Episode four eighty seven is episode three point fifteen, how to build and break habits that cause you to overspend.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are replaying one of our most downloaded episodes from a few years ago about habits and specifically spending habits.
Turns out we've been talking about this type of thing for a long time. There's a part of me that's thought we've kind of begun to talk about impulse spending and habit building for our book. It's like, nah, it's just that we've been talking about this forever and we finally thought, let's put it into a book. So if you want our tape from kind of the inception when we were first beginning to talk about habits, that's what we're looking back to. But still really good relevant stuff.
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So a couple good episodes to q up for after this one that came up after this episode was originally recorded. Episode four sixty two. Willpower and self control in spending. There's this illusion that spending is self discipline and self control and higher willpower. But we don't necessarily believe that. We believe that there's other ways you can work with
your body instead of against it against your brain. And then episode four fifty nine, five Ways your childhood impacts how you spend money, so this can be the root of where a lot of our habits are. So those are two good ones to queue up. But let's not waste any time.
Let's get into it. Let's get into this. We've got some really great articles for you. The first one comes from CNBC and it's titled three habits that actually cause you to spend more money according to a behavioral researcher.
So they are citing a lot of the findings of Mary L. Beasley, who's the co founder of common Sense Labs, where she's talking about these habits, and then it's kind of an overview of that behavioral research that was done, and just begins by talking about how often we can have the best of intentions but still make mistakes along the way because we're human. And I know for myself
that is still true. Even though I have a personal finance podcast for five years alongside Jen who I've learned so much from, I still am not hitting every goal and crushing my savings and spendings and investing in all of that, and we can all have the best of intentions. I love the example that they give at the beginning of we can think and plan. When we're going out to dinner, we're just going to have one glass of wine, but then you know we're with really good friends, we
end up having three. Or I am going to challenge myself to save fifty bucks a month, but then by the end of the month only find twenty five dollars in saving. So I think that this, in a really succinct way, gives some other reasonings to why that happens. And the more we can understand that reality, the more we can respond well and see shifts. So while I'm not perfect, I know, Jen, you would say you're not perfect,
there can be improvement along the way. However, within this any overarching thoughts from you, Jen on this one.
Yeah, I so I once we get we're going to say the three habits. But I think traditionally when we think of quote unquote bad spending habits, we think of that ordering the two extra drinks at dinner. We think of the Starbucks drive through on the way to work, ordering takeout for lunch. So those are not the real
habits that we're focusing on today. And so I just thought this was a very cool, like there are deeper issues, deeper habits that cause those more superficial ones, and so I love that this article goes into those and then the next article will go into more specifically how to break them.
Yeah, so the first habit, habit number one is that we can often tend to rely on our will power to restrict our spending. We can think that that's enough if I just grit my teeth and white knuckle this thing, that's going to be what helps me restrict my spending. And the researcher explains that motivation like anything else, and you've heard us describe this it ebbs and flows. Motivation can't be the thing that we're waiting on to just happen to just befall us and then the rest of
life suit. So if you're just relying on sheer willpower to prevent you from making purchases, it's going to wear down overtime and won't always be effective. They also reference how budgeting can be one of those things, like, well, we try and restrict our spending through budgeting and then thinking it's our willpower that's going to help us keep in that place. Now, I love budgets, but I do think that this is highlighting an important thing about the
way that we approach budgets. So creating a budget can help us know where our money goes, how to allocate it. But a lot of times if we're trying to use that as the motivator for our will power in this effort to curb spending, it can lead to this cycle of overcompensation where maybe it works for a little bit of time. Oh yeah, I just saved all that much, but now we feel deprived, and then we overspend and the gains are hardly anything because we've then overcompensated for them.
So this just sheer relying on willpower doesn't work.
Yeah, It's like so when we talk about decision fatigue, it's that for you know, for those of you who don't know, decision fatigue is by the end of the day, like in the morning, your decisions are great because your mind is fresh, but by the end of the day you are, you know, eating ice cream in pulse, shopping on Amazon, because your your willpower literally has been depleted from your body. Your brain only has so much capacity
to make decisions. And so instead of working against that, which is the real mistake, we need to be working with our minds. So we need to be looking for those ways to kind of internally motivate ourselves to keep going. So part of that is, you know, quote unquote find your why, But there are other smaller things that we need to be doing to really move on our own lition and not rely on willpower.
Yeah, have it.
