Reducing Food Waste w/Debt Kickin' Mom

see why as soon as she opens her mouth. She has a powerful story, great actionable tips, and you will be engaged every single minute of the episode. Mm hmm, yeah, it's it's just really good. And we're recording this intro after we've had the interviews. That's why we're so confident about it. But let's let's get into it right first. Our sponsors, of course, also brought to you by Basic. One of the best things we can aim at in our financial lives. Want to reduce spending, save some money

just by the basics. Get back to the basics, food, clothing, bills, really anything basic. We know we've reached the pinnacle of frugality when yeah, basic becomes a compliment. Oh man, yeah, you're basic. That's my life for sure. You know, it seems it seems like an insult, and then you realize, hey, it's the best thing you could say about a Yeah, Jack, Yeah, I live in a trailer. I'm getting back to the basics. Every time he brings some beans, I'm back to the basics.

Every time we bring kind to the pediatrician, he is always on the fiftieth percentile. And so we're just so thankful that he's so average. We're like, yes, basic, like us, we are so basic, yes, so vanilla. So so that ties in perfectly to this interview because Angela and her

family were just being basic. They were being super normal and over a decade, accumulated seventy seven thousand dollars worth of every debt you can think of because they were being normal, and they were able to pay it off on mostly um a single income for two and a half years and then the last five months two incomes. And so they have a fantastic story, and she's going to go into it more in her own words, but this is a story that everyone can relate to in

some capacity. And so I am I'm excited for her to share it with you. Listen up. Yeah. So, without further introduction, UM, here's our interview with Angela, debt kick and mom. Welcome Angela to the Frugal Friends podcast. We are so stoked to have you on. Uh. It was such a pleasure to meet you in October um at Ramsey Solutions, like in person, so it's going to hang out again. Yes, it was so nice to meet you and I'm so excited to be on your podcast. I'm a big fan, so we are, and we are big

fans of you and your YouTube channel. I love what you're doing, so glad to have you, and I'm sure listeners will enjoy what you have to say to You bring such a good perspective. Thank you. That is awesome. While this is great, I'm glad I can be considered one of the Frugal Friends. It's not that hard, but

you're in awesome. So for people that don't know about your debt free story, can you can you give us the rundown on that because I love your story and I think it's so many people are where you guys were and are feeling hopeless and you have You've just

given a story of inspiration to so many people. Oh well, thank you, and that means a lot, and that is why I continue to share it because so many people resonate because the fact of our story is that we were just very very very normal for a very very

long time, and that caught up to us financially. So um, I mean, I can, I'll give the condensed version, but they basically me and my husband got married pretty young, like I was twenty one and twenty three, and we were fresh out of college, and you know, we started a family really young, and basically our entire twenties was spent like having babies, playing house and going into debt, and we just I mean, the truth is is that

we got married young. We weren't making a lot of money, but we were just kind of doing what you normally do. You get married, you have kids, you buy a house. And we had no clue about personal finance because like most people, you don't really talk about it. You know, you may talk about budging a little bit with your parents. You know, they may teach you that money doesn't grow

on trees and whatever, but they don't. I mean, we just personally didn't get that upbringing where we were taught, you know, how to how to handle personal finance, and I think that that's so normal because most people I talk to don't even feel comfortable talking about personal finance, right, So, yeah,

so that's kind of that's that's our story. So basically, we spent almost a decade of our marriage having babies, being house poor and trying to survive off of one income because we had this family and we were just being like trying to just do what we thought was normal. Um, you know, you have you get a job. My husband was making not very much money fresh out of college, Um, got a job, started having kids. I wanted to stay

home with my kids. So we were living off of one income, and we were just always broke and always living paycheck to paycheck, and it was fine. We didn't graduate school with UM at this point, we didn't have student loan debt, so we kind of were just paycheck to paycheck, just managing. But slowly but surely, we started racking up that credit card debt. And then I'm talking over the course of like a decade, you know, an emergency would come up and we could never save money.

