Episode four seventy six, How lack of purpose drives your impulse spending with Jordan Grummitt.
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.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking with our really good friend Jordan. He's known as Doc G in some circles, but he is such a good friend and amazing person, and he's got a new book out called The Purpose Code, and so we're talking about how lack of purpose it plays into our impulse spending.
I love his perspective on things, and we were even able to chat with him a little bit more after the podcast because his insight has been helpful to me on multiple occasions. Just personally, I think there's so much alignment in our messaging, but different words and different ways of getting at it and describing it. So if you've needed some fresh perspective, this is definitely a good one.
That's the great thing about language, I think, especially even in personal finance, but outside of it as well, A lot of it is overused and comes with a connotation that either gets lost in the overuse or misunderstood. And so I think Jordan gives kind of new perspective on old language and refreshes the need and importance for it.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Today. That's right. There's no time like the present to seize opportunities, say yes and lean into spontaneity, like coming to our live and in person event at Tumbolow Books in Saint Petersburg, Florida tonight at seven pm. We're talking about our book by What You Love without going broke, hanging out with people, doing a book signing. We still don't even know what we're going to write in the books when we sign it,
but we'll come up with something. Let us know what you want us to write in your book. If you are anywhere near the Tampa Bay area, join us tonight at Tumblow Books in Saint Pete again at seven pm. We're going to be doing a Q and A and a signing. It's going to be lots of fun. It feels so exciting for us to get to be live and in person and talking about these things and seeing faces and just hanging out and celebrating, So if you're around you don't have any plans, come join us tonight today,
seize the opportunity. And also the book is available, so definitely order that thing because it would help us. Thanks. Also, when you hear us reference that this event might be happening tomorrow, January fifteenth, that is in accurate information. We originally scheduled it for the fifteenth, but instead it is now January fourteenth at Tumblow Books in Saint Petersburg, Florida at seven pm. So we probably mention it again at
the end of this episode. Just disregard the fifteenth, replace it with the fourteenth, assume that instead of tomorrow, it's today because today's the best. We love it for to be today instead of tomorrow. So January fourteenth is the correct date. And so sorry for any other mistakes throughout this episode that you pick up on, but we just don't have the time to edit all of the rest of the audio to make it accurate. So take this nuggative truth with you through the rest of the episode.
It's happening on the fourteenth. Thanks.
All right, so we definitely will link to the last time Jordan was on the show in the show notes. But if you want some other similar episodes, we've got episode four fifty four how to Say No to impulse purchases, and then episode three seventy eight psychological Reasons why we impulse by Those are really good. You can either search for those titles in your podcast player with the phrase Frugal Friends, or if you're on our website, you can
search the episode number. And Jordan, what we love about him is he is a hospice doctor who's pursued financial independence and decided that he didn't love everything about medicine. The only thing he loved about medicine was his hospice work, and so this has impacted him so profoundly. He's written two books as a result. He hosts the Earn and invest podcast, which we talk about spending and he talks about earning and investing. So they're definitely two shows that
you should have in your lineup. But his perspective on purpose with like big p Purpose and Little Pea Purpose was such a refreshing take on the subject and I can't wait for you to hear it.
Let's do it, Jordan.
Welcome back to the Frugal Friends podcast.
Jen and Jill I am so happy to be here and have a really great conversation.
We're so thrilled to have you. It's always such a good time talking with you. You've got such a plethora of knowledge and experiences that blend together to be so helpful for our whole personhood, certainly our finances. So we're excited to explore that blend today with you.
Yes.
Yeah.
People always laugh at me when I say I do personal finance and I'm a hospice doctor. Those two things most people don't feel they fit together, but in a lot of ways, I think they.
Do, Yeah, which I love. And I loved how you talked about it in your first book, Taking Stock, which was like just an education and we'll link the we talked with Jordan prior to his first book. We'll link that episode. But it did it I having my my father died when I was sixteen, and we had hospice in there, and it brought up like all of the feelings and the thoughts and the considerations that you talked about and really set me on the course to where
I am now. And so now I'm so excited to see how you've expanded on that in your new book. That just happens to launch on the same day as ours. It's a good day.
I tell you, it's a good day for bestsellers January for.
Best I hope, I hope.
Yeah.
The purpose code. So let's start start out with purpose. How do you define purpose? And how important is it? Especially like with our money, because we talked so much. I mean, you know, we talk about money. Let's bring it back to the money.