Number two is focusing more on immediate satisfaction versus long term benefit. So like when I was just saying, when your willpower is depleted, then it makes it even harder to focus on the long term benefit versus the immediate satisfaction. And I would say it's not a bad thing to focus on immediate satisfaction. Our brains are kind of wired to do that, but not doing it every single decision. So most of our decisions have to be for long
term benefit. So I'd say it's probably like an eighty twenty. If eighty percent of your decisions are sound and provide long term benefit than twenty percent, you can just like go off and impulse spend all of it at target, you know. So we're not looking for perfection. We're just looking to do eighty percent right so that we can have the freedom to not think about it and not be so guilty with that other twenty percent or whatever ratio feels.
Good to you, and that's a little bit just default mode. I feel as though immediate satisfaction is innate, and it does take work to be able to identify long term benefit and create ways for us to see some degree of short term benefit while we're working towards long term benefit. But that's so often what habits are. They are these things that have worked to some degree or have created shortcuts and efficiencies, but many of them aren't actually working
in our favor. And so a lot of this is just becoming aware of those habits that aren't benefiting us and how can we shift that Again, we'll get to that in the second article. But yeah, it's natural that we would want to focus on immediate satisfaction, but that in the long run is going to lead to that overspending. So that's another reason that we can find ourselves like in that run, why I had the best of intentions, Why did it end up this way? And these are
some of the top three reasons. And the final one, habit number three is just simply following the crowd, keeping up with the Joneses or whoever it is that you follow on Instagram. This can highly and heavily influence how much money we spend and what we spend it on. We often will take cues from those around us on what we should be doing, how to belong again, this is one of those just innately programmed things of humanity.
We want belonging, we want immediate satisfaction, we want efficiency, we want to believe that we've got the grit and willpower to just say no to whatever whatever. But the reality is there's a lot lot more forces at play here, and especially if we are not actively aware or intentional about that, we can find ourselves buying the things, doing the things, having the experiences that maybe we don't even
love that much. It's just what's happening with those around us, and it's influencing the decisions that we're making.
They reference research.
Now.
Granted I did not click on this to see if it met Jen's standards of research, but apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of America, I'm sorry, the Federal.
Reserve DELCA Philadelphia.
I'm from Philadelphia, so America, the best of America comes from Philadelphia.
I'm gonna check this now, Okay, The.
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that if your neighbor wins the lottery, you're more likely to file for bankruptcy. This sounds like a woudicrous fact. I mean, first of all, how many people have they been able to actually study who won the lottery and then look at the behaviors of those lives, winners, neighbors.
I can't imagine it was more than five.
Feel free to report back, Jen, But still, the point that they're trying to make here is we are heavily influenced by those around me, around us, whether that is our neighbors, the place, just our immediate community, our friends, our coworkers, the people that we're choosing to follow on Instagram, social media. We will be influenced by their spending habits. And if we are not intentional about choosing something differently, that's just how it's going to shake out in our spending behaviors.
Yeah, I want to note that to quote the study to examine this question, we rely on match data on the universe of lottery winners and the universe of bankruptcy filers in a single Canadian province.
What and it's the federal banks Philadelphia doing this research.
Thank you for your rigorous citing standard. CNBC I just wanted it because it sounded so crazy, right, But so to bring it back around, these three habits are really important to look at. That's why it's important that we look in habits because we only have a finite amount of willpower at the end of the day, so we want to put our actions on autopilot. That's what habits are. We focus more on immediate satisfaction. It's the way our
brains are wired. So we want to have good habits, and we want to just be intentional about our habits so that we're not falling into unintentional like limiting ones. I don't want to say bad versus good habits, because one person's bad habit could be another person's good habit. But limiting and growth habits, And yeah, we follow the crowd, So we want to have eighty percent of our habits
being are actions being good habits. So in those times where you do follow the you know what the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is saying, you might do, you're mostly taken care of. So I do. I When you were saying this one, the habit number three, I was remembering, I follow this guy at I think it's Shabaz or Shabaz says or just chabez. Yes, the rich people in the post. The rich Yeah, all the rich people. I don't even know if they're rich, but they just carefully
and luxuriously curate all of this designer stuff. And like apparently there's a part of TikTok where like fancy ice, like filling your freezer with like fancy ice is a thing, and it's just all so pointless. But if that's all you're seeing, and he and he'll make just really funny commentary, like poking fun at it, not the person, but just
like how ridiculous practices are. Like, if that's all you're seeing, you can think that's normal and you can follow the crowd with your fancy ice, but you really have to ask yourself why, you know, is this what I value? Or is this just something like I'm seeing in my brain is just automatically going to I should do this? So yeah, it's all right, I do love what following their sources.
Thanks for checking checking that source, jet, because that was a wild fact that turns out to not be maybe all that factual. And this is why we scour the internet on your behalf to save you from this insane research, absolutely, but sometimes the research doesn't take that long.
