Episode three forty six, how to put good money decisions on autopilot.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and deliver your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast.
My name is Jen, my name is Jel.
And so many of the things that are quote unquote busting your budget actually come down to the spending decisions you are making, whether that is the small day to day stuff or the big things that you've decided to spend money on. You're housing, your transportation, even your food. And so we think one of the keys to saving money and spending better is putting good money good spending decisions on autopilot or being efficient with how we make these spending decisions. And so that is what we are
talking about in today's episode. It's another one with just your girls, thoughts, no articles, just what we got to say. Welcome using the brains. Welcome to another one in our heads. This is one where we're gonna use our own brains. Welcome, not the brains of other people.
It's what you're here for five and a half years in and we're gonna do what we want. It's all about efficiencies, simplifying.
If you've been listening to the show for a long time, you don't want us to use our own brains. You like it when we don't use our brains. But if you're new here, maybe you'll like this. We'll see.
This episode is brought to you and us by pilots, auto pilots, pilot episodes, pilot gas stations, helmsman plane pilots, the real leaders of important tasks, and speaking of leaders in their own spaces, shout out to Matts Flights, who puts out a daily newsletter updating you on flight deals. Those are the kinds of daily updates I want, just personally. So if you want to be on a plane that's piloted by a real pilot for a reasonable amount of money, check out mats flights dot com.
They did not pay us to say that Matt is just a really nice guy with a really great service that we wanted to tell you about, So Matts flights dot com.
Yeah, pilot gas stations did pay us, though. Pilot gas stations are like, yeah, you do need to know about Matt's flights. Yeah, that's also false. I like to lie, but I won't lie when I'm using my brain. Don't worry. When we get into the real episode, it'll be nothing but truth.
Oh wow, all right, Well, if you like these episodes where we are we're talking about the things that we are going to be writing about in our upcoming book, I believe spring twenty twenty five, we'll see, No, we won't see.
It will be early twenty twenty five, will contractually obligated TVD. But we are yeah, yeah, I should not say that so nonchalantly. It is actually happening. But we've done a few other episodes like this where we are kind of not like, not spitballing. But we wanted to actually have on record episodes where we are talking about the things that we're sharing in the book because we thought we
probably owe that to the community. So episode three forty two, The Importance of Honoring Your Season, that was the last one we did. Episode three thirty seven, how to Adopt a Frugal Mindset, and episode three p thirty What is
the Radical Middle and how to of It? Those are just those are a few of the ones that we have done that we are just the two of us talking about what we have been sharing on other podcasts on stages in front of you know, small groups of people at parties and talking about whether there might be a stage all of that where there might be a stage.
So yeah, let's let's get into talk about this topic on efficiency. So so far, in addition to those episodes, the actual principles that we have covered on different episodes, or what values based spending is, what the radical middle is the importance of curiosity in finding your values and refining your spending, the importance of recognizing your season, and then how to prioritize values and financial goals when your
income is limited. And efficiency is the next of those principles that help you live out and ca carry out this idea of values based spending. Because while it can be great to talk about and it's a great concept, where the rubber really meets the road is in how do we actually make decisions to spend money in alignment with our values.
I think the important thing to highlight to about all these episodes that we've done that are a little bit more of our original thought, as much as it can be considered original, is that these principles we're highlighting that are in a girl and foundational to a frugal mindset just build upon one another. They're not necessarily steps or a linear pathway that you have to go in order, but they all do intertwine really beautifully. So this is when we're choosing to talk about it. But we can
implement efficiency at any stage. We love talking about the heavy hitters when it comes to our finances, and so when we talk about efficiency, this particular topic, this particular principle, what we are recognizing is that the definition of efficiency is producing desired results without wasting materials, time, or energy. I love this definition. I mean, thank you, Miriam Webster, but I think that it's a helpful caveat to say that it's getting a desired result without wasting those items.
