, that was racking up quite quickly.
I did the same thing.
I was on an income driven re payment plan, and I think I was for the first few years after college. I was paying like twenty thirty dollars a month and I.
Was totally okay with that. It's totally fine until like one that one day when I realized my debt had grown. It had not decreased over several years. So do you guys remember that day, Like, what was the day that really like kicked it for you where you were like, Okay, it's it's time to pay this off.
I think that for me that there was There wasn't a day for me. Honestly, I was more than content with just working at you know, jobs that qualified, stay in the program, and hopefully at some point getting my loans forgiven. But it's also at the same time, if I had a few extra dollars like putting that towards the debt as well. It was after we got married and we had some life changes, such as purchasing a home that it kid was like hey, we can actually tackle this, like if we look at it from a
strategic perspective. Now we have two incomes together, like we can get it done March sooner. And at that point I was just like, okay, like run the numbers and tell me what we can do. And that's really I would say, what started it all and where we are now?
Yeah, because I'm a financial plan of my profession, so I'm used to kind of like looking at these numbers doing my little calculations. Like even right now as we're doing up for tax season, we're in December filming this, and it's like, okay, already starting to look at like our tax bill coming up. We're like the people who get our taxes done. The first thing I said, like, we're those people. So I've always been that like proactive person, and for me, it was kind of just like a
mental shift of okay, like we're married. Now we have you know, two incomes one household. Hours before it was we were living separately and all that stuff, maintaining our own lives, and so it was just like, this is a good moment to really try to prioritize this, Like we've paid for the wedding, we've got a lot of like our life goals. We bought the house, like we've done all those things, Like it's time for us to
really pay more attention to this debt. And really we just we took the subsection because they know we weren't going to pay off all sixty thousand dollars, so we weren't necessarily trying to become debt free, but we were trying to pay off the portion of our debt that was about above five percent, and that was our highest interest rate debt at that point, which equated to about ninety thousand dollars.
Smart smart, wicked smart. So for you, Mishak, is there anything that you can remember that Akiva said to you that made you kind of willing to say, yeah, let's do this, let's tackle the high interest debt.
Yeah, I had to get hit with the emotional stuff. Or were you like when she hit you with the logic? You were there emotion or logic?
Yeah?
Yeah, Once she told me that, hey, this is possible for us to pay off this amount of debt by just using strategy such as living on one income. So that's what we decided to do. For the listeners out there, living on one income so that the other person's income could go solely towards debt. It was like, okay, can we do this like we'd crunch the numbers, Yeah we can.
We can live comfortably like this, And it was just like, all right, let's go for it, so much so where she probably was just like all right, calm down, because I'm just like, let's get it over with, let's pay it off. And she's like no, no, no, no, no, like we can, you know, use the funds on she's paid off the ninety thousand, put that towards other good
to use, such as retirement and things like that. But my thing was, I guess the emotional attachment of well, hey, if we can get rid of this in three years, four years, let's do that and then let's focus on other things. So yeah, she accuses me grounded in the fact where it's looking at like what makes financial sense, not just what feels good.
Yeah, And originally our timeline was three years. We were amazing and we thought that was super ambitious. Like our goal we got married was we're going to get this ninety thousand done in three years, and we got it done it and it basically exactly half the time. So we were just really excited about, you know, being able to make that progress that quickly.
Oh me, Shaq, you and me, we are the same because I felt this. I felt the same way and my husband, Travis is my voice of reason because I was like all or nothing, I'm going all hard trying to do it, you know, the right way, and.
He's like, well, let's do it the smart way. Like whatever.
Yeah, that we are the same and yeah, and we talked to people all the time too, where they think it's going to take one amount of time and once you get going, it takes like much shorter.
Yeah, oftentimes shorter, which is great.
I mean, don't put that expectation on yourself, but it is great.
Yeah, exactly, just like get it done and then we can move on to the next thing. And she's like no, no, no, no, no, like this makes more sense. So it was definitely more of a come down moment for me, but still really happy with the progress that we've made.
So so back to that concept about how oftentimes we set a time frame goal and then it ends up being less time than that. Do you see any reasons for why it took you way shorter? Almost half the time than what you thought.
Yeah. Absolutely, number one thing was increasing our income. We would not have been able to do it that quickly and we had not increased our income, so that was a major thing. I think when we when we had gotten married, we both had our full time jobs. By the time we ended this, we both he had a new job, new job first of all, increase in pay. I had started a side job. He had a side job.