So I actually I love this next article and I can't believe we haven't covered it before. I actually looked at episode the show notes for one eighty one. I was like, we should have. I've read this article a million times, not a million, but a lot. I was like, we have to have used it in one eighty one. No, we didn't. So the next article is James Clear's how to Break a bad habit and replace it with a good one. It is one of my favorite articles on the internet, but in one eighty one we used it
James clear article on how to build good habits. So this one we're focused on breaking habits and then to build habits. Follow up with one eighty one. I know that's in the title, but the point of it is to get you to listen to one eighty one after this one. That's the biggest one.
James Clear is just a good resource too in learning more about habits. So it's why we reference this work so often. And you know there's not necessarily oh ten tips, five steps, blah blah blah, just kind of taking us through what causes bad habits? What can we do about it. What are some techniques that work. So we're just going to work our way through that. Yeah, feel free to start jen with what causes bad habits?
All right?
So what causes bad habits? Most of your bad habits, according to clear, are caused by two things, stress and boredom. And I would say boredom in the sense that you're just not being intentional. It is always easier, our mind always takes the road with fewer obstacles, and so I would say, maybe you're not bored, but your mind might be. So I would maybe even add a third. It's just like just like situational, like seasonal kind of where you're at,
not being intentional about where you want to go. A lot of bad habits, especially spending habits, can be caused from that, but also stress and definitely also boredom. I know, sometimes especially with a newborn, if I just want to get out of the house, like I'm going to Target because it's too hot outside.
Vica hands, it's like water. Our brains will take the path of least resistance. And I will caveat this by saying all of the other principles that we've talked about throughout this podcast still remain. We still have to recognize the season that we're in, our current capacities. What does kindness to ourselves and well being look like right now?
And we can't tackle everything all at once, and so really measuring whether you're in a season of maybe just maintenance or in a season of growth or whatever it is. I think you know, Jen, I hear you say, oh, man, there's these things that I'm doing. Yeah, but you have a brand new baby and a four year old and you're getting back into the pace of work life. That going to target might not be something that you want to be doing to cope in a year from now,
But is it okay for now? Like there is still this spectrum of what is and isn't beneficial for us, and going to target is still far better than.
Going to the bar.
So it is far better than taking my newborn into the bar.
And that would be a coping mechanism too. So I think also.
Learning where you are along the way and being kind to yourself in this and recognizing that Okay, you bite your nails, you go on shopping sprees, you overspend, or you like you might not be able to shift all of that all at once. Pick your thing, decide what is okay, maybe for a season, check back in with yourself.
It's all a part of this equation.
Yeah, but he says that the end of this, recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them. And so I think that just reiterates. So you have to recognize the season that you're in and no, is this a season where I can change my bad habits or my limiting habits, or is this a season where I can you know, focus on this limiting habit but not this one for this reason. So that is definitely number one awesome.
Then the article goes on to explain how we don't eliminate bad habits, we replace them. So there's snaps, there's no pause there, Okay, picking back up. So there is no reality where we can just cut out of our lives something that is hill informed, misplaced, miss directed, non beneficial, without replacing it with something else, without identifying, well, what
will I do instead? If you're accustomed to going to Target every single Saturday as a way to just get out of the house and you end up spending money, you can't just stop that cold turkey. And that goes back to that first article of relying on willpower, Well, it just doesn't work. There would need to be something
else coming in to replace that. What will you do instead needs to be a really crucial integral part of this equation, just even just that recognition that I'm not gonna I'm not just gonna get rid of this habit. I'm gonna have to identify how to redirect it.
Yes, absolutely, you It's like when you dig something out of a dirt road and you're driving over it. You want to replace that that thing that was in the road. You got to fill it back up with dirt in order to drive over the road. Considering if it's a if it's a big thing that you dug out.
Of the road, So how big is a shovel?
How I mean, how big is the thing you were I don't I want to say like it was a dead animal or something. But you've got to fill it back up in order to drive over it. You don't just take it out and then you know, drive over it, you'll get stuck. So that's kind of the idea, is that you don't take something away without replacing it, because your brain just works easier, It works more easily when you replace so then we go into how do we replace how do we break the bad habit? So I
like James Clear's habit loop. It's a smidge different than the traditional habit loop of three phases. So he basically takes that habit loop and for every reason that you would perform a habit, he just like takes the opposite. You just do the opposite. So, like the first part is well, first you have to choose the substitute for your bad habit. But the first part of the habit loop is the queue. So you just make the queue like obvious, or you make the queue. That's how you
build one. You make the queue kind of as disguise it as much as possible, or ignore it as much as possible. So like if your habit is picking up Starbucks on the way to work and the drive through you go a different way to work, or you get in the lane farthest from the Starbucks, so you make it as hard to do the habit as possible, cut out as many triggers as possible. And so that's the first step to breaking your bad habit.