But that doesn't mean that you're not utilizing those items. So getting a desired result with materials, time, and energy, but not the waste of them. And I think so often it does take refining for us to recognize what is the most efficient way of doing things. There can
often be multiple pathways. One might not be better than another, but there could be a more efficient pathway, especially when it comes to the disc visions we're making around our finances, and so the ways in which that this kind of connects to values based spending is that we want to be able to conserve our mental resources so that we're not bogged down by decision fatigue day in, day out, moment to moment, when we could just be making one
or two spending decisions quarterly that actually make a massive difference in our finances rather than the daily decision of smaller purchases. Those do matter, But when it comes to efficiency, we're going to talk about the heavy hitters.
And you've heard us talk about it before and you'll hear it again throughout this episode. That that sheer willpower, which is what we're usually told is supposed to keep us going, or external motivation that enhances our willpower, those are not enough. We need to focus on the actions that we can do, and that is what we think
is most efficient. Efficiency is not productivity. Productivity is so hot right now, but productivity seeks to add more to pack in, while efficiency seeks to complete tasks faster with more ease. And you can have both. But we talk about values and prioritization first, not independently or as a step, but first so that you are aware of those and you know you're not packing in what doesn't need to be there, and so again we'll just reiterate what Jill
said is that these different principles, they're not steps. They can work independently of each other, but having an understanding of all of them will help you do the others better. But we try to put them in an order to where you can best understand them by reading or listening
to the prior principles. And that's a key reason why why prioritization comes before efficiency, because I think I heard somebody once say that action is not the goal, like to take action to do the next right thing like that sounds great in theory, but you have to know
if you're taking action in the right direction. That's the first thing is making sure that the direction is appropriate, and then you can determine the action based on your season and focus on efforts that you can control to get there.
To me, the goal of efficiency is less work, less time energy exerted, maybe more time for relaxation if we're going to be honest or whatever you want to do with that ergen where you're honest, productivity is how can you get the most done so that you can do more? And I just I like efficiency better for a lot of reasons. So amen, when it comes to our money, different ways of developing this efficiency mindset. Leaning into this principle,
we're going to want to look at automating first. Automating everything. I mean, why need to tether yourself to needing to remember certain due dates and deadlines and doing the actual manual work. We can automate everything as often as you can. This can include saving, investing your bills, even your variable bills. When it comes to your electric or your water. Most companies have an opportunity for you to automate bill pay.
It doesn't mean that you can't have your sights on it and know what it is that you're spending, or have an alert when that bill gets higher than a certain amount, and you're going to need to be needing to do some manual things if it is an unexpected
higher cost. But you can still automate all of these things, and then it takes out some of that temptation that could be there to not save on any given month or for just forget investing, whether it's a simple mistake of forgetting or an intentional error in choosing not to because you just want to go to brunch every weekend. I don't know, speaking for myself.
Brunch is fun. But so we hear automation, we almost gloss over it because it's on every single list of what to do with your finances, right, and we're like, okay, yeah, automate it. I've heard it before. But in addition to automating what you already have automated, like maybe your car payment, your mortgage, your rent, what have you look at ways to get creative, cultivating that mindset of creativity again, ways to get creative in automation. So one, this isn't financial.
But for me, I want to drink more water, and I will not remember to drink more water. So I have alarms on my phone set to go off every three hours that remind me when I need to finish the water that's in my bottle.
And that is true, that's not a lie.
Yes, I also have an app that kind of nudges me to drink water every couple hours, and you can choose to ignore those nudges. But this is a creative way that I have automated, and it's you know, yes, it's a little stretch of the word automate, but it is a reminder that I have automated for me to drink water to reach a goal that I want to reach. The goal is to drink more water, but it's an arbitrary goal. The actions are what I am looking at.
So I'm going to drink water whenever the alarm goes off. That's real action. That's something I can can measure and really train myself to do. So we want to combine this habit, this mentality of creativity and think of, Okay, what are ways that I can automate things that are outside of the box. And you will know what that looks like in your own life once you start to look at your recurring tasks, look at your schedule and all this. And we'll talk more about schedules later, but
in future episodes or chapters depending on where you're at. So, yeah, that's where we want to get this automation in, Yes, the tried and true, the stuff that can be automated easily, yes, but also getting creative in things we can you didn't maybe think you could automate, but there are ways to do it.