So we went from like two full time jobs to like two full time jobs and like two time jobs, and we pulled from it all the business at all. We don't even really count that, but like, yeah, it would not have been done without that extra income at all. So definitely key.
Okay, so what did you make when you started and what did you.
Work up to with all those hide households or jobs. What'd you work up to by the end of it. Yeah, so we were combined making about one forty I think, but when we got married about one forty or so. And then, like I said, by the time you know, he switched to a new higher paying job. I had got a raise at my job, my day job, bonus at my job, as well as starting a part time
side hustle. I think got me about ten thousand dollars or so from that all that together, when I think we were closer to like one eighty five I think or so combined when that was all said and done, So, yeah, we were able to really put literal tens of thousands more onto the goal, which really helped to escalate that time frame.
That's amazing because especially when you're living that dink life and seeing some of the increase of income, there can be that well, lifestyle inflation and instead of that, you chose to just shove.
Tens of thousands away.
To debt, which is awesome. And in that debt payoff, just for clarification, was did you pay it with any lump sums like from selling property or dipping into savings a ton? Were there any big payments that you used towards the debt.
No, I'm really glad that we didn't, like consolidate, because all of that was on the table, like how can we do this? Should we do that? I'm really glad. You know, if the student loan thing comes through fingers crossed, like that'll definitely you know, just had a hold to us, you know, and that, Yeah, that helped as well. It wasn't just the increase in pay I'm glad you brought that up. It was also the forbearance that's been happening. With no interest accruing on either of ours, we've really
been able to just pit away on the principle. So now we're running those numbers, it's like, okay, wow, it came down from this to this, And if we get the student loan forgiveness, it's going to be like two years where we'll be debt free, well if student loan debt free, if it goes through. So you know, we're happy either way because we're really happy with our progress.
Of course, it'll be nice to get a little something extra, but if we don't, like still the same plan of just crushing the debt as much as possible.
Well, not a card as we have, crushing it on a more invable pace, but still.
A celebrated Yeah, that's something I want to dive into, because you made a strategic decision to stop at ninety and let the rest of your debt sit for the reasons you just stated, and also for the lower interest rate. So and I'm sure a lot of other people go through that. What goes into making that decision where do you stop and where where do you go? Like what are your thoughts when you're kind of making that decision.
Yeah, it was really just running the numbers, and it was really hard for him to want to really stop at that point. Like I said, it was kind of more emotion, but I'm really a numbers girl, so I'm always going to be looking at what is the most optimal, Like tell me the most matt answer, and I will do that, Like that is just how I operate. And
it's on a certain point. When we got to that point, it was like, Okay, at this point, we are kind of putting in the bare minimum into our retirement accounts, like just to get like like amployer matches, so like I'm play, We're putting like six percent, You're putting like what five percent? And it's just like if we ever want to retire in some form of the near future, right in this lifetime, it's like we have got to
ramp this up as well. So instead of just putting every spare penning, we have to work what is now super low interest rate debt, especially in a four barons period. It's just like, no, we need to seriously look at increasing our investing rate at this point, and so I made the goal that we should try to get to
a fifteen percent all in like investment rate. I mean that's including any employer matching, and so basically that's what we have worked ourselves up to where we're at this point combined, at least up until very recently when I left my job holding the story, we have been putting fifteen percent. That's a combination of our contributions and employer matching COMBB or we're both putting fifteen percent toward retirement.
Excellent. Thanks for describing all of that. So how did you decide how much to put towards the debt and where to slow down too?
Yeah, it was it was that was more of an art, I would say. I think it was more like having conversations running the numbers, but having conversations where it was like, Okay, if we pay seven hundred dollars a month, let's look at how long that takes, and let's just literally we're
just playing with numbers. This is an amazing spreadsheet that runs our entire life that I highly recommend that we've been using to risk could calculate our payoff date, assuming you know we put certain amounts of numbers in and so that's basically what we've been using. So I would play around with the numbers, and I'm saying, okay, if we do one thousand a month, like or how long is it going to take? We do fifteen hundred two thousand a month, if we can even do that right,
like how long will this take? And we kind of just massage the numbers to a point where we could still meet our investing goals and have basically everything else really go toward that goal is still be within a timeframe that felt reasonable to us, so as Mischeck was saying, like it with our current plan, if student loan forgiveness comes through, because that's thirty thousand dollars on the life, but you know, with it that does come through, that
really shaves our timeline down a lot to where we could be out of this in the next two years. So excited.