So it's interesting. Most people think purpose is this really big, huge thing and either we find it and live a wonderful, special life or we don't find it and everything is lost. So we make it really high stakes. And part of the reason we make it so high stakes is colloquially purpose people think is the why of doing what we do. And I really try to change that definition. Instead of making purpose the why, what I really say is purpose is about the here and now, it's about the present
and future, and it's really just actions. And so when I talk about purpose, I'm talking about filling our life with these actions of doing things that fill us up. And it's that simple. And I think this is one of the issues of why purpose causes so many people anxiety, is because we make it this really big difficult, hard to define thing. And because it's so hard and difficult, we often look other places to try to figure out what our purpose should be and guess what. And this
is the connection to money. Most of the people trying to teach us what purpose should be are trying to make money off us. And so if you look at social media, and if you look at TikTok and Instagram, and if you look at advertising and marketing, they're trying to show us a version of purpose that might look like six pack abs, it might look like wearing the nicest clothes. It might look like traveling to all sorts of other countries. It might look like running an eight
figure business. But the problem with those versions of purpose is they're asking us to co opt their version of purpose. But they're doing it because they want more followers or they want you to buy what they're selling, and so money plays a huge role, and they're trying to convince you you can buy your way into purpose. Like if you just buy the good running shoes, all of a sudden, you're going to be a runner. If you just buy the best clothes all of a sudden, you're going to
be successful. And in corporate America and killing it, and so money is intimately tied to purpose, often because other people want us to tie the two together so they can sell it something.
It also seems, in my understanding and coming to this word, I do have a visceral reaction to it that I should probably dig into and then read.
Your book about.
But it's also can seem tied to the way that we earn as well, Like I have had trouble with this concept of purpose because I have switched careers, not just jobs, but the things that I do in my life, which has kind of thrown me a bit for a whirlwind. And okay, well, like has my purpose change? Am I not living into what I'm like? It seems to be so tied to the way that we've understood it, like our identity and the things that are innate within us we've kind of been born to do. Like how you're
describing this like pie in the sky concept. So I don't know if any of that is aimed at reality or your understanding of it, but it sounds like you're breaking it down even smaller. I'm wondering if who could give some more examples of like, Okay, if it's not such a lofty thing. What is it? How could we understand this better?
So I think the easiest way to understand it, and I break it down in the book is basically there's studies that show that having a sense of purpose in life is associated with health, happiness, and longevity. There are tons of great studies scientifically proven purposes related to these things.
On the other hand, their studies also show that people get up to ninety one percent of people at some point in their life have what's called purpose anxiety, meaning this idea of finding their purpose frustrates them, causes them to be depressed and anxious. And so what I talk about in the book is this idea that we probably get purpose wrong, and instead of being one thing, it's probably two things. And one of those things is associated with all that anxiety, and the other is probably more
associated with the happiness, health, and longevity. And so I call them big P purpose and little P purpose. And so most of us through society told that we are supposed to be searching for big P purpose. This is big audacious purpose. In America, we say if you can think it, you can build it. So it's not just becoming a doctor, it's curing cancer. It's not just having a successful business, it's being an eight figure businessman or
making a billion dollars. It's not just running for the local school board, it's becoming president of the United States. And the problem with this type of purpose, this big, audacious, supposedly life defining purpose, is it's really easy to fail. It's very scarcity mindset oriented because most people don't have the skill set, the genetics, the luck, and they don't happen to be the right people at the right time
saying the right things. And if you really want this big audacious purpose, you've got to be all of that. So most of the time we don't have agency over it, and it's easy to fail. And so it's very much all or nothing kind of winner takes all. Like if you're running for president, either win or you lose. We just saw that in this recent election, and so this leaves people feeling bad. What I think is a bet better version of purpose is what I call little P purpose.
So big P purpose is all about the big audacious goal, and so it's very goal for it focused. Little P purpose is all about the process and not about the goal. So it's just engaging in things that you enjoy the process of doing regardless of what you accomplish, and so instead of being all or nothing, it's kind of all
or all. It's very abundance focused. And so I think this is the big difference of why purpose feels so like setting to us is because a lot of people think it's so big we can't grasp, whereas I think little P purpose is very easy to grasp. Well, what could you love doing? And let's start building a life of purpose around it. So I often say you don't
find purpose, you create it. It is true you have to have an idea of what some of those inklings, those beckonings in your life are, of things that light you up, but then you build a life of purpose around.
Them, really helpful distinction for a person who might have that big P purpose in mind, this is what there aim is at. How might that show up then in their finances and the decisions that they make. How can that impact spending? If that maybe is more so the aim.