Yeah, So which is two fold. It's that first choosing what the substitute is going to be then cutting out as many triggers the thing that's going to come just before, Like if you always eat cookies when you're home and you're watching TV, then it might be something that don't watch TV at night, Like there might be cutting out these different triggers that always lead to the next thing of the habit. Of course, as it relates to finances
and spending, there's different things to talk about there. Of if I always go to Starbucks on my way to work, then maybe I need a different path. I need to take a different way to work so that I'm not passing that Starbucks, and eventually that will turn the external motivators into internal motivators. But initially our brains do need these things to just be removed. We can help ourselves
out by eliminating some of those unnecessary temptations. The next thing that they recommend is to join forces with somebody. We love this because we think we go further together and having community is a massive part of experiencing well being and quote unquote success in feeling empowered in your personal finances and achieving goals. If we bring someone else along, whether you are aimed at the same exact goal or similar goals or you both are just trying to achieve
something somebody else. To be able to talk about that with, share what your goal is, share what works for you, what's not working, be able to have someone to celebrate together with when those little victories and big victories happen. Having someone else is a really powerful motivator. Not that motivation is the thing to be the driving force, but accountability. Community in this process is going to really help us stick to it.
And I think that can go into the that kind of So there are the three laws of inversion of the habit loop to break that bad habit. The first one is to make the cues invisible. The second and third are to make the habit unattractive and difficult, and that can that's where community really comes in. It's really important and this is maybe one of the most difficult things.
That your community supports the direction you are going, whether that is family, friends, the people you surround yourself in your career, at your job, whatever, those are the people that are either going to make it easy to continue with limiting habits or make it difficult or unattractive to follow through with those habits. If you are surrounding yourself with people who lift you up and encourage you to
reframe your mindset to be better. Then it's going to be unattractive to be overspending on things that you don't truly value. And if you are spending time with people who like to do free things as much as you, it's going to make it difficult to overspend in the areas you don't want to spend on. So that's why we are so invested in having people around you who live the way you want to live.
Yeah, and the next portion of this article and talking about how to reform redirect our habits has to do with mindset. I'll just list off the three that come next, and it's related to visualizing yourself succeeding, not needing to become someone else, but return to the old you, and some of the things that we can do to interrupt negative self talk.
And so I think.
Each one could be implemented depending on your own personnel and what makes sense to you. If you are someone who enjoys visualizing things and imagining yourself at the place that you want to be, then that might be a really helpful mindset for you in really daydreaming and envisioning this new life can help. It's not going to be the only thing. It's not some magic pill, but it does help us to imagine and keep that goal in focus. The next tip related to the not needing to be
someone else, just return to the old you. That's a mindset shift of recognizing that you don't need to become a new person. Chances are that the habits you're trying to break is in some form a return to maybe who you used to be.
Like they use the.
Example of smoking, chances are you weren't born smoking, so it's not it's not that you need to quit smoking. It's more this mindset of you need to return to being a non smoker. You probably have not spent money your whole life, so it's not like I don't I need to just not be this type of person, but rather go back to the more simple ways of life.
This, I think.
Breaks down at some point, but I think that that mindset can be helpful in I think what it's primarily getting at is the narrative and the story we tell ourselves about who we are, and that can be a big barrier in us achieving and experiencing change. Is well, this is who I am. I'm an overspender. I'm a smoker, I'm a couch potato, like whatever words you would want to put on it, and we take that on as
an identity. And I think that this exercise is mostly pointing at how do we shed those negative self talks that aren't beneficial to us mostly even aren't true that these aren't identifying identity pieces. So there's that one and then using the word but overcome self talk, and I
like the examples that they give. You know, maybe moving from if you feel like you're a person who's a failure, you might have this narrative in your head going I'm a failure, I'm a failure, and maybe it's shifting it too, I'm a failure, but everybody fails sometimes. Or if you feel like no one respects me, I'm not a respectable person. No one respects me, but I'm working to develop a
valuable skill. So it's really shifting where we typically go what we say about ourselves to the action that we're trying to put towards change. And again that's all that's mindset, that's taking our thoughts, being aware of them, how they are moving our behaviors, and shifting that because it all begins in our mind and when we can shift the way that we think, then we can shift the way that we behave.
