Episode three eighty seven, ETFs and index funds and bears.
Oh my, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Ha woo, I sang before we officially recorded, so that was in my head. Yeah, I'm sorry I threw you off. Welcome to the Frugal Friends Podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are not singers. We are podcasters who are just passionate about helping you understand how to spend money with intention and then where to put that money that's going to make the biggest impact for you. And that's the focus of today's episode.
Not just saving but investment, which is usually one of the biggest areas of mystery for many of us. Once we kind of get these other things down, we've got a spending plan, we're paying down debt, and then there's this whole looming ets and index funs and bears oh my.
Yes, especially the bears. The bears are a big one, right. So today we are expanding on our episode on the roth Ira challenge. You have about a month left to open and invest in your roth theray for twenty twenty three. There are so few times that you get a grace period from the government, and this is one of them, and so we want you to take full advantage if you have not maxed out your roth IRA for twenty
twenty three. We also have the episode on and we re aired investing or saving your first one hundred K. So this is just a continuation on that, and we're not We're going to try to demystify some of these terms and make them accessible to you. Yeah, we're going to try to try to ourselves.
Yeah, okay, I am Actually this is a little bit side note, but worth it. Started to read Psychology of Money because you've been recommending it to me for approximately six years, and in either the intro or the first chapter, he's talking about how new, relatively investing even is in the stock market, and I think it really helped to normalize why there can be so much confusion around it, mystery around it, and in part because it just hasn't
existed for that long. Even your best investors are still baby in their understanding because this whole system is relatively in its infancy stage and still developing. Like roth iras we're not a thing until nineteen ninety eight. Yes, nineteen ninety eight, we were already born, hate to break it to you, We were nine well into our yes, yes, we were nine nine years old before so this all has been happening within our lifetime. So just to kind of help lay the framework, I think that was a
helpful thing that that book pointed out. And also, and we'll talk about this. You know, ETFs are a relatively new thing. We are unfamiliar with it, but that doesn't mean that we have to feel bad about that. We're in part unfamiliar because it's it's new, yeah, in the grand scheme of.
Things, and it is good to be wary of new things, especially in the financial industry. But these are some of the things that have stood the test of time, and with technology as it is, it doesn't take a long time for something to stand the test of time. So these are things that we trust, we you, and we are going to talk about them today as they pertain to your rath are specifically, we're not here to tell you if a rath ira is the best move for you.
We're just here if you've already decided that the roth ira is a good move for you and you've just been putting it off, or maybe haven't invested as much as you can. Maybe you're getting a tax refund this month and you're looking for a really good place to put that money. Then this that's what we're trying to do here. But first, this episode is brought to you
by International Women's Day. One time, I made a joke to a guy that I celebrate Exclusive Women's Day on May ninth, which is my birthday, and he sent me flowers on International Women's Day because he misunderstood me. So, if anyone has ever bought you flowers, you should get a high yield savings account, even if it's you who bought flowers for you. Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash c is our current recommendation for a highyield savings account, but it is it's good to have some savings.
I have so many questions. Yeah, love love cit love high yield savings accounts. What when did this happen? Was this recent?
No?
Was this like a dating experience or was this a colleague who was just like trying to be It.
Was an ex boyfriend who did not want to be an ex and maybe that's why I made the joke like the joke and bad taste, but that yeah, that's that's what that happened. Anyways. A couple good episodes to queue up after this would be episode three sixty one,
what are mutual funds and what do they cost? We briefly touch on ETFs and index funds in there because they are relevant, and then episode two forty one Divesting Banking sustain We talk a lot about sustainable banking, credit unions and high field savings accounts, So those are some of the things that are helpful to know in the
realm of managing your money. Again, we're not a podcast that We're not a general personal finance podcast where we talk about all of the different things about investing and managing money. We try to specifically focusing focus in on conscious consumption and intentional spending. But we don't consume consciously
and spend intentionally for no reason. There are reasons behind why we do it, and we can pursue more of those when we are managing our money efficiently, and investing is one of the most efficient ways to manage your money, and this is what goes into those investment accounts are the index funds and the ETFs.