Yeah, that's where our routines and habits are going to come into place. The routine being a regularly established rhythm that you have a part of your daily, weekly, monthly, maybe even quarterly or annual rhythms. That would be what
we're talking about when it comes to routine. And there's a lot of things that we can make almost on autopilot because we've formed habits around our rhythms, and they almost feel as though they're becoming a bit involuntary because we've so trained ourselves that this is how we respond to this requirement task thing that has to be done in a way that is going to be actually most
beneficial to me. So those routines can create habits. Not every routine's going to become a habit, but like you're saying, Jen, we can be creative in what that looks like. So as a concept, whenever we can't just absolutely automate our savings, there are other ways when we can look at rhythms, routines, habits to create just a beautiful blend of we're not expending or wasting time, energy attention on this.
Yeah, So like the water is the routine or the habit, and the alarm is the automation. And so for things you can't automate, then you have to have these cognizant routines that hopefully will turn into habits. But you can start those routines with something automated, all right, So how do we know which routines to adopt, especially for our finances? So in life, creating routines for anything that doesn't require critical thinking is a good rule of thumb. You can create, Yeah,
routines keep your mind in autopilot. Hopefully there does take a little bit of cognizant effort. That's why it's not a habit. That's the difference. So, but you're not going to need to be fully mentally there to do it. So yeah, I mean, like for a child, brushing your teeth is a routine, we have a bedtime routine. As an adult, brushing my teeth in the morning is very mindless. But the actual like morning routine I have is not mindless. I actually do like put thought into it. But that's me.
My husband does not put any thought into his morning routine. He could, I think, sleep through it, and I think he actually does sleep through it. So what a routine in a habit looks like is going to also be different for everyone. But when it comes to spending, we want to look at routines first, before we think about habits. We want to create them for things that don't really
require nuanced thinking, but will require some forethoughts. So this could look like logging your transactions at the end of the day, budgeting or creating a spending plan at the end of every month. That's a routine. You're not going to just buy habit, make a budget, meal planning, and prepping. You're going to think about these things, but you can create routines around them. And really you can use the rule of like the eighty twenty rule. So it's also
known as the Pareto principle. It's a tool for prioritization, and it helps you identify the things that are going to be most beneficial. And I think we talked about this in the prioritization episode, but essentially eighty percent of the output results from twenty percent of the input, and that's the Paretto principle. And so you're looking at routines that can give you, quote unquote the biggest bang for the buck.
I think that's the term scientifically speaking.
Scientifically speaking, so so yeah, meal planning and prepping, I think hands down we can agree that that's one of those twenty percent routines that get you eighty percent results. Budgeting again, yes, logging transactions, I would say to customize it for you, I would say follow the big three rule. The big three in your spending are housing, transportation, and food. So when you are looking to create routines, focus on those first. Anything that can lower your housing costs, lower
your transportation costs, or lower your food costs. Those are the biggest part of the budget for most people. And if you can just start with your routines around one, two, three of those, then you're going to be creating routines that lead to habits that will get you the biggest bang for the quote unquote theoretical book.
And routines. You most likely already have some established rhythms and routines. I think with this first step that you're describing, genet can include a refining of that what's working, what's not working in the midst of that routine, figure out what's going to be the best course of action. That has gone through the prioritization filter as well as the efficiency filter, as well as the values based filters, but on all the filters.
So many filters.
Yes, we like it, especially when they can be easily adopted and practiced. That's the thing too. We don't have to be perfect at all of this, and you can decide what's the most important filter, but they all blend together well, so it's not like you've got eight sunglasses on to be able to see this thing clearly. It's the different questions you're going to be asking yourself and then that's going to lead into greater refinement of habits that correlate to those rhythms and routines. And this is
where creativity comes into play, and even stacking. We can have multiple habits playing into any one routine that we have, so we want to have a good understanding of what those rhythms and routines are. Then look at what habits can I be building around this that are going to help me. So you've given examples already, Jen of teeth brushing and water drinking. I know you've talked on previous episodes too about how you will stack by brushing your
teeth and tracking your expenses for the day. It's something easily that you could do on your phone and kind of baking it into what is already happening in my day. That's efficiency Some might call it productivity, and maybe it's a little bit of both, because you are getting a lot done, but at the end of the day, it's so that you do free up time not just to do more, but to do less. And we love that. So you want to go back to some of those
prioritization questions, apply it here. What habit can I create now that are going to make other things easier or unnecessary later? And it of course can be baked into all of the other examples you just gave of logging, transactions, budgeting, meal planning, prepping. What habits can I put around my meal planning, shopping prepping. That's going to be a representation of twenty percent of my effort, but give me eighty percent of my output.