Yeah, and these mindsets are you know, the I'm stupid, I'm the failure. Those are not the mindsets you want to stick with. The butt is simply just something to add at the end, yes, instead of a period. Eventually, you want to be able to say, I'm not a failure. I failed at this one thing. Yeah, but failing and failing better is part of success. Yeah.
Adding the butts is just the first step. Good voice, Jen, You don't.
Want to stay there, right, And the more you dive into creating a growth mindset and developing good habits and breaking limiting ones, the more you develop this language. It's it's language that you have to learn, and it's difficult to learn. After years of saying like I'm bad with money, I need to spend money to feel better, all of these narratives that we talk to ourselves about money, it's
hard to break those narratives. You have to learn the language to replace the narratives you're telling yourself, and that kind of leads the last one is to plan for failure. And this is so important because we all slip up every now and then. It's what the article says, and it's not even I we see failure. It's like this, it's a big negative thing. But failing at something or just not most of the times is just not succeeding in the way that you thought you would succeed. It's
not failure. So I think the idea is that if you plan for failure, it's not in a self sabotaging way where you try something but you don't give it you one hundred percent because you just assume you'll fail. So we're not talking about that, but we're talking about know that you're going to make mistakes, know that you're not going to be perfect, Know that you're not going to succeed in the way that you think you should
succeed in order to define success. So when you're building a habit, there's a lot out there that says it's going to take you twenty one days to build a habit, and the reality is it takes you know, at least sixty six, somewhere closer to one twenty. So whatever you're working on, whatever habit you're working on, you'll be working on it for three to six months at least, and you're not going to be perfect, especially in the first couple of weeks, and that's when most people will give
up when they're trying to break a limiting habit. So plan to not be perfect, plan to not succeed in the way you think you should.
Yes, so true.
I also love the way that this article wraps up in this where to go from here? Section, and I appreciate the way that they highlight that it's very easy for us to get caught up in how we feel about our bad habits, or you know, we might label them our bad habits and we can feel guilty, or we will spend our time dreaming up how we wish things were, But our feelings are not necessarily what's going to actually be the factor that moves us to action.
It's more so an awareness of what's happening, gathering up information that's going to actually make the change so great, intro into kind of next steps to take. So I would encourage anyone to check out this article. But they list out questions that you can be asking yourself, like when does your bad habit actually happen? How many times a day are you engaging in this habit? Where are you, who are you with? What triggers the behavior and causes
it to start? And so even just simply tracking, very similar to how we approach our personal finances from the start of just tracking where's my money going, how's it being spent?
Who am I with?
What happened just before it? All these things are so interconnected, and if we can remove some of those feelings emotional baggage around it and just be curious about ourselves, the our own researchers, if you will, gathering this information, it's that information that's going to fuel and inform the next steps after you've tracked all of these things, and you can look back on that with that curious eye and think, okay, then what can I do? What triggers this? How can
I eliminate those triggers? What's the Q craving reward? What can I be doing instead? Just before this habit might be triggered? How can I replace it? What would be something that's effective? Where is this beginning? What does this tell me about myself? What is it that I'm trying to avoid? Are there other coping mechanisms that I'm going
to feel better about? And all of these things, all of these questions will move us towards growth where we're not going to fall into those first three habits that we talked about in that first article. We are more equipped once we go through this process to combat some of those other ways that we might be tend We might tend to pull in that direction, but we can be more intentional as a result of asking ourselves this and paying attention and replacing, not just eliminating.
Yes, you know what will never replace or eliminate, and that I have missed so much.
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 bills, butfalo bills, bill claim. This is the bill up the week.
Hey, Dan and Jail, I have a very small, but sweet bill of the week for you reguarding eggs. I, like many Americans, have not been able to find eggs that cost less than I don't know, eight to ten dollars a dozen. So I was shopping at my local big box store and I wasn't completely floored that there were no eggs left that weren't the very very high natural whatever variety, and I just wanted I just wanted eggs,
some large eggs. I saw one cart and left of eggs kind of lurking in the back behind the price tag at dollar ninety nine.
Open them up. One of the eggs was cracked, and.
I thought, you know what for dollar ninety nine, I'm just going to get eleven eggs. So I get to the front, start to check out, and I tell the cashier like, ah.
You know, he's very sweet, and I say, oh, I this.
Was the only one left.
I ken't believe I'm buying eggs that you know, has cracked egg in them.
And he just kind of laughed.
And when he ran across the scanner, I saw they rang up four forty nine. So I said, oh no, this must have also been in the wrong place. But you know, I'm still desper for eggs.
I'll buy them.