We just weren't disciplined. We didn't know how to live life on a budget. We couldn't have a really saved money, so anytime an emergency came up, we were using that credit card. We would get like a tax return and be able to pay it off, but then the next emergency would come up. And we just kind of lived this cycle. And then the biggest thing is when we bought our first house. We are from California. We don't live in California now, we live in South Carolina now,

but we bought our first house. We became house poor. Like we bought this house. It was just too expensive for us. We couldn't afford it. We're on one income, but um, we wanted it, and we wanted what we wanted now, you know, and even though we're paycheck to paycheck, Um, I don't even know how we got approved for our mortgage. Like I look back and I'm just like, this is crazy time, Like I don't get it, but we did. And that's when things got really out of control. You

look at the statistics. And this is why I shared this story because I talked about it and I kind of get embarrassed where I'm like, gosh, we were always so broke, but yet we kept buying things, you know, in our lifestyle. We never modified our lifestyle to live below our means, but statistically, like it's what is it like sevent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck like most

people live exactly that we were living for a decade. So, like I said, you know, we just spent our twenties having kids, growing our family, and getting into debt, and it caught up to us and basically we found ourselves where we could not make it anymore. We were like drowning in debt payments. It was so hard to live off of my husband's income because even every time he would get a raise and we'd have more income, somehow we managed to spend it all right, because we still

didn't know how to budget. We didn't understand how to budget, how to save. I mean, we understood it, we just when it practice it. We couldn't put it into practice. You know, you can write numbers down, but it's actually that is exactly right. Or we were just in denial, you know, about how much we were spending when we're tracking spending so many little pieces of it that we

just weren't doing. That seemed like common sense, and it is common sense, but we know the majority of people don't do that, and that's why debt is such an issue for so many people. And um, it caught up to us about after when I was pregnant with my third child. We were at probably the rough one of

the roughest parts financially. We'd always lived paycheck to paycheck, but my husband had a new job and we now we didn't have health insurance, and we ended up having two babies without health insurance, paying for it out of pocket.

And now we had all this medical debt on top of our credit card debt, our mortgage, just you know, the rat race, right, And at that time, I realized, like, you know, this life, this life of me being a stay at home mom and having you know, my kids in my house, we can't keep up with it anymore. And I realized I was going to have to in order to keep up with our debt payments, I was going to have to go back to work. So I started going to school. Well, my mindset was so like, Okay,

I'm gonna go to school. Well, how the heck am I going to pay for that? So I take out over the course of about four or five years of being a stay at home mom, and going to school at night. I took out forty dollars in student loans on top of like already thirty thousand dollars in debt that we had. I took out the loans so that one day I could make enough money to pay off that debt. You know, So now here we are, I'm

about to graduate. We have four small well I graduate, we have four small kids, and but now my loans are coming out of deferment. Still stay at home mom, I still have small kids. And the reality is just like what in the heck we have seventy seven thousand dollars of consumer debt on top of our mortgage, student loans, car car loan, credit card debt, medical debt, personal loan, like just all this stuff like and it just became like, I we can't even afford the minimum payments even if

I do work. It's like it's for nothing. It's just to pay for the debt. And this is going to be our life for the next at least debt gate of student loan debt, but probably even more because we're still not going to pay off our other debt. So it just you know, you can just see how it took time to get where we were at. It feels like so stuck, suffocating or hopeless. And I can just

feel people listening to this just nodding. I can see them in my head there in their car, and they're because they are doing the same exact thing, or they've done the same exact thing. Well, And I love how you call it normal. We were living normal lives. You're not talking about going to the salon every day and living a luxurious life. You're having babies and living in

a house. Yes, yeah, oh my gosh. And I've always said that, And that was part of my mindset too, is I was like, we don't live this extravagant life. We've always driven used cars like I don't. Well, I had a shopping problem. But it wasn't like a name brand. I wasn't yeah anything. It was very We live of what we felt was a modest life. But like you said,

it's life. It's just expensive, you know. And it was just all these things happening, um and yeah, I always the picture that I get is just suffocating, like just slowly the weight of it. The weight of it was, yeah, just suffocating to us, which can make us immobile, That can paralyze us to do anything about it, which then repeats the cycle. So true. So so what was the

