How To Cut Back On Emotional Spending with Leslie Tayne

My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are airing one of our personal favorites that happened to be very popular with you guys as well, with Leslie Taine talking about emotional spending, not just negative emotions, but also positive emotions. Any spending we make that is emotionally charged, Yeah, and usually that's a lot of our spending as well. Learn relearn with Leslie. This was one of my personal favorite interviews. I really enjoyed Leslie, so

excited to reshare it. Yes, but first a sponsor opposites attracting. We're not sure exactly how true this is or if there's actually any evidence to support this claim, but today we're leaning into the saying and the concept that opposites attract like salt and pepper magnets and I don't know what else, what else attracts that's opposite and today we've got another opposite attraction for you, debt payoff and the holidays.

They usually don't go together, but we've got the Debt Free Christmas Workbook for you, all about how you can combine debt freedom and the holidays and get through this season without going into debt because you don't need to. You don't need to get more debt while you try and work out the holidays. So Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Christmas Get yours. Yes, it's free. Did we mention it's free? It's a free workbook for you. Love that. So if you love spending money, who doesn't, We don't.

Actually we love the things that money can provide us to an extent, but a lot of times we think we love spending, and a lot of times those cases are emotionally charged. If that's you, which we think that's probably more like you, even if you think you love spending. This episode is great, but we also have a few others you can queue up, including episode one how to

Identify and Improve Spending Habits. So this takes emotional spending but then also talks about a few different types of spending an addition to that, and then episode one fifty six how to avoid impulse spending. So again, emotional spending is just a type of impulse spending. So those are very popular episodes. And one fifty six and whenever we talk about spending and spending habits, those are always popular episodes. So queue those up to listen to after. But first

we'll just focus on emotional spending. Back to Leslie, Leslie, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. I'm glad to have you, and we're super excited to talk about emotional spending. I can't believe that we haven't talked about it more. But it is something that people ask about a lot or have like a lot of trouble with. So this is going to be a really great conversation and hopefully people will leave having a little

more power over their emotional spending. Leslie, let's get right into it. Can you define like emotional spending, like what it is? What it is for you? Sure, emotional spend thing, you know. I think I think you're right. I think a lot of people don't realize that it's actually happening to them. But emotional spending is usually a tied to an emotion. You're doing it for a particular reason other than a necessity. So a necessity you have to go

to the supermarket and you're buying food. But emotional spending is really tied with some sort of feeling and you're motivated to make a purchase as a result of a particular feeling. So and sometimes with emotional spending, or most of the time with emotional spending, there's an after feeling as well, sometimes either an emptiness or a feeling of

guilt or remorse. So there's an emotion when you're going to make the purchase, an emotion when you're making that purchase, and then a post emotion that's all tied to it. So it's a very emotional experience. M I like how you've delineated that that if you're purchasing something other than necessity. I think when I first heard the topic, I'm like, yeah, I don't I don't know, I don't know if I do that I'm hearing you're describes like, Oh, I buy things all the time that aren't for my life, so

this is good stuff. Yeah, it's something that I have to think about as well. Am I an emotional spender. You know, I'm so caught up in you know, I do this for a living, so I'm very very focused and aware of my purchasing and spending and budgeting and money. So I have to really think, you know, is there a piece of me that might be an emotional spender when I'm understanding the definition of it. You know, not

everything you purchase is a necessity. It's okay to purchase something that you want, but the question is what's the reason behind that want and is it something that's trying to make you feel better? Yeah, I love it because I only think of like typically emotional pre buying, like if I'm treating myself because I'm celebrating like I'm happy,

or if I'm stressed. But then I don't think of like even when it's you know, mindless, there's still emotions that come um during and then especially like after so much guilt and shame when you make a like purchase out of budget or or all of those. And I just I like didn't really think about parts two and three of the spectrum. It's very there's a lot of

subconscious um impact. There's a lot of things that are going on when you're making those purchases that you're actually not aware of because at the time of the purchase or when you're going to do it, you could actually talk yourself into it. You could. Your mind can justify anything. It can justify any purchase a reason, you know, why you're in that place to begin with. You know, I always thinking like, why do want I want to go to a mall. If I go to the mall, I'm

just gonna make purchases. So I try to think about, you know, what would be my motivation to go to the mall. But I could justify why I need to go to the mall. So your mind starts to justify why it is that you're in the place that you're in, why it is that you're going to make that purchase, And a lot of it really is subconscious and subconscious feelings. So the whope point of the emotional spending is to become aware of why you're doing it and what the

motivation is. And if the motivation is genuine, you know it's something that you want, then it's something that you want. It's not necessarily an emotional purchase. If someone I would imagine all of our listeners right now are like Okay, is this me? How do I figure this out? What would you say about ways to identify the emotions that are triggering the spending, so ways to identify the emotions

not being not in the moment. So don't look at yourself like right if the second you are say you're you're listening to this and you're on the way to make a purchase, Now is not the time to start figuring out why you're doing what you're doing. Look at the past kind of go back and look at past purchases and say to yourself, so, why did I buy those shoes or why did I make that purchase? Was that purchase to celebrate an achievement? Did I feel stressed