Yeah, and yes, again, productivity and efficiency can be intertwined, but they are not the same, and so we always want to make sure we're being efficient and not just productive for the sake of productivity. But something in like the stacking, So tracking your transactions while you're brushing your teeth, the actual start of that action can become a habit, even if the tracking of the transactions is still something you have to put like some mental thought into it
still has to be a routine. I start with my credit card, and then I start with my debit card, and then I go to my spouse's you know. So that's the routine of tracking the transaction. But the actual taking out the phone, sitting down at the computer, sitting down at the graph paper with the pencil, that can be habitualized. So I know, sometimes it's difficult to decipher the difference between the habit stacking and the routines and stuff.
But the actual practice of tracking a transaction or making a budget would be a routine.
You know.
For the spending plan, we start with what's our income, We go to our foundational expenses, we go to our financial goals. That's the routine, sitting down to do the action, getting over that. Something at rest stays at rest, something emotion stays in motion, going from rest to motion. That's what we want to habitualize. So that's the goal, is to create habits that put your spending decisions on autopilot. So how do we do this in the real world?
What should these habits look like in the real world with our spending and so this could look like when you are about to make an impulse decision. You just stop for thirty seconds and you have an awkward pause before putting something in your cart, or anytime you put something in your cart, you ask a question and be like, what is this going to do for me? Or how is this going to grow me? Or you know, something
like that. We haven't come up with the questions yet, we're still work shopping them, but we'd love to hear your ideas. What questions you ask yourself. Maybe they'll make it into the book. So, but taking the pause, that is the habit, and hopefully the question is also the habit, or having the habit of when you're online shopping instead of instantly buying, putting something in the cart for thirty days before buying it. That's a habit that you can build.
When you're in the grocery store, we have the routine of making a grocery list, and we can habitualize the action of starting it, and then when we're actually grocery shopping. It's not going to be a habit to stick to your grocery list. I'm sorry, but the way you grocery shop can become habit. We either avoid the aisles that we are most prone to impulse on or we can make a habit of doing our shopping on an app so that we don't even enter a store to make
impulse buys. So you've got to look at your life. Where am I prone to impulse spend? And this is where that ninety day transaction inventory can come and clutch. Where am I prone to impulse spending or spending outside of my values? And how can I break up that trigger, break up that queue so that I can create a routine that is better. Okay, I create a habit that grows me instead of mindless habits that just suck the money out of you and you don't even realize it's being drained.
And you may have some habits that are great they don't need to be shifted, and others that do need to be shifted. But being mindful and aware of any hab that we want to break, we are going to need to replace it with something else aimed at the
desired outcome that we want to see. And so I love what you're highlighting here, Jen that it doesn't have to be everything all at once, But look at where are you experiencing the most hemorrhaging of finances or spending or decisions that you don't even remember making and somehow there's boxes showing up at your door. That's going to be a great place to tackle. That's another efficiency and prioritization topic, because you don't want to start where maybe
someone else is starting. If you're fine in that area, if you're doing stellar at meal prepping and cooking, but it's not so great when you're scrolling shopping sites in the middle of the night, then that's where you want to begin. So figure out what it is going to be for you. Implement your own creativity with this principle of efficiency in mind, with this concept that just being busy is not an indicator that you are doing well
with things. You don't even have to spend a lot of time on this just being smart intentional wise about the rhythms you're looking at, the habits you are breaking and forming or shifting, and the impact that that's going to have on your finances in the short term and long term.