So when it comes to big P purpose, I think a lot of times, first and foremost people try to buy their way into purpose. So they try to, you know, kind of buy all the stuff, right, Because if I'm going to be, you know, a number one podcaster, right, or if I'm going to be a major League baseball player, or if I'm going to be you name it, I've got to buy all the stuff and the accouterments that
go with that. And so a lot of times we spend lots of money because we think we can buy our way into becoming something as opposed to the way we really do these things is we do it. But the other thing is, I think part of that big P purpose is often really false narratives about money. We set up money as a mirage and we make money
our big P purpose. So it's like once I get to a million dollars, or once I get to financial independence, or once I get to a billion dollars, and we spend a lot of time focusing on those things, but they don't really fill us up. And a lot of times, if we're lucky enough to get there, because not everyone can get to a billion dollars, but if we're lucky enough to get there, we realize that it was kind of a mirage and we don't know our why, Like
what is that money going to do for us? I think a lot of people don't realize that money is a tool, and it's one of many tools. So it can help us free up our time so that we can then pursue this little p purpose, but in it
itself can't be purpose. And I think a lot of people get stuck on that, and then once they get there, if they're lucky enough to hit their goal, a lot of times they feel empty and hollow, and the easiest thing to do is double down and say, well, I'm just going to double that goal, as opposed to thinking more about what would really fill me up.
Yeah.
I had that after we paid off debt and I did it so fast and I thought, Okay, we're debt free. Now that's going to be this, you know, solve my problems. Now I'm going to be able to spend money. And like, inside, I still had too much guilt to spend money. So I just transitioned it to trying to retire early. And instead of looking at what is inside me that is causing this guilt and shame around spending and the fear of money that's doing this like causing me to hoard.
Instead of thinking about that stuff, I just followed what other people on the internet were doing. That we're also not thinking about this stuff. And Jill said this the other day. It was not the nirvana that was promised to me.
What I love about that example is it really actually describes the difference between meaning and purpose. And I always say that happiness is made up of both meaning and purpose. And a lot of people think meaning and purpose are the same thing, But in my definition, meaning is something different. Meaning is about our past, and it's about our thoughts about what we've been through. So meaning is the story
we tell ourselves about ourselves. And part of happiness is learning to tell yourself heroic stories about yourself, like you had these difficulties things, these traumas, these worries, and you overcame them and therefore you got to a better place. So meaning is kind of a journey of being enough. And what you were just describing there is not having a sense or feeling of enough, And it was a
meaning problem. But if you think making money is going to fix that, if you think purpose is going to fix that, like I'm going to make making money or paying off debt or achieving things my purpose, you can't really purpose your way to enough because it's more of
a meaning problem. And I bet what you found is you had to go back and look at some of those narratives about your life and look at some of those stories you were telling yourself about yourself and rewrite them and say, Okay, you know, I had debt and it was a problem, and I had fears of not having enough money, But actually I was just a normal kid growing up and had some stressful situations around me, and I reacted this way to protect myself and to
feel okay. But now you're older and more comfortable, you don't have to do that anymore.
Yeah.
So I love this the way that you talk about purpose because it's very similar to how when we talk about values based spending, we talk about values as higher needs, and the highest need on Maslow's hierarchy is self actualization, which we kind of talk about as purpose, but so often I think that term is kind of misrepresented as maybe like transcendence or this like big p purpose right when really it's and I had to look this up, it's truly just like knowing one's true self and feeling
like you're being able to be creative and innovative and an active participant. So how can we cultivate that actively in our life? Like how can we creatively get after that little P purpose, can we expect to fill it one hundred percent?
Like?
How does that work?