on that day? You know, try to take a step back and analyze previous spending and that might be able to provide some insight and the reasons behind it, and you can start to think about, well, what was I thinking before that, and what was I thinking when I was there? And then how did I feel after I made the purchase? And was it something that continued to make me feel good or was it something that was

fleeting after I made the purchase? And that's a really good way to start to identify the triggers in those purchases. Oh I love that tip. It also makes me wonder about even keeping a log as you go, like not not to identify everything based off of what you're buying right now today, but kind of marking down, okay, on this day, here's how I was feeling. Did I buy anything that day? I wonder if even like journaling, that kind of thing would be helpful for somebody to identify

what their triggers might be. Totally, journaling is a great way to identify emotions, period, and there's so many benefits to journaling. It's there's so many benefits. But if we're looking at it from an emotional spending perspe active, if you start journaling what you've been doing, then you can read back. You can go back and say, look, what's

happened that day. Maybe it had an interaction with a family member that was negative, or you had a very stressful day at work, or you know something else was going on that you may not be so conscious about at the time. But when you take a step away from it and you can go back to say, your journal which really does help job your memory as to what's gone on. I mean think about our lives are so busy and there's so much information being shot at

us all the time. It's hard to remember what you were feeling yesterday, the day before, even a week before. So if you journal and you start to write down the events around you're purchasing, you'll be able to identify

some common denominators and some commonalities in your purchases. And by doing so, you'll then be able to see and become aware that there's something that's triggering you to do that, and then you can I. Once you IDENTI, by that, you know you're gonna feel so you're gonna feel like a weight lifted off of you. But that journaling is super important gives such perspective, I think to be able to look back. We think we're going to remember what has happened in our lives, but reality is we don't.

I don't remember what I ate two days ago, similar to what you're saying, Leslie, so and and then being further away from that experience can help to bring new perspective and realizations and self knowledge. Right. I think you make a great point. You know, when we first started talking, we were talking about like what what you do over the weekend, So you might talk generally about your your experiences over the weekend. I did this or I did that,

but are you really talking about the feelings? And when you're journaling and you can write things down in the moment, and you can relive those moments again in the future really without having to call on your memory to do that, because there's there are so many things that impact our thought processes in our mindset, and you would look back in your journal and see what you were thinking at that time, which could be very different from what you're thinking today, and that could just be a week or

a month or a couple of months. Even think about our thinking and our thought process January and February and how that's changed dramatically March, April, May, June and so forth. Yeah, which is why I think manually tracking your transactions when you're trying to get control of your spending is so important.

And then you can just add this one little extra thing on top of it where you're like, okay, these are kind of some standout things that happened today, and then once you are identifying patterns, you can look back on over weeks to see like how these patterns are going out what's happening. So if you're already manually tracking your transactions, this is just like a small extra step that you can do to like get control of your spending.

And it's like not that hard, just like do you know writing a couple of sentences before you go to bed at night makes can make so much difference. Absolutely, you know, identifying your biggest and your most consistent what we call spending triggers, is super important because once you know that spending trigger, you'll become more aware of them. You'll stop and you'll think before making the purchase out

of an emotion and not really the necessity. I love the whole person approach that happens here, Like I'm getting this visual of having all of your expenses listed out on a document as well as your emotions and how your day when how intertwining which we are, like we are whole people and all these aspects of our personhood intersect and if we could get closer and closer to making those connections, my goodness, will we be a healthier

person for it. But what an interesting concept. My mind is being a little bit blown thinking about at like my budget and my journal the coinside, But how amazing would that day. It's very empowering. Actually, So if you if you include your journaling with your purchasing and you're budgeting, he'll become so intertwined that you know, it'll become second nature to understand. Okay, so I'm making this purchase. Now I understand why I'm making this purchase and how I

ended up where I am in the first place. What's motivating me to get where I am? Again? The motivation. I keep going back to that example of going to the mall. But you know, sometimes I think, you know, um, so there's all these off I'll give you a good example. So I'm looking for a new office space right and there's office space around this big mall here on Long Island. I'm like, I don't want office space over there because I'll be too tempted to go and shop during lunch

or you know, there's there's like department stores there. I'll be thinking, oh, I should be going in there having a sale. But if I keep myself away from it so I know what my triggers are, I become aware that if I see it then and I visual and I'm visualizing it's in my face, then I'm gonna want it. So if I keep myself kind of away from it and I get an office space in an industrial part, likely just but that kind of example is just you know, that's my kind of trigger. But for you it may

be something similar or different. The fact pattern is slightly different. But if you could be aware of what makes you trigger by knowing why you're buying what you're buying, it's

so empowering. Yeah, and you don't I mean, if it seems kind of overwhelming to commit to a lifestyle like this, you could just see like a financial journaling challenge where you spend like ninety days I'm going to track my transactions and like journal about them, you know, emotionally and see what happens, see what you can get, and just doing it for like a month or two or three months, and then even that complicated, Yeah, you could just be like you could do an emoji next to it, like

on the feeling, Yes it could. You could have a fear emoji. You could have an anger emoji, you could have a sad emoji. Like just put something next to it that identify is that and and something that you identify with that could be that identifiable emotion. So it doesn't have to be overly complicated. Where you know you now, you're you have in your head, you're visualizing, well, I should I lay on the couch and have a freud like session about why I'm doing this. No, you could