Yes, So one last thing that I wanted to touch on is we always are making habits. You can choose to make intentional habits that lead you in a direction that you want to go, or you can live by habits that are made of circumstance or season or energy level, and you can let those habits guide you to wherever they're going to take you. Either way, you're our brain is making habits. So we've talked a lot about making habits, but how do you break the habits that your mind
has created? And I love to follow James Clear's Atomic Habits, his very easy four step model for making and breaking and so the best way to break a habit is to replace it with a good one. But you can get a little bit more granular on that. He's got four laws for behavior change, So of for making a habit, and that's make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy,
make it satisfying. But honestly, you could just like simplify that to make it obvious and attractive, because the easy thing is going to be attractive and obvious and it's satisfying. Like if it's attractive, it's going to be satisfying. So just think about the first two and so you can inverse those two. Break a habit. And so the first one is you want to hide it, So whereas if you wanted to build a new habit, you make it obvious. If you want to break a bad habit, you make
the queue or trigger hidden. So if your habit is going through the drive through at Starbucks, then you find another route to wherever you're going so that you don't pass by it. If that's not a feasible option, then
you take the Starbucks app off your phone. You make it very hidden, as hidden as you can, and then make it unattractive instead of attractive, so you can either And this is where we toll a line of like, so for Starbucks drink, you can maybe do research and how much sugar or calories or in your particular drink, or how much money you're spending in a year. Some
of that can be like shame based unattractiveness. So I would kind of geared towards I never like to gear towards like negative though, Like in everything, you do need to be aware of the negative and positive of your choices, but I don't like to focus on the negative. I like to focus on the positive. So something else that's attractive that is going to make this bad habit less attractive.
So again prioritizing. I love coffee, but if I'm getting takeout coffee every day, I'm not going to be able to save as much money for the all inclusive resort I want to go to, So which one's more attractive? But the all inclusive resort thing is a little far in the future. I might say, I want to go to a nice restaurant this Saturday. I have it planned,
I have it in the budget. But if I am buying all the Starbucks all week long and I'm spending my twenty five dollars there, then I can't get the appetizer that I want at the restaurant I'm going to on Saturday. You toe the line. You kind of have to. You can't think too far ahead. You kind of get to look at the near future on these ones. But yeah, breaking a habit, hide it and make it less attractive,
and then take the opposite to build a habit. Make the queue obvious, i e. Automate the queue and then make it attractive.
So, and all of this is just an example. We would still encourage you to start with the big three food, housing, transportation, the food that's most expensive, your particular spending decisions that are really causing some unnecessary strain on your finances, that's where you're going to want to be looking because again
that's the efficiency thing. If it is coffee, great, that's an example, but more often than it's probably going to be bigger decisions that you're making, whether they're regular or not. So often that's where we're going to want to give our first focus, and then we can get into some of these smaller line items and that sufficiency.
But I get that it can be easier to start with the smaller things because they're more obvious, and so if you are not, if you don't know all the ways to start in the big three, just like with anything, you want to start with things that are easy, but you don't want to stay there. So looking at your transaction history and you see a lot of coffee, start with that. That's going to be the lowest barrier to entry. But you can't stay focused on these six dollars decisions.
Once you've refined a few of them, then you have to jump to the big three. And coffee still is technically a food item, so it is still under food, but you want to jump to housing and transportation. But you definitely make food decisions more frequently than housing and transportation. But so be aware. You can start with the food, but you want to make those money saving housing and transportation decisions as quickly, as early as you can as you feel comfortable.
And you know what, I'm always comfortable with. It's part of my big three. But it doesn't cost me very much out It.
Is the big one, if I'm gonna be honest, it's the big one.
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 paid off your mortgage, Maybe your.
Car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Duck bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi, jillan jen. My bill of the week is that my husband and I recently went to a gala event to support a local nonprofit organization that donates to schools, and during the live auction, there was a pro sports fan weekend getaway package that started at twenty three hundred dollars, and my husband, being the sports enthusiast that he is, thought it would be funny to throw his paddle up, not thinking he was going to win, but he accidentally did so we now have an unexpected bill to go
on this trip, and I wanted to especially thank you for your travel hacks episode because I will be using as many as I can to reduce the cost of this weekend getaway. All right, thanks for all you do.
Have a good day.