So this first article is from nerd Wallet and it's titled index funds versus ETFs? What's the difference? So ETF stands for exchange traded funds, and index funds just is their index funds. And really all of these articles are saying there's a lot more similarities than there are differences, but there are some differences to be taking into consideration when when thinking through what's the best for me when
it comes to investing. I will also say a lot of these articles will talk about index funds and ETFs in the sense of just regular day to day investing, and so we are specifically bringing the lens of investing for retirement. And I did find a sidebar helpful article from Investipedia that am putting into the outline. We're not going to go through this one, but I do think it's worth talking that, yes, you could just us invest in ETF, invest in an index one and it not
be a part of your retirement plan. But for us, when we talk about investing on this podcast, we're primarily talking about investing for retirement. So what you can include in your portfolio four your roth IRA for your four oh one K And Investipedia did a helpful article on is an ETF a good fit for the four oh one K plan? And I will say my biggest takeaway from that article is them saying there's just a lack of familiarity with ETFs, that they can be a really
good option. They're becoming more and more a part of people's four o one K portfolios, but people may not choose it because they're relatively new. They can introduce some complexities in record keeping that may require some different operational processes for four oh one K plans that I imagine we can ebb and flow with, But that the popularity of ETFs is growing and will probably continue to grow,
so it's worth considering. It's worth becoming knowledgeable now on this possibility, because we don't want to choose something just because it's familiar if there is other options out there that could be beneficial to us. So I just wanted to state that at the onset, but then to be able to talk about index funds are a bit more familiar to us than ETFs are. But let's talk about the differences. So the first one listed in this nerd wallet article is that the minimum investment required for ETFs
and index funds are different. ETFs will have a lower minimum investment than an index fund. Most of the time, it just takes investing the in an ETF the amount needed to buy a single share, and sometimes brokers will even offer fractional shares, so that's going to be less than an index fund. Both are still relatively quote unquote affordable to your average investor, but ETFs might even come at a lower minimum investment required.
Yeah, I in the past have always talked about index because they are the thing I know the most about. But as I have grown, I've talked to more people, I've done more research. I've realized that because ETFs and index funds are so similar, the differences are very We'll talk about the differences, but they're they're so small, and the ETFs, even with the differences, may even have the edge.
But the minimum investment required, I tell you, is the number one reason that I'm starting to recommend ETFs to people who are getting started. And obviously we're not financial advisors. We can't tell you what to invest in. This is all just from our experiences and our opinions. So it is really this minimum investment required. And so yes, Fidelity does offer some index funds with a with a low barrier to entry to get in. I think it's like ten dollars, but with ETFs you can start with one
dollar and you can do it at any brokerage. Is It is really a game changer, I think, And so that's why we're doing more research on them and at you know, telling other people to do more research on them,
because the barrier to entry is a lot lower. And I think when you're talking to your friends about investing, which you absolutely should, I think we should all be talking to our friends, our family, strangers, we should all be talking about investing to each other whatever we know, not feeling scared like we can't talk about it because we're not you know, professionals. This is accessible to everyone. It becomes more accessible the more people talk about it.
And so even if you have index funds, talking to people who may not have started investing yet and knowing that difference will make it easier for other people to get started investing.
Yeah.
So the next difference is capital gains tax. So this is again this is something more I think relevant to regular investing, but outside of outside of or outside of retirement. But ETFs are more tax efficient than index funds by nature, and so this is a very like it's it's a very minor difference, but again it gives them a little
bit of an edge over index funds. So like when you sell an ETF, you're typically selling it to another investor who's buying it, and the cash is coming directly from them, So capital gains taxes on that sale are yours and yours alone. To pay to get cash out of an index fund, you technically must redeem it from the fund manager, who will then have to sell securities and generate cash to pay you. So there's a middleman. It's it doesn't mean that the fund is actively managed.
It means there's just a middleman selling the index fund like to when in the buying and the selling of it. So when this sale is done for a gain, the net gains are passed onto every investor because remember an index fund is a basket that it's a mutual fund. An ETF is not a mutual fund, but an index fund is, and so everybody's mutually funding this index fund.