just put an emoji next to the purchase. Yes. Yeah, most budgeting apps will have like a note section for a transaction. So yeah, it's great. Yeah, what are some alternatives too emotional spending? Once we start to identify these patterns, So, some alternatives to emotional spending are um, you know, you have to find again, once you identify the ways in wait which you are triggered by this, you can find

ways for healthier outlets. So you could say to yourself, all right, so i'm feeling I'm feeling this way, you know, and I'm feeling and I'm tempted to go purchase because I'm feeling that, you know, I want to make myself I'm angry. It's something that happened, and this will distract me from being angry. That's one way to distract you. But there are other ways to distract yourself from a particular feeling. So you could take a walk, you could

do yoga, you could exercise. You know, a lot of it is really being powerful within yourself and your mind to understand once you know what the trigger is, what you could do to make changes to that. And I think that's what's super important. It's really that self awareness, peace and trying to get yourself in a place where

you know that. I mean, again, you have to talk to yourself and you have to have conversations within yourself, which is super normal and okay, and you're saying, this is how I'm feeling, and this is what I would want to do to make myself feel better. What are some other things that I could do to make myself

feel better in the moment? And um, talking about it is really important also, So find a friend or a significant other or somebody that you can have a conversation with and say, hey, you know, I'm having a tough day and I'm feeling like doing you know, this is what I'm feeling like. You know, do you have a few minutes can I just talk it out with you? And you know, if you could, if you could get it out and talk about it, you can write about it.

That's again another really good way that the process of the additional process of journaling and being really detailed and that are the great ways for you to um distract yourself and find healthier solutions than just purchasing. I love it, Leslie. I think what we're really talking about here is coping mechanisms, and there are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and spending unnecessarily on things that we don't want that then leads to that guilt and shame that you were talking about.

That's that that would be on the unhealthy spectrum. Uh, certainly, Yeah, there is a spectrum to it what we could choose to do to bring about care for ourselves or what we think is going to be caring. But I think you make an important point here that I just want to highlight that you need to find healthy outlets. It can't just be I'm not going to spend. We do still have to deal with that emotion and we have

to replace that spending with something else. And you've just given a fantastic list of verbal processing, writing, self talk, having some of these things prepared, which I believe we Jen Jen and I talked about in our self Care episode. Just creating a whole list ahead of time. Again to highlight your point, Leslie, of we're not doing this in the moment. We are doing some of this back end work ahead of time when we're not in that emotionally

vulnerable spot. So to be able to have a list already prepared of I know that getting near water helps me, or I know that walking outside helps me, or I know that petting my animal helps me, whatever it is. Sometimes those things are hard to access when we're in the moment. So already just having a simple list of like, these are the things that I do to care for myself, so that when we might be like, Okay, I'm angry, I'm upset, I'm overwhelmed, to just look at the list.

There's not a whole lot of thinking that needs to be involved there. Just let me pick something off of this list. What's low hanging fruit, what's accessible to me right now? Um, And you've given us a great start, Leslie. And I think I think that you can also as you buy things, if you start to say to yourself on a regular basis, whether you're whatever, you're purchasing necessities or wants, say yourself, why am I buying this? Determine

what your wants and needs are. And if you start to get in the habit of doing that, you'll start to start you'll ask yourself, under every circumstance, what am I doing? And why am I purchasing this? And when you start to get into that habit, and a habit forms in about thirty days if you can be habitual about asking yourself that question every purchase, and I mean from gas to for your car, for everything you purchase.

So if you start to do that, you start to become super conscious of your purchases because I think that you're so right you can't and you're in the moment and you're having one of these feelings, it's very hard to turn that off. So if you start ahead of time, when things are nice and calm, and you can be consistent with the process, then when the when the peak comes, when the emotions hit and things go a little more awry, you'll be in the same thought process where you're asking yourself,

do I really need this? Is this a want or a need? You know? Why am I doing this? And I think if you start treating yourself mentally ahead of time and consistently the self care on a daily basis, you'll find that you know that you won't have the same spikes in these emotional needs where you're creating a where a situation is created that's forcing you into an emotional spending circumstance, which really, as you've identified, turns out to be not not great anyhow, we we've got that

after shock, emotion of guilt or shame or in my situation, I usually sweat and just like you're always sweaty candidate with my credit card for something that I probably shouldn't have just bought, so you start to not be able to breathe in your hyper that didn't have that compounded the difficult situation and now any deodorant. It's very is

The spending in general is emotional. Okay, there's so many go on spending anything because we're a we are always talking about budgeting where and you know, depending on the generation you come from, you know, money is kind of a newer topic. Honestly, Like in the past, money was

never talked about. So think about how repressed thoughts and feelings had been about money and spending and now we talk about money so much more and budgeting in your credit, your credit score and not getting into debt or how to stay out of debt, and those topics are so

they trend all the time. So now it's right in front of you about what is almost a judgmental perspective, if like I shouldn't spend, I shouldn't have credit card debt, I shouldn't have bad credit, and so there's feelings of guilt,

beings almost thrown at you or created. And then those feelings are you know, internalized from coming from older generations who never talked about it, so you didn't grow up necessarily talking about these things, and now you have media and discussions about it, but you're not really sure where

they should go. So I think that topic of money, spending and budgeting is a very emotional top topic for people to begin with, because I'm not really sure how to compartmentalize what the feelings are that you should have

during the process of purchasing and managing your money. It's it's a great point identify where have we come from, even not just what's our personal history with spending in the emotions attached to it, but also digging even deeper to what is my family's financial story and how does that play into the way that I approach purchases or finances or budgeting and it's it's all intertwined and we

can dive as deep as we want. But that I was in a store yesterday and the girl, Um, the sales girl said to me, Um, my family comes from the idea that if you don't have the money, you don't buy it. So it was so. And I think that goes right to that point where you know your families, your your parents and grandparents had had had discussions about money. Whether they didn't have discussions, that's still that's still a discussion, if it was quiet or there was comments made like that.