Ha ha. Oh, this is the first time we've heard this long girl. I hope we're laughing with you. I do hope that that's what's actually happening here. This is a wild one, but you know what, Yeah, here's here. We're gonna look at the bright side with you. One, it sounds like you've been listening long enough and taking enough ownership of your finances that this isn't gonna break you. Secondly, you can you can rest easy knowing that this is not just getting you a weekend away, but it is
practicing generosity. That money is going to this nonprofit. So fantastic, well done. But a sports getaway package. I'm probably gonna need a follow up, and you can do that. If you happen to meet anyone named Bill. I guarantee you you will like one at a sports getaway.
There's gonna be oh yeah, you're for sure going to meet someone named.
A handful of Bills. But I'm I'm gonna need to know what this means, and yeah, feel free to tune into the travel Hacks episode.
I am envisioning men in a spa in like jerseys and football helmets, Like that is a sports getaway in my head.
They're at the spa with their helmets on.
They're at the spot, yes, or riding horseback with the jersey and the helmet. And I don't know why the fans have the helmets. It doesn't make sense. I don't watch sports.
But hopefully the money you have bid is going to cover your travel expenses. I don't know. We need more, We need so much more information.
So here's one extra hack. If you or your spouse has a business, pay for the donation from that business. And then now that is also a tax right off. Or if you itemize your deductions, you can pay it personally, but that could lower your taxation, saving you a little bit more. But yeah, I'm gonna need to know what a sport getaway.
Is like, because Lord knows, I will never be on one. We will never find myself on a sports getaway.
This reminds me of an episode of Bluey that I was watching last night, where the dad thinks it's funny to like he's acting like a claw machine for his kids to like get stuffed animals out of. And he puts a little block in there that says unlimited ice cream after dinner, and he's thinking he's gonna just hold on to this one with his other hand and the kids won't be able to like get it because right he's the claw and his daughters pummel him like tickling
and get the unlimited ice cream from him. And then he is thus forced to give his children unlimited ice cream after dinner because they hold the cube and it says the holder of the cube gets unlimited ice cream with no caveats, And Mom at the end is like, what did we learn from this experience? And I can see you in this gala saying what did we learn from this experience? That was the exact where my mind went. And so I hope that you will that you will share a follow up with us.
I think this is probably the longest response we've ever given to a Bill of the week. We're so in, we're so invested. This is going to be like a podcast spin off of what happens at sports getaways that are the result of bidding at nonprofit gala fundraisers. This is just it's so wild and we're so glad you called in because this is what reminds us that we have such good friends in this community. And please do
call again if you all listening. Happen to find yourself at a sports getaway and you also can answer what happens there? Or you are a person named Bill. You know how this goes. Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your bill clearly. This is what it's what we live for. And now it's time for the hiking round.
You can catch the follow up to that Bill of the week on our sports podcast, Helmet Honeys. Oh, I don't hate it A long time to think of. I don't really don't hate we are And the cover art is us in helmets and jerseys, uh in a spa. That's it. That's the cover art.
I think my head would be hot, but I would do it. I'd do it for the fans.
Yeah, okay, all right for the lightning round. What's one habit you can't leave out of your daily routine no matter what. I will go first, because I actually tried to leave this habit out of my daily routine and found that I could not because of the place that I am at in my life, the season that I am honoring, and it is coffee. I tried to take it completely out. That's not happening. I haven't slept a full night in over six months, probably longer because our
four year old also wakes up every night. He just doesn't require me to get up with him. So that's it. I have never been a person who needed coffee. I always just enjoyed it, like I could, you know, do a thirty day coffee fast no problem, and I can't right now. Maybe that will change when the house isn't always reeling from being sick. The cold lasts three days and the fallout of the cold lasts three weeks for
all the family to get through it. And that's what we've been just going through for the past several months.
So that's real. So you'll drink coffee now as an actual energy boost, like to wake you up, not just for the fun of it.
Correct. Yes, as soon as I drop off Atlas at daycare, I'll either go to the gym, come home, shower, make a cup of coffee, or come home and make a cup of coffee like I before I start doing work that requires cognitive function. I need it. I thought it was just a habit, and I thought I could just, you know, try without it, and I quickly learned that it is now a habit I can't leave out of my daily routine.