So here's the thing. Little P purpose is very, very very abundant. It is everywhere. The problem people have is a they think they're supposed to be shooting for a big PA purpose, so they don't even look at little pea purpose. That's one problem. But if you can get past like those big audacious goals and look for process oriented person purpose, a lot of people say, well, how do I find that? And I always say, you don't
find it, you build it and create it. But it is true that you need to anchor it on something. And I call these purpose anchors. These are the inklings or the beckonings, the things that light you up that you're going to build a life of purpose or little pea purpose around. So the bigger question is how do I find these purpose anchors? And I talk about this a little bit in the book, but they're really three or four good ways to think about it. Let me
go through a few of them. I'm a hospice physician, so at the end of life we talk to patients and a lot of times we do what's called a life review. It's a series of questions we take them through that helps them review and examine their life and ask the big questions what was important to me? What were my biggest successes? What were my biggest failures? Well, one of those questions is what do you regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do. And here's
the thing. Regret and a dying person is really disappoint because you don't have agency to fix it anymore. You're too tired, you don't have enough life left. You know this is not the time to do that. On the other hand, what about someone like us who's not on our deathbeds, who's healthy. Regret actually can be flipped around
and turned into a purpose anchor. So, for instance, I knew years ago that if someone gave me a death sentence of a week or a month, the one thing I would have really regretted is not traditionally publishing a book. I knew that years ago, and so it behooved me to turn that into a purpose anchor and then start building a life of purpose around that, which is what I did with my first book. So regret is a
really great way to start thinking about purpose anchors. Another great way is to start thinking about the joys of childhood. So I tell people, think about your room when you were a kid, What were the trophies, what were the posters, what were the drawings. A lot of times kids basically fill most of their time doing really purposeful activities, and no adult has told them they can't anymore. So they go play Cops and Robbers, or they play back basketball,
or they do whatever they do. They lose track of time, they don't come home in time for dinner. Right They're in a state of flow of enjoyment, and they're not really even looking towards goals, like they're not expecting to achieve anything. They just want to enjoy themselves. Kids really get purpose, and then of course they grow up and take on careers in school and all this important stuff and drop all these things they loved. So a lot of people can think back to their childhood and it's
a great place to search for purpose anchors. For instance, when I was a kid, I loved baseball cards, and I don't have time for it now because I have other purpose anchors other things in my life. But every time I'm on the internet and I see something about baseball cards, my eyes light up and I get really excited, and I almost always read it. So I know from childhood that baseball cards are a great purpose anchor for me. So we talked about regrets, We talked about joys of childhood.
Another really good one is what I talked about my last book, The Artists Subtraction. A lot of people have jobs that they don't love, but if you really push them, they'll say, I hate ninety five percent of my job, but there's this five percent I love. It's like I work in a restaurant and I'm tired of serving people.
But you know what, every Thursday morning, for two hours, I do the stock and I go through all the shelves and I write everything down, and I see what we have and I see what we don't have, and I love that part. Sometimes when you subtract out the things you don't like about something, you're left with what you love. And so for me, I was getting really tired of being a doctor, but I loved hospice medicines.
So when I subtracted everything else out, it was the one thing I would do even if I wasn't being paid for it. And so for me, that was a really great purpose anchor.
And last but not.
Least, if regret and subtraction and the joys of childhood, if none of that is sparking any version of a purpose anchor in you, then you use the spaghetti method. You basically throw a bunch of things against the wall and see what sticks. You try things you normally wouldn't try. You talk to people you normally wouldn't talk to, maybe a volunteer for something that makes you a little nervous inside, and if you spend that day and you actually enjoy yourself,
that might be the beginning of a purpose anchor. So I think there are a lot of ways to actually build purpose. And what I've actually found is that most people, when you really press them, know what they love. They know what they dream about when they're about to fall asleep in bed, what they think about. Most people actually, really,
if they give themselves permission, can identify. But they've been told that that's not serious enough or important enough, or not good use of their time, or for that matter, not good use of their money, and so they they don't pursue those things.
My mind is going in all sorts of different directions with all these questions you're asking and examples that you're giving. I can think of a couple of things for myself too. But I think, you know, when I think about an anchor and how you're describing something to build off of and make every day, I can't get away from. Okay, does this need to be provisionary for us? Then? Like you know, if I think about an anchor for myself, it to me means something that I then am able
to engage in pretty regularly. But would that then be to the exclusion of these other things or do I then need to go find work that is aligned with those things? Like how do we part it all out? Like the little pe from like the way that we earn money too.
So here's what I say, first and foremost, I think we have too many rules around purpose. So purpose can be lifelong, but it can also be something you do for a few weeks. You can have one purpose or many. Your purpose can affect the world and feel like it's bringing great social change, but it certainly doesn't need to.
There are really no rules. And what I found is when people identify these purpose anchors, they might identify ten or fifteen, and then it even gets exponential because each purpose anchor we can actually build purposeful activities around I call these climbs. So I love baseball cards, Well, I could start collecting baseball cards again. I could go to baseball card conferences. I could start a blog or podcast
about baseball cards. I could join the you know, Willy Mays fan club for people who still love Willy Mays even though he retired long ago. I mean, there are so many different things I could do, so many different purposeful activities. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter how many purpose anchors you have. You choose one or two of them, and you enjoy them until you don't anymore, and then you go find another anchor or do a differentfer climb. But here's what I want to specifically talk about.