And I'd like to add, just to make it clear, because we mentioned that we increased our income, we didn't sell anything. I also want to say that we didn't change our lifestyle too much either. That's important as well. We didn't like, oh, we're only eating ramen, not that there's anything wrong with that for folks who do. We didn't make those type of changes. If anything, I would say that we kind of increased are some of our spending.
Travel was something that was really important to me in addition to paying off the debt once she, you know, mentioned that, like that was something that I did not want to give up. So we actually traveled a lot more since we got married. This year, we took like three or four trips, three of them internationally, So like that was something that we did not skimp on. We didn't skip on our lifestyle. It was more of increasing our income and making smart decisions with the money that we've been given.
Oh that's so amazing, and I really appreciate hearing how you both thought this through and implemented something that worked for you, that was logical and really individualized. I think it can work for some to just be given a blueprint or a script for here's exactly how you do it, and they could just put their heads down and do it.
But it brings a whole another level of mindfulness and a critical look and permission for freedom to implement the ways in which you all did of identifying how can we be paying off our high interest debt and think about retirement and still be living our lives because we recently got married and we want to enjoy ourselves too and travel and not eat ram and so just a lot of respect for the ways in which you individualize this debt payoff plan for yourselves.
Yeah, So what would you've said to you when you were starting out this journey, or what would you say to somebody who is starting this journey and is where.
You were at. Yeah, it's really a balancing act. And really I can't give one piece of advice because I think that is such a sensitive subject for so many people and the emotion that goes into that. Like I can easily say I'm just going to do whatever the spreadsheet tells you, but that is not everybody, right, That's not even the vast majority of people, And so I think that really you have to follow your heart in
that case. You're not necessarily going to do things always the optimized way or the perfect way, as long as you're doing and committing to a plan that's going to work for you. I think that's the most important thing, is to make some progress, rather than what I see on the other extreme, which is people just get so overwhelmed by it that they just don't even do anything altogether.
So I think it's kind of having that patience knowing yourself and not comparing your race to anybody Else's got to kind of take it at your own, your own pace.
And I would add on to that is for the individual that might not know anything at all about their debt, get get comfortable with your numbers. Find out what your interest rates are. Get a spreadsheet, a notebook, Google, whatever it is that you're doing to keep track of things.
Write it down so that you're aware of, Okay, I have this debt with this company, this company, this is the interest rate, because that's a good starting ground where even if you do need some help to kind of put point you in the right direction, at least you have the foundation.
That's great advice.
So when you calculated the numbers, did you find that it was better or worse than you expected?
I don't think I quite had expectations. I kind of knew it was like I was. I know it was bad. I was kind of keeping track of it. Honestly, even
as a student. It was kind of like I was watching the mess unfold before me, and I kind of just accepted it at a certain point, like especially when it was like going to grad school, and like, okay, I went into grad school purposeful, no way that I was adding on another twenty thousand, five hundred dollars worth of debt, Like I knew that at that point, I was cognizant of what I was doing and just kind of had to accept that fact and realize that, like
it's okay, Like you're gonna figure it out, right.
So yeah, I do not think that we were like the normal high school students going to college. We went to high school together, and at that time, we were looking at numbers like which school is giving us the most scholarships, the most grands, what makes the most sense. So I think we really knew going in at every phase when we were adding on debt what we were getting into. So it wasn't a huge surprise when we did the numbers and we're at one hundred and sixty thousand,
It's like, okay. It was more of a we know how we got here, how can we get out of this? That's really it was more focused on the end result versus how we got there.
Well, Akiva me Shack, we've come to the point in the program where we want to invite you to celebrate your huge miles.
Seriously, ninety thousand dollars of debt paid off in eighteen months on a starting income of one hundred and forty thousand worked up to one hundred and eighty five thousand over that time. That is a huge accomplishment. How would you like to celebrate it?
Yeah, I think we'll see awkward high five that that there, we goo.
Awkward high five here.
That awkward high put the balloons on the convetty.
Yay for awkward high fives and computer generated competti. Yes, thank you guys so much for sharing your debt free story. We hope that people find inspiration in it, especially for people who want to focus on optimizing the financials, not just checking things off.
Of a checklist.
So thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you for having us really appreciate it.
I love that they were the only couple where both people came on for our Debt Free Stories YouTube series.
Yeah, they were both present, which was really fun.