And he just laughed very kindly and said, you know what, because i'll give them to you for that, I'm going to take off more too. He changed the price of those eggs to a dollar forty nine, and it was just it's just a really nice day, and I just went through those eggs very slowly because I was just so grateful to have a dozen eggs. And yes, I even use the crack one for a dollar forty nine. All right, thanks, Jen and Jill, have a great day.
Oh my gosh, Katie, your eggs for a dollar forty nine. Hey, what a relatable and sad experience. B congratulations, your kindness got you a discount, and that is fantastic. Kindness always wins.
Sometimes it doesn't, but I love it.
When it does. Wow. In this community, kindness always wins, even it's not monetary.
Oh that's so true. Jen.
You know what, I don't think I've ever heard a story of an egg negotiation, but I love this. I don't even know if you intended to be negotiating, Katie, but that's the way that I'm interpreting this story is that you took your cart and of eggs and you negotiated it down to a dollar forty nine. You negotiated with kindness, And what an amazing bill. And how interesting that something like that can really just shift the course
of a day. I'm so glad that you had a great experience with this cashier that you even use the cracked egg. I hope you didn't get sick, but well done. Yes, well, we love hearing about deals.
Yes, and it is I mean eggs. Man, they have had their fifteen minutes this year, for sure.
All the people who have been raising chickens are like, say, this is why.
Yep, your one thousand dollars investment has saved you money in the long run. But I have been using So I'll make a baked oat meal like almost every weekend, and it calls for two eggs, and this year I have been going down to one egg and one flax egg. It works flax a flax egg, and I could do two flax eggs. I just kind of like to split the difference. But it's a tablespoon of ground flax seed,
two tablespoons of water. You mix it up and let it sit for a few minutes and it gets a kind of a gelatinous consistency and it works just like an egg in baked goods.
So you've got some great tips, Jhen. You should start a podcast thank you about having babies.
Thank you. Maybe I will.
Sometimes I will replace eggs with apple sauce. Yes, another the apple sauce is any cheaper than eggs.
Vegans are having their moment for sure, because they're like em, No, no eight dollars eggs for us. No, we've been we've been living this life that is, and that's what we got out of this Bill of the week, and well done.
If you all listening, want to submit your bill, If you're a vegan having your fifteen minutes, or you're a chicken farmer having your fifteen minutes, or you are just out there slighing like Katie negotiating your eggs at the checkout counter, we want to hear about it, or just any other podcast or any other bill related to anything related to bills. We keep it Lucy Goosey, visit Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill. We are here for it, and now it's time for.
Your own.
Well go back, Chack shelf.
I hope you've been saving those intense sound effects for me. Ah, just still like.
You've been missing missing my aggression.
Yes, I am excited for this lightning round because I had an immediate answer, and I've heard Jill's answer was also immediate but has changed. But we'll see. Do you want me to go first? Or you you need time to think very one, please go first. All right, So the question is what's a recent habit you had to replace and how did you do it? So for the first six weeks of my new son's life, I ate frozen waffles every morning for six weeks?
Is that it's now holean? Can I can I pause you in your story? You go to interject? Was there any shame in that? Was that an active choice that you felt good about?
It was not a choice that I made intentionally. At first, before I went to the hospital, I filled up my freezer with food because and just easy food, and waffles were the first thing to go. It was my treat for making it through the night. I got through the night because I knew waffles were in the morning. It was that was a real thing. I literally was up several times a night, but I'm like, in the morning, I'm making waffles in the toaster.
Yesm shrag.
Yes. So that really got me through the first few weeks and then just became a habit. It just became a habit every morning for six weeks. And at that time, I'm like, this is not a treat anymore. I need to redirect this. So I have replaced it with eggs because I have an endless amount of money at my disposal, and so I have been eating egg cups and breakfast burritos. So like you know, turkey bacon and eggs inside of tortilla. That is literally my breakfast burrito. Two slices of turkey bacon,
an egg, and a low carb tortilla. That's my breakfast burrito. It's not fancy, but I love it. Or like an egg cup each like muffin tin has one egg and a like an apple, an apple, a chicken sausage, a morning chicken sausage. So that is what I have replaced my waffles with.
But that's work, and you might not have been able to.
I was not weeks right, and no meal plant them. So like on Sunday, I'll go through a dozen eggs between making my egg cups and my breakfast burrito, and I'll just bake both. So like I'll do six eggs, whip them up, put him in the egg cups with the chicken sausages, and then the other stix I'll put into a glass baking dish and I'll put all those in the oven, bake them and then they're there for the week. So it's not that much work because I still my son's you know, almost like just nine weeks old,
so is he's still very tiny? No, I mean he's huge, he's a chum, but he's, you know, compared to regular sized humans tiny, right, and he still wakes.