Because you brought about something important, You're like, Okay, I identify these anchors. I start building these climbs, these purposeful activities. But should that take over every aspect of my life or should that just be my free time. Here's my answer to that. It's a little bit of a long one, so I apologize. Oh boy, this is my version of what it looks like to win the game. Here's what winning the game looks like from the day you're born
to the day you die. And I know this because being a doctor and a hospite doctor, I see this all the time. You have a certain amount of time, and you have no idea how much that's going to be. And yes, you can like exercise and wear a seatbelt and do some things to increase the amount of that time, but generally it's kind of set. And here's the problem with time. You can't buy it, you can't sell it,
you can't trade it. Basically, it can't be commoditized. Time passes no matter what, and you have zero control over. But one thing you have control over. The one thing you have control over is what activities you're busy doing as time passes. So I love to look at our lives as a series of time slots, call them days, months, years,
whatever you feel good about. And so winning the game is filling up as many of those time slots as possible with purposeful activity that fills you up, and getting rid of as much and as many things as you loathe as possible. And so when we start as adults and we get jobs, we like can look at our calendars every month for the rest of our lives, and if we're winning the game. We are slowly increasing the things that we love and getting rid of the things that we loathe, and we have lots of ways to
do this. I like to talk about tools and levers. Tools are things like money. Money is a fabulous tool. If I have lots of money, I can pay someone to clean my house and therefore Saturday Sunday, I don't have to clean my house all day and I can spend that time doing something different. I'm winning the game because I can put some purposeful activity into those time slots that was before not purposeful activity or activity I loathed. And that's you know, increasing that calculus of your and
winning the game. But you have lots more tools besides money. So even if you're twenty two and have very little money, you also have your time, your energy, your youth, your communities, your passions. So there's tons of tools there. But we also have levers. So they're three levers. One is the joy of addition. The other is the art of subtraction and the lastest substitution. And so if you're twenty two and you're working sixty hours a week and you're like,
you know, I'm so busy. Your privilege you're a doctor, you're financially independent. Of course you can talk about purpose. But I'm twenty two and working six hours sixty hours a week. There's no way I can talk about purpose. I would say, well, you have some tools that I don't have. At twenty two. You have more energy, you have your youth. You probably don't have a mortgage, you probably don't have kids yet, you might not be married,
you probably don't own a home. So you know what, even though you're working sixty hours a week, probably on Sunday, you can spend three or four hours doing something that lights you up, that's exciting to you. Maybe you turn it into side hustle, maybe you don't, but either way, you've used one of your tools, your youth and energy, and then you've used a lever, which is the joy of addition, to add in three more hours of purposeful activity. And again you're winning the game just a little bit
more because you've added in something you love. Even if you haven't gotten rid of a job you don't like. But if you happen to be lucky and you do that thing that you love for three or four hours on a Sunday and it happens to make a little money. Maybe you can start working forty hours a week instead of sixty hours a week. And so this is our job.
It's to use our tools and our levers to look at our calendar every few months and slowly increase the number of things we love that feel purposeful to us and get rid of the things we loathe. And so if you start that in your twenties, it may take you a decade or two decades, but eventually you'll probably transition your job more into something you love because you're going to use the joy of addition in the artists abtraction. Right, So let's say I work in that restaurant and I
hate serving customers, but I love doing stock every Thursday morning. Well, maybe one day I go to my boss and say, hey, we've got ten restaurants and I love doing stock, and Lily over there hates doing stock, but she loves taking care of customers. Why don't I travel from restaurants to restaurants to restaurant all week and just do stock all day because that's something I love. And boom, You've used
the art of subtraction, the joy of addition. You've used some other of those levers and tools, and now you're spending more time doing things that feel purposeful. And so this is what I think we have to do. This is how we win the game. But it's not immediate. It's not like, oh, I found my purpose and I'm going to quit my job and go for a passion play and find a passionate job. You might be lucky, but most of the time it's not that straightforward. It
takes more time. Takes time to figure out where your purpose anchors are and what you love, and then you kind of slowly transition your life to look better and better every year.
How often would you say that we'd be auditing this or that even those anchors might shift.