Yeah, which was so fun to get to get each of their perspectives on it. So it was just really good to hear them like talk about like increasing income, maintaining their lifestyle and really going hard for that short period of time, but not doing it the way that everybody says you have to do it is really doing customizing the journey. That's what I really appreciate, is they're customizing the journey.
Yeah, you mentioned before we got into the interview that they didn't increase their lifestyle, which is one way of looking at maintaining it, but they also didn't decrease it either. They opted for the path of increasing income to accelerate debt payoff. And that's going to work for some, not going to work for all. But again, these pictures of what it can be for various people. I love that
that it doesn't have to mean extreme deprivation. Some of us might choose to adjust our lifestyle, but they didn't and they still became debt free, which is beautiful. And then that piece that we've already mentioned, I just can't get over it. Balancing the debt payoff with the retirement goals.
I think that does require and we even mentioned this in the interview, someone really knowledgeable of their personal finances and knowing what sorts of risks that they can take, the timeline that they wanted to want to take it on the ability to stick to those goals and kind
of not fall off the wagon on either end. So I do feel like this is kind of debt payoff like two point zero that yes, it's possible, but I do think you've got to have a really good understanding of what you're doing, how you're doing it, probably listening into podcasts, reading books, so you can make sure that you're doing it in the most wise way possible. But again, it is possible.
Yeah, I think balancing the two comes down to doing the math, and it'll be you'll have to do a variety of math problems and you can use investment calculators online for this, but figuring out, so how many years do I have before I want to retire? And typically I would plug in sixty, even if you want to retire earlier than that or later than that, I would just start with sixty, uh, and then look at how many years and then what's kind of the what would it look like if you did one hundred dollars a
month for X number of years? What would that get you? Like for three years, what would that get you in three years? And then so you do that and then you plug that into another whatever that number is, into another calendar calculator as you're starting and then you say, okay, I'm starting with this. What does it look like if I invest two hundred or five hundred dollars for X years? And you can do that. Some calculators will have like the option to add X number of dollars per month,
you know, every year. So it just depends on the investment calculator you're looking at, but you can. And actually I did all of this, and I created charts and stuff for the investing course that I made, And that's actually one of our pre order incentives for pre ordering multiple copies of the book, which you will all find out about soon. But if you don't, if you don't want to finagel investment calculators like I did, I just will just like you know, preview. That's one of our
pre order incentives. But so you'll have to play around, Like if I want to pay off debt, obviously I may not be able to put fifteen percent of my income towards investing or twenty pers or whatever you want. So you just have to play around with those percentages to see what's feasible. We do believe in having one primary financial goal that you are working towards at any time. When you're juggling goals, it becomes none of the goals
get met right, it comes becomes overwhelming. But time in the market beats timing the market, and you save a lot of money on saving for retirement by saving early. So even if that's with one hundred dollars a month, you still make out better than waiting down the road to do two, three, five hundred. So we know that
to be true, but so it will. You're aunt will just be dictated by playing around with some calculators to see how quickly do I want to get to one hundred thousand, how quickly do I want to get to X or a million, and then playing around with with timelines as well. So it is a two to oh one strategy for sure. But I think everyone even if you're paying off debt, you can afford to do one hundred dollars a month, like that's just a no brainer. If you're paying off debt. If you're you know, struggling
to afford that, then it's a different story. Or if you're paying off high interest at like credit cards, that's a different story. But most people on their debt pay af journey can afford one hundred dollars a.
Month or do both in whatever way. Yeah, whatever monetary amount. It can be hard to say specific numbers for everybody, sure, because we are all different, But for a Kiva and Meshek story, it did work for them, and it's something to look into for you yourself, what you're comfortable with too, because this is such an emotional thing as well. We talk about this when we hear from people who paid off their mortgages. It's not a bad idea or an
incredibly good idea. It's kind of what do you want to do what makes sense for you given all that you understand about finances and the options before you. I think similarly here how it might pro to be investing and paying off debt. Might prolong the timing that it takes for you to pay down debt, but it might be worth it because you know your income levels aren't going to really allow you to play catch up once the debt is gone. So these are the things you
kind of need to weigh out. You can do both, you don't have to do both, though, so yeah, figure out what works for you. But it did work for a Kiva in meshag and they gave us an awesome update. So this is a Kiva writing and said the biggest update is that we're no longer living the dink lifestyle. We gave birth to our first child, a baby girl,
in December twenty twenty three. Congratulations. I'm technically still on parental leave as I write this message, which by the time I return to work will have total to five months of partially paid which we've had to supplement from our own savings and income. Me Shack took a total of four months off before returning to work. Congratulations meshack I Akiva also took a pay cut at the beginning of twenty twenty three and I moved to another job.