breaking point? Yeah, so the breaking point and was we So this is there was lots of things that happened right over the years where I was like, we this is not working. This not working, but you're in survival mode and like you said, you're paralyzed by it, You're in denial. Is just what are we gonna do? It feels hopeless? Um well, we ended up going on a vacation and it ended up being kind of like our sick entire moment. We took all of our kids on

this vacation, but we couldn't affordification. So I was like looking for deals and ended up finding this deal. But there's totally a cat she had to listen to a timeshare sales. I know, everybody just like it was. I know. So this is just this is just where we were at, like emotionally, I was just like, we just need to have a break. And so we end up going on

this vacation and it's super cheap. We stay like two nights in the mountains at this nice resort, but the catches we have to go to this time share sales pitch, and that was my first time ever doing anything like that. I had heard people say, like, oh, just go, you're not you know, don't buy the time share. Of course, like we were too broke to even consider buying a time share. We knew that that wasn't going to happen, but you know, we thought it wouldn't be that big

of a deal. Well, it ended up being the most horrible experience ever. This timeshare salesman, Like I didn't know how I would react in that situation, but he is a real person and he's trying desperately to get us to buy this time share, and we told him from the get go, like, you know, we're here to get the deal. Um. And I just learned something about myself on like a human level, Like I had gotten to a point where I was wasted, Like we were so broke,

we needed this vacation so bad. We find this budget vacation, and like I just felt like we were taking advantage of this guy whose job was to sell us something. And at the end of the day, if he wasn't going to sell us a time share sales pitch, he doesn't get that commission. He starts talking about his family, and I could almost hear like a desperation in his voice,

you know. And it was just this really human moment where I connected with this timeshare salesman, the fact that we were taking advantage of this deal, and I just felt gross. You know, it's right after Christmas. We put Christmas on a credit card, like we put this vacation on a credit card. Here's this timeshare salesman trying to get us to help him get his commission, you know, and we're like, no, no, no, we don't mean to

be rude. But now he's talking about his family. He starts bringing up his you know, his time in the military. My brother was in the military here, and it's just like, wow, this is our real life. And um it just the whole thing felt sleazy and gross. And that night, UM,

I end up getting a text message. So we went to this time shot sales pitch, went out to dinner, go back to the resort room, and I get a text message on my phone from my bank telling me that we maxed out our last credit card from the dinner that we had put on it, like we had overdrawn the credit card. And it was like it's canceled. You can't use that. We're in the mountains with four babies, and honestly, like I'm like, I don't even know how

we're going to get guests to go home. Do we have enough in the checking account because I was kind of relying on the credit card until my husband gets paid next because there's nothing in the checking account. And it hit me. And I get emotional every time, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. And at this time I was handling all the finances. My husband was earning the money, but he was okay with me just kind of handling it, and I knew the gravity

of the situation. He did not. He went to bed that night, put my kids to bed, and I could not leap. And I was in this resort hotel room on this vacation, looking at my phone, you know, broke and really and after this whole experience with the salesman, you know, and all that, I just felt like wow,

and that was our sick entire moment. And I ended up staying up that night pulling up all my accounts, every debt payment that we owed, Like I just started writing it down on the hotel notepad and just listing. I was like that wow wow, you know, and it was just I looked at everything and I said, the thing is that we cannot keep doing this, and it was this broken point. So then the next day, um well, we ended up going home the next day and it was that night that I was like. I told my husband.

I was like, I need you talk to you. He knew we had debt, you know, but he didn't understand the the magnitude of it. I didn't understand the magnitude of it until that night when I sat down and started writing everything out. And what prompted me to write everything out was because I was like, oh my gosh, we maxed out our credit card. Can I get another one? Can I get another credit card? So I'm like, well, what all credit cards do I have? And I'm writing

them all down? How much is my debt? You know? I just started pulling up all these different accounts and then it was like, oh my gosh, this is way worse than I thought. You know. I scared the monster in the face the first time that night, and then I had to talk to my husband about it and be like, you can't be in denial anymore. I can't do this on my own anymore, and we got to do something different, and that is literally where it all started. I was right after Christmas. It became our new year's