So those capital gains taxes are passed on to every investor that have shares in the fund, meaning you could owe capital gains taxes without ever selling a single share. This happens less frequently with index funds with actively managed mutual funds, So that's kind of where there's a little edge on actively managed funds. But I think the fees on actively managed funds definitely negate the tax savings. But from a tax perspective, etf generally have the upper hand
over index funds. We are you know, most people I would think that buy index funds are buy and hold. So really the only selling you would have to worry about is, you know, people in retirement. That's theoretically obviously that's not reality, but so it's a minor edge, still an edge though.
Yeah. The third kind of difference between an ETF and an index fund is the cost of owning them. That said, both can be very inexpensive from an expense ratio perspective, So the article describes that you can easily find funds that cost less than point zero five percent of your investment per year. But another thing to consider is looking
for trade and commission. So if the broker does charge a commission for trades, you'll pay a flat fee every time you buy or sell an ETF, which could then lead to eating into some of your returns if you are trading regularly, and I think that that's a big
if because ETFs. One of the things I was reading about is that a big difference between them and index funds is ETFs allow intra day trading, meaning it's regularly being assessed for value and can be traded throughout the day, whereas index funds can are only assessed at the end of the day. So that can lead to higher risk, higher reward with an ETF. Of course some downsides to that as well, but that's a big if. If you're trading it regularly, then you could have some of those
trading commissions eat into your cost. But if you're just putting it part of your retirement investment portfolio, then you might not see too many high fees happening there. Yeah. They also describe that when buying ETFs, you'll also incur a cost called and I gotta really enunciate this one, the bid ask spread, And I do enjoy reading that.
We are nine it is all the way back to when the bid ass Yes.
Uh, so you won't see this when purchasing index funds, and it is usually very small. Their bid ass spread is pretty small, but if you're buying high volume broad market ETFs, it's gonna be a cost to consider.
Yeah, so you've got your tax efficiency over on your atfs, but then you've got your no no bid ask spread over an index funds. These are very minor differences which makes them so similar. So I'll just cover some of the similarities that nerd wallet comes up with, and these are they're they're very similar, right, So diversification, you can get identical funds in index or ETF so you can get the SMP five hundred, you can get target date funds now as ETFs. You can get a total stock
market or a total bond fund. Both are available in ETFs and index funds. Seconds that they're both very low costs, they're passively managed, and so the investments go with the index they're named after. So SMP five hundred is just a fund made up of all of the stocks in the SMP five hundred, all the companies in the SMP five hundred at the ratio that they make up the five hundred, the biggest five hundred. So again they're going to be low costs as compared to an actively managed fund.
And then three is strong long term returns, and this is what we love. We're not day traders. We don't talk about trading options four X. We're not here to get rich quick off the stock market. We're here to get rich slow, and we do want to get rich, so that's why we buy and hold. We know that time in the market is more important than timing the market, and both index funds and ETFs have a long term
track record. So this article is saying the annual total returns of the S and P five hundred has averaged around ten percent over the last ninety years. And since ETFs and index funds you can buy an S and P five hundred in each, that's kind of the return that you're going to see there. So actively managed funds they may perform better in the short term because fund
managers make investment decisions based on current market conditions. But the improbability that those fund managers will make consistent market beating decisions over a long period of time, the studies show that it just can't be maintained. So it's just like us in our lives, you know, like we're gonna win a lot, but we're gonna lose just as much, you know, no matter how hard we try. No matter how good we are at what we do, you just can't nail it every time.
And dodgeball is always going to hit you in the face on the playground.
Sometimes at least one hopefully not every.
Time for me, at least on for you. Stop. You know, I wasn't even playing. I'd be over on the slot dodgeball in the face.
But yeah, So that's kind of the similarities and the difference is mainly to show you that the differences are very negligible. They are almost identical.
And I will add, both ets and index funds bundle together many individual investments such as stocks or bonds into a single investment. So that's the diversification piece that you were talking about, Jen when that is something that's important, something that we recommend both do that. Okay, this next article is bringing in the bears.