Her other babies' size, he's right in the pack. But yes, oh my god, so well and how interesting.
I think what you're saying is bringing up such a good point. I think sometimes we can identify this has now become a bad behavior, what a behavior we want to replace, where it was a habit that.
Was intentional to begin with.
So it was almost as if, you know, when we talk about Q craving reward and one of the ways to replace a habit is to give yourself some sort of reward, And what's that going to be? And it sounds like that was the response to a previous larger issue of sleepless nights and how will I get through this sleepless night with a good attitude doing the things that.
I need to be doing.
Your reward, which made sense at the time, were waffles, And now that's kind of turned into this coping mechanism habit whatever you want to call it that, now you want to replace, and I think that will probably that cycle will probably keep happening about.
And I replaced it with something just as delicious and just I mean almost just as easy to make because in the mornings, I literally just pop them into the microwave and they're good, very quick to prep I'll prep them when I make dinner on Sunday night. That's when I throw the eggs in the ovens. So I've been doing that for a few weeks and it's been great, and it has been like an even replacement I just made.
So I was saying, how I made like an oatmeal bake every weekend until I gave birth, and I've in those two months. I've just made my first one again this past weekend. So that was something I really enjoyed. That has been too much work up until this point, and I probably still am not going to make them every weekend. Just this weekend was a you know, a good I found myself a thirty minutes of time to do.
So I think it just highlights that it might be for some it's a bad habit, for others, it's a fine habit for for some seasons of life, it's okay, and then other times we want to shift it. So I think it really your story in this is highlighting just the permission there and to just focus on one thing at a time. Before it was sleep and survival. Now it's okay. How can I feed my body a little bit more healthy sustainable foods.
And it's why I don't like using the term bad habit, because long term eating waffles every morning is a bad habit. But for me, it was not a bad habit. It was just a limiting habit, and it was for intentional for a reason. And then when I decided that I didn't want that anymore, though I do still love waffles, I went through a lot of maple syrup. I my check book could not handle the amount of maple syrup I went through.
I had to switch to right, the same, same, same, like my parent, A bad habit.
You know, it serves me.
This makes me sound so like more PG, but like, honestly, I could have the same Jill and I could be telling the same stories. So don't don't get it twisted.
Okay, Jen has encouraged me to not eliminate what I was the only thing I could think to offer to you find folks listening to this podcast, and she's encouraging me towards vulnerability.
And here it is.
I do like to be authentic and I'm not ashamed of this, and I am a work in progress now. I have been on a journey of what I feel is an okay amount of consumption of alcohol. I have no problems with alcohol, like as far as the way that I view it or the way that I engage
with it. But there are times that I can kind of ebb and flow with Oh, I would like to be abstinate from this thing for a time, and so I would say more recently it's been I don't know, it's honestly, I think I've heard from so many people through the pandemic how alcohol consumption went up a little bit, because what else are you going to do when you're sitting at home and working from home, And not that I drank while I was working.
Still have some standards around that stay tuned, though, and.
I think just there were times where I went months without consuming alcohol and then I was like, I enjoy it though. It's a fun thing to do out with friends and we've got people visiting. So anyhow, all that to say. More recently, I've just been trying to limit how much I'm consuming, keeping track of what that is. I never will have more than one or two drinks like on any given day. I'm not I hate the feeling of being drunk. I just enjoy a nicely crafted
cocktail or a glass of wine. But even still, I don't want to do that every day. I want my body to be able to get nutrients. And so anyhow, I've gone through seasons where a glass of wine or a cocktail almost marks the end of the day for me, and realizing that, okay, this might have become a habit, this kind of ritualized behavior. It's how I'm marking the movement of one of you know, maybe work life into
personal life kind of a thing. And so I have worked on replacing that with something, realizing I can't just not do this, I'm going for something in the fridge, and so I've replaced it with either tea or.
Something I've really been enjoying.
Honestly, I know this sounds so silly, but just like iced lemon water is so refreshing to me as we're getting into the summer month, So that has really worked. But also I'm not abstinent from alcohol altogether. So there you have it. Like there, I'm trying to hold the radical middle in that even as I see all of these people moving towards abstinence on all things is the key to well being, I think for me, there's permission for that to be different while also identifying what's going
to be best for me. And can I replace some of this with enjoyable bevy bevyes enjoyable non alcoholic bevies.
Yes, I mean I too enjoy an alcoholic bevy and I've been abstinate from them for nine months.