And that's imprinted on you from a very young age. And when it's imprinted on you, unless you become aware of that as an adult, it carries with you and it does create the motivations and the underlying subconscious behaviors that we have when it comes to our view of money. Our ideas of money are are spending habits. So it

is something to be explored. You know, sometimes you might find when you're doing the journaling process and asking yourself while you're buying something, you might actually find that some of it does relate back to your childhood, that some impacts of the thoughts and um judgments about money maybe

impacting your emotional spending today. Yeah. I was actually just thinking, like when when I was trying to think of an example of like an emotional spending that might be like really common, my first thought was, like, if I had to go spend time with my mom and we were if this was like five years ago, um, and I had to go spend time with my mom, I would have to stop at Starbucks before every time and like get a latte to make myself feel better because I

was just so like anxious about it. Okay, so that is emotional spending. That is emotional spending. It doesn't have to be that you walked into a store and you spent you know, a hundred dollars on a pair of shoes you shouldn't have. It could be emotional spending on a four dollar a cup of coffee exactly. And then

like how do we combat that? Like figuring out Like figuring out that's what you do, like after a few weeks of recording it, and then it's as simple as figure ring out, Okay, what's something else that can like soothe my anxiety that doesn't cost money but gets me the same emotional result? Um? Yeah, or better or maybe going to counseling and fixing those things. But and that is a way and that is a way out too. I mean there, therapy is is not a new concept.

It's it's very um open and talked about. And therapy is a wonderful tool to help you become insightful and become aware of these things and then learn what those triggers are, because sometimes these triggers are much deeper and more difficult to deal with just by yourself. And you make a really good point going to therapy. There's nothing wrong with it at all. It helps you understand yourself better.

And if you can help understand yourself and find healthier ways to manage what those triggers are, you're gonna be and just gonna be a healthier person all over. Knowledge is empowering. What we're talking about here of learning ourselves better, it does empower us and helps us to continue on

that trajectory of making good, healthy decisions for ourselves. And I love what you're saying here, Leslie about even the underlying message of it's not about guilt or shame for however you were raised or whatever you your typical approach to money is. But this this message of let's just

learn ourselves better and care for ourselves better. And and so with that, if we find ourselves at a place of Okay, we just made an emotional purchase and we know it, like we we've discovered all these things and now we know it. What what would you recommend to somebody who can identify that, Okay, I just did this. How do I recover now? So? I think the first step to recovery is not being hard on yourself, is not beating yourself up and saying, I'm not a bad person.

I did this, I shouldn't have done this, and you know, I'm either going to get in trouble or yelled at or or i'm or I'm yelling at myself in my own head. The first step is to be kind to yourself and say, Okay, I'm really proud of myself for identifying that I just made an emotional purchase, and say and and you know, I try to keep everything really positive and say because it's baby steps in the recovery process.

And once you you say to yourself, you know, I made this purchase, I'm not a bad person for making this purchase. I'm aware that I did it, and I'm really proud of myself for identifying and now what can I do? Now is the time to write down why I'm feeling this. And now you've taken step number two in you know, writing it down, and you say, I'm really proud of myself that I actually took out the journal and wrote this down, and now going forward, I

can make changes going forward, and you can't. You can't go back necessarily and fix the past. You can learn from the past, and you could say again that I understand why I did what I did, and I think really being kind to yourself and saying, if I'm feeling stressed about going into a family event, you know, the holidays are coming up again, and it's you know, it's an unusual circumstance that we're going to be managing the holiday season this year, so that may be added stress.

So this might be the time of year that you actually start spending more. So now going into it, you could say, all right, now that I've identified that when I see my family, I'm really stressed out and I tend to buy more or your um spend more during those times, So what can I do to make myself feel better about it? And I think that's the next step is to really get that understanding. It's really about you.

You know, just because somebody else has a feeling or is soothed by um a resolution to this problem doesn't mean that you are too. But again, be don't be hard on yourself. Be very kind to yourself and forgiving and understanding and understand that the recovery process is sometimes one step forward and two steps back. And I often tell that to my clients when we're resolving debt in general, that you know, we're going to take a step ahead, but you might find we take two steps back. But

we'll get ahead. But in the beginning things are a little bit more challenging because we need to fix some of the issues and I am fixing some of the issues requires that identification process and it's all emotional. It's it is all emotional based. So um that's that would be my recommendation. And really being kind to yourself, even learning to be kind to ourselves is such a novel concept.