Oh my, so this is not this is not exactly what I had in mind when I named the the episode, but I am so glad that Goldie brought it in because we're we're not in a bear market right now, and that's fine.
But.
Very recently you yourself have experienced a bear market, whether you everyone, everybody listening to this sorry.
You just like emphasize you yourself, and I'm like, okay about me, Jill.
Everybody listening to this has experienced a bear market in your lifetime, whether you knew it or not, and so these are part of normal market cycles. And so we'll just touch us midgeon about bear markets and it can be and so these are what scare people away from investing, right That's why people don't. You don't want to put all your chips in the stock market basket because of
this right here, the bears. And so we just want to maybe take away a little bit of the fear associated with it by giving you a few facts.
I mean, this was my experience before we did our roth Ira Challenge episode and we did talk about this, so I would definitely recommend going back to that episode. But I have essentially only been investing in a bear market. Now I'm starting to see some returns, but you know, I'd been investing for three years and I'm like, Jen, it's not doing what I want to see it do. This really kind of sucks. What am I going to tell the people who listen to this podcast episode? Because
it's not going that great for me? And so this is what we're talking about. These are the ebbs and flows of the stock market and what to do if that is the case, and the climate when you are beginning to invest, but also what to do how to maintain yourself in the midst of when we will inevitably
hit that point again. And so the first point that they're making about this is what you just said, Jen, don't go all in all at once, don't put all your money into one singular place probably ever, but especially when you're in a bear market, when the stock market isn't doing phenomenally. And the problem with a bear market is that you can never tell whether you're at the beginning, middle, or end of it. You don't, none of us can
tell the future. But just being aware of diversification forever and always.
Yeah, And that's why we love ETFs and index funds is because they do offer that diversification. You can get a total stock market ETF or index fund and you're invested in literally every company that trades in the New York Stock Exchange. Then you can get an international stock market fund that includes all the international companies that trade on the Stock exchange. That's like Samsung, Toyota, a bunch of companies that you use on a regular basis are
not American companies. And then you can get a bond fund, which is just you know, kind of being a debt collector. So there are a lot of options for diversifications that are made really easy when you choose these these funds, and so that kind of can protect you from going
all in. But then again, you don't want to go all in all at once either, So you need to keep an emergency fund not invested, keep it in a high old savings account where you're not going to be worried about if the market's down and you need your emergency fund, you're not gonna be worried about losing money. So that's a really important thing. You need to have
your emergency fund in a highield savings account invested. So the next part is build a portfolio small chunks at a time, and so this is something that ETFs.
Really allow you to do.
If you only have maybe fifty dollars a month to invest, it allows you to build a more diversified portfolio in smaller chunks. So if even when you're worried about being in a bear market, when the stock market's going down, a lot of people will say that it's on sale, right, So that is something you'll hear a lot, especially in the financial independence community. It's really fun to say when stocks are going up or when stocks start.
To go down.
But the average bear market is about fourteen months, so it's over a year, and we definitely experienced that in twenty twenty two. We experience just you know, a whole year of really poor returns and that's the and that's the average fourteen months. So it's fun to say that, but in reality, our behavior can can make us feel differently. So it's still important to take advantage of that quote unquote sale when times are rough and when times are good like they are right now, to be putting even
like more in. Knowing that my natural propensity is going when we are when we do again enter into another bear market, which is inevitable, I'm going to want to put lesson. And so maybe you're fearless, maybe you go all in in the bear market, and that's great. If you are not fearless, and you know, I want to put a little lesson now when we're in good times like right now, we want to be putting more in.
And that's another reason we're doing this, brother, they challenge right now in twenty twenty four because the FED is about to lower interest rates, and what that's going to translate to is it's gonna I can't speculate on the the economy or the stock marker. I don't feel comfortable to actually recording myself doing that.
Yeah, I'm gonna get in over my head.