resolution to start getting out of debt. Yeah. Thanks, I feel happy to like experiencing that story. Yeah, you told it so well that there's such for me like an emotional connection with your story. Right now, we all need to process this together. Now. It's good. It's good because it's real life, and I think so many people find themselves in that place. I think what is so powerful is how normal your story is and sound, and how

many people could connect with it at different points. And we say it could feel so immobilizing, so paralyzing, and yet you can almost get to this point of enough, which then can propel you towards something different. Not that I would ever say to somebody like make sure you get to absolute rock bottom and buy everything that you want so that maybe you get like motivated after that, but yeah, can you can you tell us then briefly what happened from there and and how are you out

of debt now? Right? Like for our listeners, like can you give us the update to like bring us back up out for what you've experienced? Oh? Absolutely so when me and my husband had that talk, uh, we actually had ended up having a great resource because my mother in law she taught Financial Peace University, like Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. She taught that at her church and she had mentioned it to us before, you know, not in any sort of way like you needed. She had

no idea what was going on. She talked about how she hosted that so much so and we kind of looked. I was like, I think that's the get out of debt guy or the budgeting guy, right, the financial peace guy. And I was like, man, peace sounds really nice, well titled peace. So call your mom and ask her about that. And without telling his mom anything about our situation, he just said, Hey, what's that class? And could me and Angela take it? And you know, we're interested in it.

And she was like, I will buy you a Financial Peace University kit tonight and it'll be it'll be in the mail. She was like, I didn't ask any question. She was so excited that he had asked for us gift and he ended up getting it a few days before the New year. Because this all happened in that short little time frame after Christmas, you know, before New Year, and we ended up getting that Financial Peace University and we got the online version of it and took the

whole course in like nine days. Like not you know, we just would binge watch Dave Ramping and it was intense. It was a lot, but it definitely got us on that track of like, Okay, we need to have a budget. It needs to be you know, we need to give every dollar a name, we need to be very intentional,

we need to cut expenses. And it basically just gave us all the building blocks of where to start, you know, the whole idea of like you know, having a small starter emergency fund and then paying off debt okay and pay him off from small Stolar just gave us a plan. We asked the plan, and we just started. We just started budgeting cutting expenses. And it was and when I say we just started, I mean yes, it almost felt like overnight. It was like Okay, we're done spending money.

We're But it definitely took some time to like work that all out, figure out how much we were spending. I would it took us a good like ninety days to really kind of get it figured out. And then over the course of three years, we paid off seventy seven thousand dollars a debt. We paid off all of our consumer in three years. And the crazy thing is that it was mostly on one income two and a half years, so that was on my husband's uh he was at an entry level engineering position, so that kind

of gives you an idea on our income. You know, definitely middle class, but one income. And um, I started teaching, so you know part of my stories that I went to grad school, got my master's and teaching, but I still had young kids at home, and we started the journey before I went back to work about five months before we paid off our last stet is when I started teaching, So the majority of our debt free journey

was on one income. So it really was about not raising our income for us in order to pay off that day. It was about cutting expenses, where my mindset before had always been like when we raise our income, we'll finally get caught up. But we made the decision to like, we're going to start now, and we just cut expenses. So frugality was definitely something that I embraced, especially being in the position where I was a stay at home mom. I felt like you know, that was

a blessing for me. I had some time I was home. I could do a lot in the home. I can control a lot of these budget categories and save money. So that is where everything starts for me as far as like my message and what I share when it comes to you know, how I've been able to cut expenses and learn to live below our meetings and and and you know, kind of get out of that cycle of consumerism and spending money mindlessly. That was our story. That's how we paid off our debt in three years.

So yeah, three years later, yes, yes, no, it's it's crazy and it's so free. So we've been debt free for a year now. Um yeah, we just celebrated one year free and we have over a six month emergency fund in the bank. We have started retirement investing, we have started a college stay means for our kids and like it done, Yeah, be done. Yeah, and four years ago you were at your breaking point? Yeah, like what anyone can think back? Like where was I four years ago?