I think the anchors can shift any time. And here's the thing again, there's no rules. If you get tired of doing something, or if that thing doesn't light you up anymore, maybe I decide baseball cards are a purpose anchor, and I start buying and selling them, and I start going to these conferences in these shows, and I'm doing this, and I'm like, dude, I don't have enough time to write. I'm too busy. I can always ditch that anchor and go to a different purpose anchor. Which for me is
writing and communicating. The question is does it fill you up? And so how often should we be doing this and looking at our calendars. I don't know. I think we almost continuously do it anyway, because you know, when we're at work and we're deciding we don't like things and we start getting burned out, we're doing that in real time. But I think it's worthwhile every few months to really kind of open up your calendar app and look at four or five weeks and kind of go through and said,
love this, hated this, load this, love this indeterminate. And what I love to see for everybody, especially if they're listening to the financial tips and tricks and learning from people like you or teaching them how to be frugal and good with their money. What I'm hoping they that they find is eventually they get so financially good that
they start having way more control over the calend. Like I'm fifty one years old, I look at my calendar and everything on it is something I chose and I put there, and that I can cancel that day if I decided I don't want to do that. Why, well, A I've done a lot of work on my sense of purpose and little PEP purpose. But the other thing is then I built up my finances next to it, and so I have this really great tool which is money, which helps me not do things that I loathe, And
so they work together. And I think that's why it's very important to not only think about purpose, but to get really clear on your money and try to understand what it can and can't do for you.
This is so important. I think what you've just like just gone all through and I had like follow up questions, but then I just got like so wrapped up into it anymore.
Well, well I got the question. Then you have touched on this a bit. But I'm wondering if there's more that you have to say about as we do this and we become more clear on little P purpose being what we can go after on a regular basis, and we can feel more fulfilled in these kind of meaningful ways, what can we expect to see with kind of our
everyday spending behaviors. I know you've kind of talked about the larger pieces of earning and maybe job flexibility, but for our listeners who are maybe even still in debt payoff, struggling with impulse spending. Maybe some low income feeling like they've got more month than paycheck, Like, what could this mean, the pursuit of little pe purpose mean for them with their money.
I think it could mean actually everything, because we use spending often to soothe ourselves. And why are we trying to soothe ourselves? Because things feel disjointed. We're going to these jobs we may not like, but we feel trapped because we need to make the money because we have to afford our lifestyle. And we are searching for joy.
We're searching for the inner sense of doing things that make us feel full, and we don't know what those things are, and we don't know how to find them, and we're stressed out and busy, and one of the easiest things to do is to take out your charge card and buy that thing to eat, or buy that pair of shoes, or buy that car. And what I think happens is when you get really clear on purpose in your life, you start doing these things that light you up first and foremost, you find that you don't
have to buy your way into it. You can just show up and do the thing and that's enough. Right, So, if you want to be a great runner, You don't have to buy great running shoes or a great tracker, have the greatest clothes. You've got to run. You've got to actually do the thing. If you want to be a writer, you don't have to write a big writing coach or take really expensive courses on writing or do any of those things to become a writer. You don't even have to publish a book.
To become a writer.
You have to write. So you realize that it's really the action specifically, and not the spending. The other thing is you find that when you do spend a lot of times you're spending is more in line with your values, because when you're really clear on what feels purposeful to you, that's when you start saying, well, is spending this money
worthwhile or not? I could go out and buy that thing that watch that really looks good on my arm, But you know what, I love hiking, and my hiking group is going on a hiking trip, and it's going to cost me a little extra to take the plane to get there. This is going to be a really great trip with people I love, and I'm gonna spend
five days feeling alive in nature. And you kind of say that aligns a hell of a lot more with me and my lifestyle and what makes me happy than buying that watch or even buying that car or buying that super expensive house in the super expensive neighborhood. You start getting really clear about what feels like purpose to you as opposed to what the world is telling us purpose should look like. And I think that just means that we start aligning our spending much more with our values.
We couldn't agree more.
No, we love that.
And you know what else we agree on, and we love 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. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, Jordan.
You know, every week we yell at our guests and our listeners to share with us their favorite bill for the week, because we know everybody has so many favorite bills all the time, but just what's yours just this week?
So this week my favorite bill is a person. This is a bill in my mastermind group. And Bill does me the favor of calling me out every time I do something he doesn't like. But it is a favor because he's one of the people in my life who is utterly clear. So he listens to every podcast episode. He looks at every piece of content I put out. And if he thinks that I soft peddled something, if he thinks that I didn't present enough of the sides,
he tells me. But he does it. It's funny. He does it in a little bit of an abrupt way, but he's a really loving, caring guy. And so that Bill called me out on something this week. But I do believe that if people care enough to criticize and to do it on a regular basis and engage, that those people really do care about you. And so that is my bill of the week Bill from my Mastermind group.