But it has the potential to get some really great returns this year if you're doing if you're doing your investing in the first half of the year. So that is my prediction. I cannot say that. I'm not even a professional stock trader, so I'm not even marry half the time, you know, but that.
Is jen you can send all your emails to please do.
So that's kind of what we're saying is we're in a it's in a good time right now. So if you're the kind of person that's going to want to invest lesson a bear market, then take advantage of the good sunny times.
Finances are also emotional. We can't, yeah, just know things and act on it. There are so many other factors that come into play. So but equipping ourselves with some of this knowledge that can help temper. Some of the emotional decisions that aren't going to be great for us
is excellent. So they're talking about when in a bear market, focusing on positioning your portfolio for the next bull market, and when you're in a bull market, take advantage of the fact that things are going well, but be aware that there will be dips again and just kind of sustaining through through that storm.
Even in bull markets, there are corrections that where the stock market will go down, you know, five to ten percent, it's not a bear because these are actually the people don't just say, oh, we're in a bear market because the stocks went down. They have to go down a certain percentage for it to be considered that. But even in the middle, you know, we'll have some small corrections on the way up, and you have to anticipate that and know that it's part of the journey. It's part
of that ten percent. Realize like annual the gains over ninety years, the S and P five hundred, it takes into account all of the bull and bear and corrections we've had over ninety years, Like that's part of it.
Yeah, And then lastly they are mentioning casting a wide net to catch potential winners. That's just another way of talking about diversification and just driving home this idea that when you buy a stock, you own the risk and the growth potential of that business. So if the business performs well, your shares rise and value. If not, your
share values sink. So they're talking about casting that wide net of diversification, and they've described that if you diversify your portfolio with just as few as twelve stocks, that's that's great. But you can also do that through an et Yeah, through an index fund. You don't have to be picking and choosing twelve different stocks. You can have diversification through some of the things we've already talked about.
Yeah, And the great thing about ETFs and index funds is if there is a sector that you love, like if you're in healthcare and you're passionate about healthcare or you're passionate about sustainability, you can choose ETFs and index funds that are sector specific. And that's really a preference thing, Like there's no strategy you know that I'm going to recommend to do that. That's really all playing around and
whatever you're passionate about. But you have the power to leave out entire industries when you're investing uh and still get a broad range of investments using ETFs and index funds. They are so they have been so customized and so like really well done at this point, Like all you know, the brokerages are doing really great things with how they're designing these funds and how they're almost customizing them that there really is almost something for almost everyone. That's cool at this point.
Yeah, do you have any final words for our friends on? Okay, I might want to look into some ETFs in my retirement portfolio. Where to begin?
So, I would say going to your brokerage, your Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, whatever, and you know, kind of figuring out how to buy them.
Use YouTube.
There will be walkthroughs probably on your specific brokerage on how to purchase funds. Because I think the most important thing is when you put money into your wrath IRA, you then have to invest it.
Right we all know that now, Yeah, we can.
Always you can always exchange it for something else later. Right, You're not locked in when you an S and P five hundred ETF, that does not mean you own it forever. You can exchange it for whatever you want whenever you want, So the important part is to get in there and get it invested. Don't just leave it in the Essentially it's a high old savings account that's in the roth area where your money just sits until you invest it.
So I'd say that's the most important thing is to get it into the roth IRA and get it invested before the deadline at least. I mean, honestly, you just have to get the money into that, you know, the special high old savings account before the deadline. But don't leave it there. Get it invested.
Yeah, you know what, we also don't want to leave and we want to invest.
We don't want to just sit there with this. We really want to utilize it. We want to invest it.
The Bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton. This is the bill of the week.
Hi, Jen and Jail, This is Jodie and I have a Bill of the week. We had about fifteen hundred dollars left in our FSA for twenty twenty three and wanted to make sure to take advantage of that, and so we decided to take the money from our savings account and pay the balance of our daughter's Orthodonis bill. So we did that and that bill was paid. Then we took that receipt and submitted to our FSA and that money was back in our savings account like three
days later. And then on top of that, we took the amount that we were paying every month, which was one hundred and forty five dollars, and since we don't have that bill anymore, we decided to just send that one hundred and forty five dollars straight into an IRA since we are used to paying that every month. So there is my bill of the week. Thanks Jen and Jil for everything you do.