Yeah for now.
So for now, for now, I get it.
Maybe it'll get it, yeah, no matter what.
Maybe it'll go back. Jill yeap.
Y'all can guess that if you've been listening for a while. Chewing gum, drinking water, wiping my counters. I do those things, you know, the counter thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm realizing it about myself. I probably wipe my counters in my kitchen approximately five to eight times a day.
It's a life sure, that's not like a it's like a coping mechanism.
However you want to define it. It's it's something that happens daily that I don't think you could get me to leave out, no matter what the thing is. I mean, bugs anywhere are a possibility, but especially in Florida, you just can't. There's we got sugar ants right now, and it's not because they're finding anything, because Lord knows, there's nothing to be found here in this very sterile environment.
So there's there's partially that reason, like I don't want there to be any degree of food for animals to think there's something we found it. Come on, guys, let's invade right now. I think we just have shragglers because they found themselves here and they're like.
I don't know why I'm here.
I'm wandering in the desert. There's no food. Yeah, report back, report back.
Wow.
But yeah, every after, like I prep any food, I wipe the counters and sometimes during food prep.
Your counters are stark white, like there's no graining, there's no marbling, there's no breakup, like your counters are just white.
Yeah, which I wanted. I didn't want a countertop that was going to hide the dirt because I don't like that. I want to be able to see it. But there is the consequence to being able to see it, then you are you don't to doing something about it, And hey, that's I guess that's that's forcing myself like what Q can I implement where there is no other option? And my queue is I see the dirt, didn't hide it?
So yes, good, Well, thank you for listening. We hope that you've learned something about habits routines efficiency and that you are inspired to First subscribe to the podcast. Second, sign up for the friend letter at Frugal friendspodcast dot com, and you will be notified when we start pre sales for our book, which will happen sometime in twenty twenty four date tbd. And third was that third or fourth whatever step you're on. We love reading your kind reviews
on whatever platform you're listening to us on. We especially loved this one from a TOV ninety one titled Windfall Throwback. They say, Hi, Jen and Jail. Before I get into my mini experience with a Windfall, I want to start by sharing how incredibly important what you ladies are doing is for your ever growing community. I love listening to both of your soothing voices, but I also love the wonderful advice you give in a variety of ways. You speak to me in a way that makes me feel
like I'm the third friend you're talking to. So thank you for your vulnerability, you're honest, suggestions, and kindness. My windfall. When I was eight years old, my very frugal mom was seriously saving to take me on a dance trip to Europe. We did fundraising, I saved my allowance. Family members chipped in and one afternoon, my grandmother and I were walking downtown and I found a wad yes, way more than two crumpled up findes and not a cell
phone to be found. It was a tough year for my family with the loss of my grandfather, and that money allowed for some extra fun when we landed. Anyway, thanks for everything you do. Can't wait to tune into more episodes. Yes, so next step, leave a li lovely review like a tab ninety one did, and we will read it on the show and say thank you. I love that story. If you leave a story in your review.
Thanks for that kind review. Yes, yeah, and thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time. Google Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.
We are getting to a place where I think there's going to be a lot of episodes coming out where people hear Jen's alarm and you're going to know that the exact time we're recording. Every day, it's the reminder to go pick up her son. And if it's been there, then you know we're recording out two I know, but if they're not, you know, they probably are cut out.
But that's the only alarm I have noise on. I don't even have a ringer. My phone is always on silent. My alarms are always vibrate. But that is the one alarm because I need other people to know that something has happened. And yeah, has happened.
That's more important than your reminder to drink water.
Yeah it is. It is actually because I will get I can be and still pick him up right. I don't know how I'm going to get in trouble, but they have drilled it into me that I will be punished if I don't pick up my child on time, and and I will deserve it.
You know, aren't you a little curious to find out? No, not me, what happens, not me.
I love breaking rules, but I'm not about to break this one.
I respect that.
So it's because I love them and I want them to love me.
Oh good point, that's important. Yeah, yeah right, go get yourself right.
May