Despite that, we're still on track and making good progress toward paying off the remainder of our student loan debt. Right now, we have less than forty thousand dollars to go and plan to be completely student loan debt free by June twenty twenty six, if not earlier. We've maintained our investment rate of fifteen percent and still prioritized traveling. Our daughter has a passport since she was two months old. And we've already taken our first little trip with her. Yeah,
oh wow, this is quite the update. You are juggling at all, including international I'll travel with your child, with your infant.
I love it. I love that. So this couple was so on fire about increasing their income for this big goal, right in order to have the opportunity to take extended parental leave and be able to move to a lower paying job. Like this is the thing when we say we're against hustle culture, but we're not against hustling. You know, we hustle for a short period of time in the parameters of the season that we're in, so that for the greater season of our lives we can have the
flexibility to do stuff like this. I absolutely love it.
You know what else, I absolutely love.
It's something that is always a hustle, but doesn't feel like.
That hardly a hustle, always a win.
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 William. 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 Jenn and Jill. This is Helen from Oregon. I am calling with my Bill of the week, which is the cheery cashier at our local discount grocery store whose name is Bill. And for the last year or so, I've been making a lot of effort to cook all my meals at home, and it has felt challenging at times, and I don't love going to the grocery store. But Bill the cashier today made my day with his Joel and it made me feel grateful for my food and
my ability to buy the groceries that I need. So, yep, my Bill the Week goes out to Bill at the grocery store.
Thanks guys, Bill amazing at the discount grocery store. Okay, And so we had a whole episode on discount grocery stores, well salvage stores in general, but episode four twenty check it out, find your own Bill, find your Bill at the discount grocery store.
Just reclaiming the name Bill, yes, and making it a good one. And this this is a double bill really discount grocery store and a cashier named Bill, and it excites me. Yeah, so much.
We want to break down the barrier of salvage stores and discount grocery stores. They're not all like gross reject food like you find good You can find good quality food at good life, locally owned discount grocery stores with great local people like Bill Well.
And you know, if you just go enough, your standards could lower too, and you could start to realize that this dented can will work for me, and I can just slice off this punk of molds and we can move along because I am dead now I can afford groceries.
Wow, if you go long enough, your standards will lower. That's new subtitle of the show. I think if you listen long enough, your standards will diminish.
It's that slow burns. They thought we weren't going to tell them, just so.
Sizzle off the mold. But here I am, and I hope that everybody. I hope that we all enjoy having lower standards.
I mean, that's what happened to me with the thrift store. It's what happened to me with the discount grocery store.
Ites.
What's happened to me when I just don't feel like going to the grocery store. I gotta figure out what's working in my pantry.
Four days ago, I just gave everyone permission to be luxury girly and high quality girly.
And but that was your episode, Jenes, is me talking.
Now episode where we are giving everyone permission to lower their standards so you never know what you're gonna get. On the Frugal Friends podcast.
If you all listening, have a bill you want to submit. If it's about a cheery bill working at the discount grocer that you now really enjoy going to. If it's about saving money because you really lowered your standards even better Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for the fidening around shoo pew.
In what ways do you lower your standards? I'm just kidding. In what ways do you ensure that you're enjoying life while still working towards financial freedom? I love I love this one because it the idea of values based spending is not spending less. Because we are so focused on how much we're spending, we don't think about what we are spending on, and values based spending simply switches that narrative to focus on the what versus the how much.
And so when we switch that and we are focusing on the what and we're prioritizing our highest valued what's, then we know we are enjoying life while still working
towards financial freedom, financial security, financial goals, whatever. So we when we shift that narrative from thinking the budget will save my life to values based spending will like allow me to maintain this These lifestyle shifts I need to make in order to improve, I think that is truly the essence of just enjoying life, because it's all when you're changing, you're creating friction, and friction is uncomfortable, but we need to embrace the frictions. So how how do
we live? How do we sustain while while we're going through friction? And it's it's making sure we have our most the things that matter most, highest priority.
So what did that look like for you?