We did not listen to this before we put this in the episode. Thank you Jody for basically just saying everything we've been saying.
Jody, you're doing the Chad inch.
Yeah, and you found.
Ways with it with money you already were allocating somewhere then getting smart with that how to reallocate it towards other goals. Just well done. I'm so glad that your daughter's orthodonic bill is paid off and now you're contributing more to your IRA. That's amazing.
Yes, And people might ask, like, what's the benefit of using because you do put that money into the the FSA. It's it's really you save money on taxes when you do it that way, when you just funnel it to the FSA and then back. But fsays are use it or lose it. Hsas can actually like grow with you.
So if they had had an HSA, they could have just saved the receipt from that and then let the money grow in the HSA triple tax advantage, so they say, I won't get into it, but and then use that money later, use that receipt later on when you take money out of the HSA after it's grown, then you just submit the receipt then and you get to benefit from all the growth of that money gets compound interest.
I mean it sounds, Jody like you timed this all well. Yeah, I think it's worth highlighting some of those differences for anybody else listening in.
Nobody asked, but I just thought i'd tell it. But yes, Jody, that's so great.
Use it say hsa, oh my, that's a whole other episode.
Okay, it'll it'll come later in the year. But yeah, using money that you already had allocated somewhere instead of using it just you know, giving your giving yourself the opportunity to increase your lifestyle if you don't need it, putting it towards your your IRA.
It is fantastic, beautiful, well done. I'm celebrating. If you all listening, want to submit your bill about increasing your contributions to your retirement investment accounts or you're just Bill. You didn't even know how you found yourself here, but we're calling you out. You hear your name. Visit FRUL friends podcast dot com, slash Bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for the round, all right.
In the today's Vulnerability around Jill, can you share an unreasonable fear you have about bears?
I love this question. It's so vague. It's like our Bill of the Weeks. I think I do have a lot of fears about bears, although I do love them. I'd love to see one out in the wild, although not really. I got so many bear stories. Do you I'm realizing I do, as you're asking me, this bear question, bear story. Okay, well it's a bear adjacent story with you.
So I was in.
Alaska one time. Oh yeah, and we were walking. We were on a walk, me and three other people and a dog, and it was just just before hibernation, so summer was just coming to a close. It was shoulder season pointing to my shoulder, shoulder season, so there were still bears out and about but getting the last bit sleepy.
They were sleeping.
Maybe, So we're all walking. One of the people who's walking with us lives there, so she kind of knows what's up. But as we walk, we hear the deepest, most guttural growl I have ever heard in my life. And if you would have told asked me previously, Jill, do you want to see a bear out in the wild, I would have said yes. I'll still say yes to this day. But from the comfort of my car. Actually we're out in the wild, even though we got four
people and a dog with us. Immediate fear just crippling and radiating through my body, like it sounded so close, and this growl was so menacing, and we all stopped. Even the girl who's from Alaska was like, oh, what is going on. We were all in fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode, and then it quickly registers for the woman who's from Alaska. Oh no, that's not a bear, that's a bird. There's a bird in Alaska who growls like a bear. And how unfair is that?
How unfair?
Like not unfair for the bird, it's unfair for everybody. Yeah, probably including the bird in some ways. But that's how you're going to play with me and make a bird sound like a bear. It's unrealistic, one of God's many But it really did kind of highlight to me how I would respond if there was a bear. But then I do often think, and so when we were there, you know, they talk about how you want to respond to different bears, like black there's a whole poem about it.
But like you want to like stand your ground with black bears, you want to play dead with brown bears. You want to just like give up on life with polar bears, like there's no telling, like that's it, you're done ended. But so brown bears, like the grizzly bears, are the ones who will drag you back to their layer, leave you there, and then come back later. So they're a little bit more smart about it. But if you
play dead, you have chances of still living. So there are stories of people who will get dragged drug off by grizzly bears. They play dead somehow, some way and then are able to run off when the grizzly walks away. That's that is one of my most terrifying Like someday I'm gonna have to play dead in the midst of a grizzly bear. I don't think I could. I just I don't fear. I think I couldn't play to actually play dead. Wow, what about you?