It's interesting that you say that. I actually work as a counselor in my day job, and it's something that I often say at the end of sessions to clients

is be kind to yourself. And and then I thought it necessarily an easy thing to do because there are our biggest critics, and we're inside absolutely and we're criticizing ourselves so often and again, if you can I identify that pattern, you know, because you might actually find out the emotional spending once you bought and now you're beating yourself up, that the patterns there, that you're almost making it worse because you made the purchase and now you're

angry or disappointed with yourself and you and you start to almost um for lack of better words, beat yourself up for it and be hard on yourself. So you could get in your head and say, you know what, I'm identifying that I have this problem. I know I have this issue, and I'm not a bad person because I have this issue, but I want to be kind to myself. I'm gonna be kind to Leslie today and say, Okay, you made this purchase. It's not the end of the world,

but let's figure out how we could fix it. Yeah, it can become a vicious cycle if we're not careful, and it happens in the debt part too. I have that a lot of my clients in debt because what ends up happening is obviously there's a lot of reasons why people get into debt. Emotional spending is one of the reasons why people get end up in debt and have a lot of credit card bills. And I sit with my clients when we can see each other face to face, um, and in the past, they're crying. It's

a very emotional time. They're very hard on themselves, they feel very guilty, they feel there's so many emotions as part of that process. And to understand that that that it is emotional, I think is an important piece of the puzzle too. That you can't go into this with the idea that you're going to be detached from the process, because emotional spending is just that it's based on feelings. Yeah,

I was thinking um last weekend. Actually, I was like, every financial decisions or question has two answers, a math answer and an emotional answer, and you just have to decide which answer is right for you for each specific question. And I think we always feel so pressured to go with the math answer, what answer makes the most mathematical sense, and we don't consider the emotional answer, and we almost sometimes feel guilty when we choose the emotional answer when

it's not the math answer. Right, If that happens a lot of the debt that world, because it's the world is very emotional, and that's where a somebody like myself who's looking at it. We call it business decisions is business versus personal feelings on these things. But someone who can really take that emotion out of it and help you um make good decisions. You know, when you start to think things through clearly and you remove some of the emotions. It's hard to do that on your own,

it really is. Yeah, we're not saying be a robot and take all emotion out of everything, but to ensure that we're not making decisions purely out of emotions. That just perpetuates a problem for us. And that's the basis of emotional spending. It's just done because through emotions without a thought process. And well, what I think we're talking about is putting a little bit of the thought process

into it so that it's not a hundred percent emotional spending. Yeah. Yeah, it's like our brains are are the friend that, like, we see a problem, somebody's having a problem, and we try and help them because we think we know what's best and then it actually ends up hurting them. That's our brain. Our brain is trying to take over and like make a decision for us to try and quote unquote help us. But like in the end, it's just not doing the right thing. Sometimes the brain is not

always your friend. Do you know what is your friend and is always the right thing and is always the combination of personal and professional best balance? 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 paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bill bufo bills, Bill Clinton.

This is the bill of the week, Leslie. Every week we invite our guests or listeners to share with us their favorite bill, and we know that you've got a good one prepared for us, and we're gonna pretend it like the first time we've heard it. But okay, let us know, alright, So you know, I really gave us a lot of thought as far as what bill, because I deal with bills every single day. I did was

so many bills, um mine and others. So in the beginning of covid UM, the beginning of the quarantine period of covid around March, there was so much unknown um that was going to happen here in New York. We were faced with potential lockdown and then ultimately locked down and the shutting down of businesses, and that was a really challenging time. So I took out my credit card bills from my business and what I did was I line item every single purchase in the last several months,

reoccurring purchases. And what my bookkeeping staff and I did was we highlighted it. We called every single creditor on that list and we asked them what programs did they have, what were they offering at the time under the circumstances. And we called the credit card companies as well to ask them if there were options in reducing the interest rates, because even though you might pay your bills off every single month, there with that unknown situation, you might have need.

You know, we're thinking what if we needed to finance something. Where would we be at if we needed to um take bills, if there wasn't cash flow coming in, how would we manage the bills? So what what we did was we went through each one of them and we were shocked. I'm personally shocked at how many of these vendors were willing to give us three months no payments, three months for free, reduce our interest rates. We turned

off programs that we didn't need at all. We realized at times we were being double billed on two different cards for the same game service, and we were able to get a credit back. Um believe it. At our facts service, we have multiple facts lines, so there was some confusion on the bills about you know, the the facts lines, so it shows up as a fact, so

we check it off. But when we called up and we asked them to itemize the expenses, we had them also tell us which bills they were charging us on and it turned out they were on several different credit cards for the same account, so we were able to get a refund back. We saved. I have to tell you, I can't. I don't know numbers of what we saved at the top of my head, but we've saved a lot of money just by going through those credit card bills on reoccurring payments. I mean, as a business, you

have a lot of recurring payments every month. But I could tell you that that exercise was one of the best things that happened to us during COVID because we saved money, we consolidated, we reduced our interest rates, and we got rid of things that we just didn't need anymore. Wow, it wasn't unfortunate reason for that push, but it sounds like such an excellent exercise for businesses or individuals to

do on a regular basis. COVID or not. Absolutely, I have to tell you that COVID had so many that the circumstances surrounding COVID, while unfortunate from a health perspective, the reality was what a step back, What a fabulous opportunity for a step back in figuring out what's important financially, you know, family wise and medical wise as well. But just from a financial perspective, it was a great opportunity to really take a look at rebudgeting. I mean, we