So for me, it was relationships. It is relationships. It is creating relationships feel very authentic and those and I'm finding that every five to seven years I need to create new friendships to fill spaces that I didn't have before. And I don't abandon old relationships, right, but I do need to create new relationships to just be, you know, more of who I am becoming. So while paying off debt, that was a big transition into who I am who
I was becoming. So I needed to find new friendships and so that was that was the biggest marker of enjoying life, was getting those highest priority values of friendship during the I know, I'm still working towards financial freedom. It's a weird thing, like I'm still working towards that.
Yeah, yeah, the question is even now, like what what how did you enjoy life maybe during debt payoff, but then also now towards financial freedom.
Right it is a present tense question. Yeah, so yeah, it's it is for sure for certain, like quality time, love language.
It's so true and yeah yeah, yeah, I'll say the same. But also.
Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure, for sure, for sure, my mom would not Mom would yell at me if I didn't say that. But put off's your real answer, Jill.
Okay, it does take some money to have some enjoyable experiences, Like, yes, the most valuable things in my life are the four FS, But if we're talking pure enjoyment, the things that can just feel really celebratory and fun to me, a lot of it does require money, and so for me, it's the sinking funds, Like when I was in debt payoff, and now knowing that I have a certain money, certain amount of money set aside that I am contributing to at varying degrees for a specific purpose, helps me to
be able to utilize that, lean into it, and take advantage of spending money on what otherwise might be perceived as a luxury I don't deserve, but I've intentionally worked towards this. I can have this even though I've got these other financial priorities. So when we were in debt payoff, any amount of money that we could get our hands on definitely went towards debt. But that was really prohibitive in being able to go out for a nice dinner
or just do a little weekend trip. And I started to realize, with how long our debt payoff took, we need that we still need to be able to do some of these things. We've gotten creative. Yes, we're hanging out with friends, but goodness, we need to be able to take a break and spend some money on something other than debt payoff. So in that time, any change like extra change that I would have went towards travel or like vacation or a.
Nice genner how found in your pocket.
So we were doing a lot of cash at that time, so it was just any time a bill was broken, I would keep the full dollars, but the change would go into a pile of money. And anytime that did I talk to you about stripping wire. In one of the recent episodes about like side hustles, I remember that I used to Eric was an electrician, and so he would bring back these pieces of wire that were not not long enough for some of the runs he was doing in these different homes, but the copper inside them
was worth money. So I would strip like the plastic sheathing off of the copper wire, and then once we had a whole big bin of it, we would take it to the salvage yard and get money for it. That money also went towards vacation or what I can't vacation makes it sound like it ended up being a lot of money. It never was, right like we would get to a point where it was just like a couple hundred dollars, but we're all talking. This was ten
years ago. That absolutely could pay for a weekend away or a couple of nice dinners out that really helped to sustain me during that time. And now I've got a couple of different sinking funds that I have a goal of what it would mean when it's fully funded. Once it's fully funded, I don't touch it. I don't keep contributing to it, but I'm able to pull out of it whenever I want to use it for that purpose.
And if you just heard a thud, that was one of the sound panels in the studio falling off the wall. I don't know.
It.
Really wanted to emphasize my point.
And that's the end. That's when the sound panel falls off the wall. That's the end. Thank you so much for listening.
And things for your kind reviews like this one from but a Crut, But a Crut Okay, they said, love this five stars. It's a fun podcast that makes it easier to think about money and to make better decisions around it. Two intelligent voices talking about money in a non judgmental and fun way. Also, you improv my English with new words and expressions every episode.
Oh imp, she that is spelled correctly, Jill.
Say in a row. That's Jill I'm not improving your English with that one. The word is improved and I read an improv and here we go.
This episode is truly over. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to leave a rating and review. With some words that Jill may have trouble reading, we will for sure share them and we will laugh at ourselves. And things just falling off the wall. This is a this is a full blown audio studio, but we can't have nice things. We've lowered our standards so that we're okay with what we have.
Things may fall off the wall, and we don't have stands for our microphones, and you know what, that's a choice, though you don't care because we are helping to lower your standards.
By Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. Still the only thing I wanted to say when you were talking about stripping wires, that that is the only thing you stripped during your debt payoff. I wanted to make It was like physically painful for me to not say that.
But here you are saying it's still in the after show, still recorded.
It's still still probably the children saying I'm saying that is the only thing.
It's the only thing that you stripped, I know, because only fans didn't exist.
Yeah, okay, I didn't go that far. Okay I didn't. I didn't reference anything I eluded. Yeah, okay, let's let's let's go put the sound panel back up.