So yeah, being pregnant kind of forces your hand in that regard.
Yeah, it's the worst. So I could say the same thing, but no, mine was waffles. But to each their own.
We just love food and drink, folks. What more can we say?
And that's going to be I think a lot of people is one of I mean, probably you should probably work on one habit at a time, and probably the first habit is going to be something food related, and so know that we are with you on that. Sometimes you replace cheap waffles for very expensive eggs, but sometimes you replace expensive alcohol with really inexpensive lemon water. So look at your habits, pick one and start to replace it. Know that you will not do it perfectly, just like Jill.
I'm not doing it perfectly, but I will say though, as it relates to spending, because there is an intersection here, you know, especially when it comes to food and alcohol. One of the shifts that Eric and I have made in the last few months is not buying alcohol out, which might not be everybody's story, but for us, that's a big expense.
Is alcohol out.
For us, we'd rather and we used to like do bartending events and that kind of thing so we can make really enjoyable cocktails, so we do that at home. The other voice that we made is to not have all the different types of liquor on hand and feel like we have to keep stocking our cabinet, but choosing one. So right now we've chosen. We're just gonna have gin on hand, and that has helped to cut down the budget.
And when the gin's gone, that's it.
When the gin moved on the next until the next I don't know, month or whatever. I can't tell you exactly my timing on all of that, but making ways where it can be connected to some of these financial decisions and then creating some of those limiting factors, removing some of those triggers, putting some parameters in place.
That is also helping our finances too, which is great.
Well, that was a fun one. And follow up on the Lightning round. Still limiting my alcohol consumption, which is great. I did do dry January, continuing it on into February. Eric's able to just use whatever alcohol we already have in the house. But we're also doing a February No spend challenge, so of course purchasing alcohol is not on the list, so we are just finding alternatives. It's not deprivation. I've been really digging some sparkling water.
Yeah you have. You have been in on that, uh huh.
The La Croix Lemonchello is amazing. I'm on some key line right now.
Yeah. I have still broken my habit of eating waffles every morning for breakfast. I have moved on to overnight oats. I do overnight oats most days, and eggs and bacon. You know, I'll prep that on Sundays, do that a couple of days a week. But yeah, I am definitely eating healthier than I was when we originally recorded the episode and man follow up to the bill of the Week Katie Eggs for one forty nine.
Yeah, could you imagine remember those days?
Wow, it just brought me back to a sad space. It brought me forward into sad spance.
So this wasn't even that long ago, but it has quadrupled. And you know what, that's why we still exist, so that we can keep telling you the best ways to spend even when the world is going crazy all around us and eggs are six dollars, it doesn't. Yeah, well, thank you everyone for being here for listening. We hope that you enjoyed this episode, and we also love reading your kind reviews about the book. That's right, we wrote a book by What you Love Without Going Broke. It
can be purchased wherever you buy books. And for those of you who are reading it and loving it, you're leaving such kind reviews like this one from Samantha Saint amand it is five stars, says this book is for you.
Buy what you Love Without Going Broke.
Is the ultimate guide to help you figure out a system for your spending and finances that works for you. The method that Jen and Jill lay out in This book is so versatile. It's a budget guide for those who love budgeting. It's a how to guide for managing spending for those who hate budgeting.
It's for folks making minimum wage and for folks making six figures. It's for high school students their first job and retirees. It's for single households and parents with six children. Whatever your life or financial situation, this book will help you figure out how to buy what you love without going broke. This is really amazing.
It could sound from this or review that the book is all over the place and doesn't know itself, but part of the reason is because we are sharing foundational principles about how to spend well and that they are very versatile and can be individualized to your life. Season than giving an exact how to or blueprint or exact math with money, We're giving these foundational concepts that if you can take them, really grasp hold of them, and implement upon them, they can.
Work for you at any stage of life. Yeah.
Absolutely, Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute leave a rating and review on Spotify or Apple. If you have purchased the book or read it from the library. Please take a minute to leave a review on Amazon or good Reads. It helps us so much, and it helps potential new listeners and readers know what our stuff is all about.
See You Next Time by Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
So the book isn't just for high school students. It's also for high school students. And I couldn't stop you.
You were on ron, but you really got it. I really emphasized going.
Somewhere, and then you made a you made a sharp stop, and you went somewhere else.
Liten.
I don't read the reviews before we are recording, and so you don't necessarily know where to put the inflection, you know, So no reprats, no take backs. It is for high school students.
Like high achieving, high performing, that kind of high for sure. Yeah, definitely be all kinds of high school students, but also just regular high school students, you know, without any highness.
We do hope that you read the book. Yeah,