re budgeted several times. We cut out expenses that we just didn't need. We trimmed down that budget to almost you know, what could I get away with that was bare bones billing wise for us, if we needed to be if we were going to be in a position where we were going to be shut down, who knew how, we had no idea how long we were going to be shut down for and what the cash flow situation was going to be like. So it was COVID really from that perspective, was you know, on a positive note

of COVID that was really a good experience for us. Well, yeah, and there's still more like things that individuals can take advantage of as far as like payment relief and lowering interest rate. It's like, no, this is not over. So if you have not done this yet, this is the perfect time to do it. Absolutely, you should be going

through your bills. My recommendation is going through your bills on a regular basis and taking a look at every single month what it is that you're being charged or remember that some of your your bills are quarterly or yearly,

like your homeowners insurance or or car car insurance. There are things that come in quarterly where yearly that you may not have seen yet that that March, you know, that March, April, May June period where things are really challenging that didn't come up, and now in later part of the year you might be finding that there's more expenses. So this, the COVID situation is from a financial perspective, is far from over, and in my experience, it won't

be over for years. And there are opportunities right now to take a look at your expenses, you're billing, you're spending whatever is on there, and look at it and decide what is the most important. Call up these creditors and ask them, Listen, I've been a good customer. I've been I've had your credit card for ten years or I've been paying every single month and I never missed a payment. What options do you have? Can you lower my interest rate? What can you offer me that would

um entice me to stay on as a customer. They don't want to lose No one wants to lose business right now, so they're gonna find creative ways to keep you as a customer as well. So and if you're having challenges and your um your cash flow isn't what it was, call up for balance billing and call up your utility companies. Don't be afraid to ask, I negotiate everything.

Call up every single creditor and just ask them what they're willing to do the word that anybody could ever say to you is no, and and no doesn't always mean no. You could always say are you sure there's no other option? Is there anything you know? Just ask the right questions. Yeah, no sometimes means you call back and you talk to someone else. Yes, I love it.

I love it. Well. If you have a bill for us that you want to share, please visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill and leave us a bill and we will play it eventually on the air. We have quite a few right now that just because you haven't heard yours yet does not mean it's not coming unless it's just unless you just call them say who do this? Which I do like those bills too. Yeah, number get weird messages. It's time. Sometimes it does come up,

but I don't know. Now it's time for the round? Do do? Do? We just this? We yell at each other, We yell at our guests. You're from families, Yeah, I think you're good. I take it. Okay, Then you could say that I can't manage. Okay, welcome to the family. Um, we are doing something like a smidge unique for this lightning realm because I found this article from Bustle and it has a lot of gifts and it's very fun. And it's titled seven Signs you might be emotional spending.

And so we're going to go through and play which emotional spender? Are you? A new game I came up with this morning and we're playing it now. There's no winners, but there's also no losers. Yes, So we're just going to go through these, and then when we come across one that we are, we're gonna like ding ding ding and then say why. And you could do that in your car or wherever you're listening to this from and just be like ding ding ding and then give us

your example. You're one step closer to self knowledge. Yes, maybe in the Frugal for an community you can let us know they're on Facebook, all right. First one, you are the instant gratification spender. Everyone likes new things, but if the feeling of instant gratification is a big part of the picture, you might be emotionally spending an attempt

to inspire happiness and excitement. You might not otherwise feel no One on the call, all right, Because emotional spender number two, you shop to escape ding ding ding ding ding. So shopping is fun, whether it's online or in a store. It can also be pleasurably distracting to look at storefronts and compare items, But if you do this regularly as a means of avoiding thinking about other pressing issues in your life, it might be a sign you're spending is

a band aid. So Leslie tell us your example. So I find myself like at night, have to work, like since we're really not going anywhere these days, I find myself on the computer, you know, just like looking at

like online shopping. So I spent the time on Amazon, and I'm like, and then I get these emails that say the top things to purchase in different categories, and I get all excited about these top things that I'm I realized that I'm escaping, and then I'm distracting myself from everything else that's gone on and I and I'm so hyper focused on these items and reading the reviews and going through it. I'm like, I'm like in another world.

I love it. I yes, I have to um escape the house while Travis, my husband sleeps, like during the days on the weekends because he works the nights. And so when I physically escaped, like I choose to go to Target or to al d or somewhere else that like is pleasurable for me, and just like walk around with my son. So I love Target. I have a question for you, though, So when I get into Target, I don't know if you have this experience. As soon

as I get there, I feel my brain drain. As soon as I walk in, I feel like there's a sucking machine that sucks out my head. And I walk in, I go, why am I here? And then I, of course I need the whole car. I don't need just the little card. I take the big card. And then I started walking around, I get super distracted in the aisles and I'm like off and running and then all of a sudden, I have a whole cart full of

things I didn't even know I need it. Yeah, they do that on purpose, Yes, And I have gotten a lot better because I've been doing it for so long. Like I can go I can go into Target and I'm not bragging, but like I can go into Target for what I went in there for and not come out with anything else. I mean, I like don't want to brag, but like I could do that. This is a side note too, but I have a fifteen dollar gift card to Target. And I'm not joking. I've been

there twice and I can't spend it. I know that that makes me just like off the charts, I'm an outlet, but can relate to all of our listeners. But it was such a phenomenon. I'm like, why can't I spend? And what I think I realized is I did want a lot of things, and a lot of them were more than fifteen dollars, And it's like, oh, I want this. I want to make this a really special purchase, Like I want whatever I spend this fifteen dollars on to

be like really meaningful. I don't just want to buy like a toilet bowl brush with it, and so I just can't do it exactly. Yeah, Oh my gosh, I love it all right. Number three is you're the competitive spender. You feel like your purchases are always competing with others.