Oh wow.
I have an unreasonable fear of falling from high places, so I won't stand near the edge of anything, even with adequately high railings. I just have a feel I have a fear of going over. And so when we see the bears at the zoo, I don't go near any edges because I have an unreasonable fear of falling over into the bear pit.
Yeah, that's like for me intrusive thoughts. Not that I'm gonna fall over, but I'm going to jump in, Like there's gonna be something where my body compels me to jump in, and I'm not going to be able to stop myself, like I have those intrusive thoughts too. Yeah, yeah, I don't voluntary and some you know, my fears are birds that are bears, and.
Yours you're just playing dead. No, your true fear we unpacked that, and your true fear is the fear of being able to play dead?
Will I be able to play dead?
So?
The bird, though, is called a Bohemian wax wing, and it's aka the grizzly bear Bohemian waxwing. I would love to be a bohemian wax wing. Heavy International Women's Day. We just out here scaring people but still being birds.
Yeah, well, thanks for listening to that tangent.
Wow, that's a good lightning round. Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you're still here, although if you're not still here, that's okay too. Okay, I got what you need. We love being here with you, and we also love reading your reviews, especially when they're really kind, like this one that came from kJ Salmon. Oh, yeah, Samon, that's perfect. It's very Alaskan themed, on brand perfect, lots of helpful nuggets.
It's another type of food I like. I really enjoy listening to Jen and Jil's idea on budgeting, saving, and spending. Not everything pertains to my financial life, but I find it interesting all the same. I also like that they cover a wide range of topics, from buying a home to a car to starting your own freelance business. It
ends there. You're right, we are all over the boys, and we will talk about Bohemian wax wing aka Grizzly Bear parts and you just never know what you're gonna get, but hopefully some helpful investing entertainment.
Yes, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to leave a rating and review. If you've already rated and reviewed on Apple, head over to Spotify and leave us a rating. It helps potential new listeners know that the show is good. According to some people.
The show is okay, yes, and worth it.
Yes, it's five out of ten stars, five out a ten.
See you next time.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Huh.
I don't think that's what people expected to get from us.
I don't think it's what I expected to get from us.
Do you want to know what I almost said as my first Lightning Round? Answer is Teddy Bears with cameras in them.
Oh yeah, that is a legit fear. But when you're watching what is it Law and Order SVU or I think one of the episodes was they caught a perp because they had Teddy Bear with camera footage.
Yeah, I guess I only have to be afraid of that, like if I'm a nanny doing shady stuff, but which you probably would be sometimes when I'm in other people's houses and like, where's the camera? Where's better be on my best behavior?
You just if it's in the bathroom, you just put it face down. That's it, right, And then just the rest is, don't do illegal stuff on camera? Yeah, kind of like these people on TikTok and Instagram doing e
lee and then recording them. Like I heard about this guy who was living in a storage unit and saving a lot of money and he was just recording and went viral his storage unit set up for living who and then he got evicted from the storage unit because it's against the terms of services on the storage unit. Sounds right, Yeah, And you were doing like you were saving so much money, you were doing so many.
If you decided to record yourself, right and.
Then and then you put the illegal stuff on the Internet, and that was your second mistake. The world has grace for first mistakes, but not for a second the Internet. I mean, not the world, the Internet.
Yeah, I mean living in a storage units. That's an option I can't.
Yeah.
I think the moral of the story that I was learning from the Internet was that wait to post the illegal things that you're recording until after you're no longer doing them.
That that'll be like us, all of the extra recordings that we have that we never released, all of our mic checks that are a little bit salacious at times.
Where I sing, when this whole thing goes to crap implodes, as it inevitably will, when when the Frugal Friends hits its own extended bear market.
When we become the vander Pump.
Rules we are canceled.
We're just going to release it all.
Yeah, then won't give you even more reason to cancel us.