Yeah, Bill, Wow, Jordan accountable.
Bill sounds like you're just putting in the time. Is this his little people?
I enjoy this Bill in my life.
So Bill is one of those personal finance experts that doesn't put any content out, but he can tell you everything about tex law. He can tell you everything about safe withdrawal rates. He can tell you everything about all this stuff, and so the problem is it's really easy for him to contradict what you say.
I love that people who know it that don't just want to look like they know it. They're so confident that they know it that they don't need to look like they do.
So all of us need a bill like that in our lives.
I know, if you all are listening, if you have a bill who's putting in the time and giving you the good critique, or a bill you don't mind paying, or a bill that you stopped paying, or your bill part from your name is Bill.
If you're listening Frugal.
Friends podcast dot com slash bill, leave it for us. We can't wait. And now it's time for the lightning ground.
I know, right dancing around trying not to get hit.
I know there's such realistic sound effects. I'm so sorry we scared you. H This is gonna be a fun lightning round because this is not uh, we're not going to make it money related because we both have books pushing on January seventh. I can't remember specifically the date this is coming out, but and so we wanted to know we're going to all share what's the most fun thing about book launch because a lot of it can be very stressful, but there's got to be some little
p purpose parts to it. So what's what's been your favorite part, Jordan?
I think, and this hasn't happened with this book yet, but it happened with the last one. I think my favorite part is when the publisher sends you the book and it arrives in the mail and you open it up and put your hands on the actual book the first time. And this is something right, we've been working on for probably two years maybe more, and we've seen it digitally a million times. We've read it digitally a
million times. Maybe we printed it off on our white sheets of paper, but it hasn't really looked like a book. And then you get that box in the mail and it comes and you open it up. Of whse nowadays every and we all of us videotape it as we do this. But then you get that box, you open it up and you hold the thing in your hands and it's just it really is. It's a moment.
Oh, I know, we get to do that next week. Our publisher said that she just sent them out, so we have gotten so.
Mind should be coming anytime.
Then yeah, we have gotten like an advanced reader copy, but it's not quite the same.
It's like coming off the side of the page and ye, but it was a glimpse of that for sure.
So you guys have to answer the same question.
Of course, yes, yes, go ahead, Okay, So my favorite part has actually been like catching up with so many friends, like podcasting friends. I that's it is. My favorite thing about podcasting is having an excuse to hang out with people and get to know people and be known. And so there was so much like getting to know people, meeting new people. We've met some like great podcasters from this, and also had an excuse to like hang out with old friends for an hour, and that has been so good.
That's why we did so many podcast interviews because it's just like my favorite part. The pitching is very hard, but it is worth it for the actual interview.
You guys have great answers, I think now that I'm thinking about it, there have been a lot of fun parts, a lot of awful parts too, But I'm going to go in the way way back machine and say that one of the most fun parts of this whole process was pitching our book idea to publishers and going to auction and having them fight over us with money.
That was fighting with money go to me.
Yeah that was.
Yeah, we got we went to auction on my birthday.
I have enjoyed when Jen and I choose to celebrate. It's not that often, but we will look for reasons to celebrate and usually eat food. Yeah, and that's been fun. So, yeah, the collaborative effort and.
Yeah, the book deal day was actually so great.
But the problem with that is then there's the panic. You're like, oh, no, I have to actually write this thing. Now, You're like, because most people don't understand, what we know intimately is that usually don't write the book. You write, you know, a book proposal in one or two chapters, in an outline, et cetera. But then you actually have to write the book once they accept it.
Yeah, that is true. We were going to write it either way. So it did feel like you might as well pay us because this thing.
Is going to think I was going to write it if I didn't get money for it.
Wow, is out the one thing that I think, you know, I definitely went through with my first book, and I'm sure you guys will feel this or are feeling it already, and I even feel it I'm now during the second book. Is when you write a book and you put that much time and energy into it, most people who don't
write books don't understand this. It becomes exceedingly personal. And so you know, the launch day is both really exciting and just really terrifying too, because it's like that is is just mass vulnerability, and especially if you have write an audience, because you're releasing it out to the audience, You're like, oh my god, thousands of people are going to see this and they're you know, what if they hate it? You know, what if it reflects badly on me? What if I messed it all up?
And what if I read their review?
I haven't thought about that, Jordan. I've never gone through a launch date by things.