And it's got this sweet Laguna beach gift like throwback if if you're old like us, where Elsie is trying to buy a golf club and who knows why, but I can only imagine because she's buying stuff to fit in with a crowd or give the appearance that she's

of a certain socio economic status. Know, sometimes I think that that's me because it's not like I don't feel like competition with other people, but I do often look like at what especially online and things that have brought to my attention through social media, I'm like, oh, you know, I saw somebody was carrying a really nice pocketbook the other day, and I'm like, oh, I really like that. I want that. But it wasn't like I didn't feel

competitive with this person. I'm just thinking, oh, I like that, I might want them too. Sometimes I feel like that my dream car is a Is Alexis r X three fifty, which is my dream car after like once my children go to college. So I'm like, you know, oh my god, I can't even imagine. I can't imagine. Uh So, but yeah, that was like I want to. I wanted to purely status, like there's no reason I need Alexis. But girls, yeah, yeah, see you could justify those pert you can get it used.

We had that very car and we got it. You did, yes, alright, so spender four you buy stuff to make a new you. So there's nothing wrong with making changes in yourself, nor is there anything wrong with using things like clothing or hairstyles to express yourself. But it's worth noting that if you're unhappy with the aspects of yourself, buying a quote unquote new you by getting a whole new wardrobe, moving apartments and so on is not the answer to dealing

with the real questions you have about yourself. Amen. Sorry, Jill, I don't think you're on this list now that you've said the gift card thing. I don't know if we're going to find you number five. You find yourself buying and returning a lot the buyer and returner. So return policies are great and they're there for a reason. But if you find yourself frequently buying items and then returning them, it might be a sign the purchases are being made

on impulse. No, I find that a deterrent, frankly, because I don't want to be involved in the returning process. Same work. But that's happening now with COVID. You can't try things on at the store, so you got to buy it and return it. That was I think I

just told you that story. I had to buy jeans the other week and I couldn't tread them on in the store, so I told the person at checkouts like, I'm going to buy these and I'll be right back for bears, and then came back and returned to sorry, yeah, you should take that home to your COVID environment at home and then bring it back to the store. Right. I was like, I'm just going to the bathroom. That's it. I'm just going right right down the road. Um. Six.

Is spending money in a way to celebrate yourself or the treat yourself spender? Yes, it's totally normal to want to go out and celebrate when good things happened to you, like a promotion or finally achieving a personal accomplishment. However, if you feel like you constantly need to spend money on a new item or experience as a means of treating yourself, it might mean that you're using spending as a way to connect with yourself at a big emotional distance.

Wow deep, All right, Yeah, I don't do this often, but when I do, yeah, it's definitely a treat myself situation. And also that is related to food, like I often want food to be a treat. And also you all know, if you've been listening for any amount of time, I really don't like cooking. Uh, it feels like a waste

of my time, the entire process. So yeah, I will often just okay, this is fine because I need food, which is true, I do need food, but then like I take it a step further and like, oh and I need it to really taste good and I need it to be from this nice place, and yeah, I need to treat myself. Yeah, and we did that. We just recently celebrated three years of being debt free and spend money getting a nice dinner. But we did have a gift card. So the gift card bit like happen,

it is worth celebrating, Like I'm not. I don't think that there's like and on my birthday. I so my birthday recently happened. And every year it seems that my husband just like takes me shopping, which I really don't shop. You've you've just heard. But on my birthday, I just feel like, Yep, today is the day, if there's gonna be any day that I spend money. So I do go a little hog wild on my birthday. But then that's it, and that that that's my day to do

what I want. I mean, really, I bought necessities. I did but I enjoyed the process of that and treating myself in that way. Yes, but those are positive feelings, so it's not like you keep any negative feelings, and it's not on a regular occurrence. Your birthday is one thing. It's if you move the budget and you went crazy and you put yourself in debt for a year by buying on your birthday, then then a different outcome. But I think super smart the way you have. Well thanks

guys for this, like pep talk. Or if you start spending like quote unquote for your birthday, like three months ahead of your birthday, then at that point you're probably not spending for your Usually my husband does buy me a gift and then he takes me shopping and I'm like, how much is this birthday costing us? Too? I said that to my husband, I said, what are you doing for my birthday? Yeah? Okay, last spender. And this one's probably my favorite. It's uh, you spend. It's the stressed shopper.

It says you spend when you're stressed about money, and it has the gift where the guy is like, it says, bacon is on sale, so we get it all and he's just throwing all the bacon into his cart, which is obviously if you don't have money, you shouldn't buy all the sale bacon. Um. But yeah, so this one particularly tough to deal with. If you're stressed about money, it can sometimes feel like you're so far in the financial hole that you don't know how to handle it.

So what do you tempted to do satiate the unhappiness or stressed by going out to dinner or upgrading your TV? Quote unquote why you can because you're unsure what the future holds. And like, this is word for word what I felt while before we started paying off debt, Like I thought, I'm so in the hole it doesn't matter, so I might as well buy what I have with the money I have now because eventually I'm gonna be

in the poorhouse. So a lot of that is not an uncommon thought process with clients, and what we we actually try to be very specific because when clients come to us to resolve their debt, they often say, all right, well, what's the difference If I'm going to resolve it this way, I'll just max out the card or I'll I'll take cash advances off my car. What's the difference if we're going to renegotiating and consolidating or refinancing it or whatever we're gonna be doing with it, and we have to

say do not. From this point on, there's no more spending. So even though that is that is a very common thought process that I'm have so much debt anyway, what's the difference if I add to it? It's like putting blinders on, Like it's so much that I can't look at it. So now I'm gonna know nothing about it and just keep going with how I've been going. And yeah, so I've put a band aid on the bleeding or the stop them stop it, yeah and lead out. Yeah.

Oh god, well, Leslie, thanks so much for coming on the show. This was such a great episode. This was so fun, so wise, um and where can people find more about you what you've got going on? So thank you so much for having me. This was fun. And you can find me at my website which is teen law dot com. You can also find me personally on Twitter at Leslie h ten E s Q. Of course on LinkedIn and um Facebook, Instagram at teen t a y an E law group, and of course you're welcome

to um, call me, send emails the uh. We have a great newsletter that we send out on finances and budgeting and lots of fun tips, so feel free to reach out. Yes, you are everywhere, so wherever wherever you are listening to this from you can find Leslie somewhere. So thanks again for being on the show. Thank you. Is your emotional spending type still true? Jen? I am in a little different place in my life than I was then, so I don't so much shop to escape anymore.

I think if I'm going to purchase something to escape, it's definitely my getting coffee at the coffee shop to work that uh that I do once a week, so that's kind of my escape. So yeah, it's it has changed a little bit. I'm in a different season of life. I'm about to be back in that season. But that's another story. How about you, it's probably still the same. I really, spending isn't my go to to cope with emotions. It's not saying that everything is healthy in my life.

But if I were to that would probably be the circumstances would be the more treat yourself approach. But spending is not typically what I turned to. I guess that's good since we host a podcast about this, but we all have moments where we will rely on this, so it's always good to have a reminder. Even when you start to overcome more and more of these triggers, you are never immune to all of them, so it's always good to have a reminder. So thank you for listening

and getting that reminder. We know a lot of you are trying to control your spending so that you can pay off debt, and we actually have a monthly challenge club for you, just for you, and we offer accountability groups and those monthly money challenges. We want to congratulate one of our members for a big win. That's Katie, she says, goal accomplished. I earned a hundred thirty nine dollars and sixty eight since this month just by dry

having around during my free time. I hate sitting at home, and my car gets good cast mileage, so win win. This was during our debt payoff challenge where everyone had to make at least a hundred dollars extra from a side hustle to put towards that. So way to go, Katie, well done. Congratulations making money while driving around. That's great. You get to see your neighborhood, more to your community. Yes,

so thanks again for listening. If you want to check out our monthly challenge community had to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club to see what challenges we've done and what we've got coming up. See you next time. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Syrian. What is the last thing you bought? Jen? Oh, I just purchased groceries. I picked up my groceries this morning. Yeah that makes sense. Oh,

yesterday so fun. This was very fun. Actually, it was a long night, and so I got up in the morning because my body does not allow me to sleep past seven am. And Kay and I went and tried a new bakery, as I often tried to hit up like a local bakery on the weekends most weekends, not every weekend, And so we tried a new one and we actually ran into our friends Ash and Neo Mayah and their two kids. They were also trying for the

first time. Neither of us communicated that we were going to this bakery and we showed up there at the same time. Was it good? It was it good food? It was fantastic. Yeah, oh yeah, I love finding new places. Yeah, I have a goal to try a chocolate croissant from every bakery in the city. Oh, that's a great goal. Chocolate croissance and a drip coffee, but I got an Americano yesterday, so yeah, or a cappuccino. Those are my usually my go to So that's a fun treat yourself.

But it sounds planned, So I don't know if you can qualify that under emotional spending. It is typically planned, but I don't always plan where, like which bakery it will be. That is still spontaneous. I like flexibility, but you can only have flexibility with some sort of underlying structure. Otherwise just more I couldn't agree more. Yeah, how about you, Jill.

Lunch just now bought lunch. We have no food in the house currently because my mother in law has been here and y'all know she cooks for me when she's in town, so I haven't kept much on hand, and then we're about to go away on vacation, so it just hasn't made any sense. But then we needed lunch, so we went and we paid someone else to make that for us. Good tree. Did you enjoy it? It was very good. Yeah. We went to uh spot that serves up Asian Street Fair, you know the spot jenl

You guys love that place. So it was good. Well, we've got a friend visiting. She came in, she flew in this morning, she flies out tomorrow. It's like a quick twenty four hour or so. I also had to feed her there. You had to show her the spots, you know, to food, every food, buying money on his food, and you too, bakery, groceries, lunch and so what we spend on. We love it. See you at dinner