For all of them. Well, I self published a few books, and so I well, and just with our podcast reviews, like people are going to hate it, and so it's just trying to not read those reviews and not take them to heart. Thankfully, I think we've talked about it so much that I'm like, I'm obsessed with this. I think this is good. Still, Like I'm still I've we are doing.
Oh, I've read it and it's good, So this is this is this is just a given. I've read your book and it's good. So we're there's not any I think here and and you have. You both have continuously spoken truths that people have wanted to hear, and so reading your book, it's like, this is everything coalesced, all the things you've been saying for years, all the waves you've been framing these issues, and so it's it's very exciting.
Yeah, thank you, And.
I think you speak on such parallel topics with such like a complimentary experience in tone, So let's not bury the lead. Where can people get your book and get more from you in the future.
Theest places to go to Jordan Grummitt dot com. That's j O R D A N G r U me et dot com. There you can see links to both my books, taking Stock in the Purpose Code, as well as links to all the places that I create content, currently mostly the Earn and Invest podcasts and the Purpose Code substack, but there are some links to my old medical blog as well as my personal finance blog. That's all at Jordan Grummitt dot com.
Beautiful, Thanks for being here. With us.
Jordan's thank you so much for having me.
I always love talking to Jordan because his his view is so complimentary to ours and aligned. It's it really just reminded me so much of how we view the self actualization of Mazwell's hierarchy of needs. It's not finding this big purpose and living into it, but it's feeling like you know your true self.
I think where the rub has come for us in the past too, is trying to always have a why at the forefront. Like it feels really similar to that kind of conversation where what's your why? Nor why financial independence for paying down your debt and not to say that it's not important to identify the reason you're doing something, like the reason you've set this aim, but it's not realistic to have that always and forever in front of you on a day to day basis. And so what
are the things that sustain us regularly? What is life giving? And we've been talking more and more about these the simple things and the ways in which our environment and internally we've been curating to be able to engage in the things that really matter that are most valuable to us. And so it's been cool to put another word to that of like this little p purpose.
Yes, well, thank you so much if this helped you kind of realign your perspective on purpose. We would love if you would leave a rating and review on apple Pie Podcasts or a rating and comment on Spotify. It helps people figure out what this show is all about and what kind of guests we have on kind of like Tracy Bigham Pac did when they said great conversations came from this episode came from the episode on sounds
like a cult. To remind you, gals, you are doing great work offering sound advice and keeping it real when it comes to personal finance, spending and living in alignment with your values and more. Applause, Emji.
Wow, it's so fun when we read in reviews where people found us through how they came to follow us there listen to us. So thanks for sharing that. That's cool, what a cool crossover that happened there, And thanks for taking the time to leave a rating and review. If you are listening you haven't done that before, that's a good idea. Tell us how you found the podcast and leave your rating and review, because that too will help other people know. Oh if I liked that show. I
have heard of that show. I might like this show too. So it's it's really it's helpful for us, it's helpful for the larger community. So thank you, thank you.
Yeah, we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. Are you excited for our very first book event?
Yes, I am. I'm very excited. We don't quite know exactly what we're going to say, but I imagine we're going to talk about our favorite parts of the book, maybe even some behind the scenes stuff in the writing process. But I think chatting with everybody is going to be my favorite part. Hopefully the bookstore stays open late, and I'm also excited to see, like what I end up writing people's books.
I know, I hope people come. I hope people show up, and that is what I hope.
You know what, though, Jen, all along, regardless of what other people choose, we have each other. We will at at least be we do this podcast for ourselves and for each other because we keep having fun. So you know what, it's gonna be a party. Even if it's just you and I.
It will be a party. But we do this podcast also because we need to pay bills, and the only way we pay bills is if people down like, listen to the show.
And by the book.
Truly, every download and every listen does help us pay our bills. And every book purchase twenty five dollars. That's it. And you help us keep doing this and keep having parties, even if they're just the two of us in a bookstore after close.
So true.
And we don't even know who's gonna be asking us the questions at the Q and A. We don't even know.
That yet, but I think we will. I really liked that when gen Ruis did that. I know, book signing.
So we'll find someone, Yeah, find someone interesting, and it'll be a surprise. It probably won't be the surprice. We'll probably have announced it already right now. It's a surprise.
Yeah. Follow us on Instagram too to get like an update on it. I'm sure we're posting. I'm sure we posted it.
Yeah, already on Instagram, but at Frugal Friends podcast.
Yeah. Fu