And where am I now? Like what has been the transformation that I've made in four years? And could I have done more? And it sounds like it keeps building upon itself for you, Angela, of the things that you're learning, and I know a big thing that you talk about and you help your viewers with is food and food prep and reducing food waste. And we love to pick

your brain on this. I know that you've probably learned so much in your debt payoff and then your year out of debt, But what prompted you to start focusing on specifically reducing food waste as part of your journey? Yeah? So, um, it all started with my journey in frugality, right, like

learning how to save money and cut expenses. And one thing that really struck accord with me when we were looking at our budget was that, you know, there's these major budget categories like housing, transportation, food, and there's probably there's probably another one, but there's like these major you know, these major budget categories that like those are the majority, that's the bulk of your income. And if you can lower any one of those, you're gonna be able, you know, significantly,

you're gonna be able to pay off more debts. So it really was about creating a debt snowball. And we're a family of six, and our grocery budget could be astronomical. Yeah, we were are. So we started looking at how much we were spending on food, and we're spending about a thousand dollars on food every month and then probably more on eating out. So it's just like our grocery bill as a thousand dollars and you know, um, I was like, wow, you know, if I can control this, we could contribute

a lot more to our death snowball. So that's kind of where it started, like just totally selfish frugality. I need to save money, we need to pay off debt reasons. And it all kind of started with this challenge to myself to lower my grocery budget, and that started with some pantry challenges, you know, like I started thinking, okay, well we can just not spend money at the grocery store this week and just eat up the food that we have. We're going to save money. So started doing that.

And as I started doing these pantry challenges and you know, lowering my grocery budget, not buying as much at the at the store, I started to become just acutely aware of how the abundance of food that I had on hand, when before my mindset was that we didn't have enough or I can't really make anything out of what I've got. But these pantry challenges would force me to get creative, and somehow I was always able to put plenty of food on the table for my four kids and my

husband and myself. And it just changed everything for me, Like I started seeing like, wow, what visually looks like maybe maybe you don't have enough. If you are creative and resourceful, you have plenty. And then I started just I mean really aware of how much food I was throwing away or I guess how much in the past I was overbuying. I was just over buying food. I had food on hand that I wasn't using. I don't

need to buy more. Um, So I realized how much I was overbuying, and then started realizing how much I was wasting. And once I and I'm a researcher by just like hobby, right, Like it's my hobby to research on that girl. Yes, right, So I kind of I'm like, wow, you know how much do people waste? You know, I can't be the only one. And very quickly you do an internet on food waste, and there's so much resources

out there, and the statistics just blew me away. Right. Um, there's a website called Save the Food dot com and I love that website. And that website you log on and it gives you so many tips for you know, reducing food waste and all that. But anyways, the statistics is what stuck out to me. It was fort of food in the United States is wasted and and you might think like, okay, of food, but consumers on on

the consumer and we contribute mostly to that. Like a lot of people will say like, oh, you know what happens because you know in the in the farms are in transportation, yes, but that statistic factors in mostly consumers who are wasting food. And then there's this at the bottom of that website. There's a calculator that you can do where you can see your your family size and what on average the amount of food that people waste.

And for a family of six, the average family of six will waste almost two hundred dollars a week in food. A hundred and eighty six dollars was the average according to this website. And I mean, I don't know exactly how they get their stat I knew that we were wasting food. I knew how much we were wasting, and I was just like, oh my gosh, you know, that came out to like over two thousand, like two thousand, two hundred a year that my family was probably just

throwing food away. Or the average family of six, that's a family of six, family of four waste about fifteen hundred dollars a year in food, but just by throwing it away, according to our website. So the statistics just shocked me, and I realized that it was like a huge problem, and I thought, wow, you know, like so many people want to lower their grocery budget, are they aware of how much food that they are throwing away?

So that I just kind of started sharing with people how we were reducing food waste and that was saving me hundreds of dollars, and so that kind of became my goal. I could save the most money if I could reduce the most food waste, and also you know, yeah, buying frugal foods and learning that kind of stuff could reduce it even more. You could save a hundred dollars a week by just not throwing stuff away, you know.

So that's kind of where I started sharing with people, like are you aware of how much you're buying and how much you're actually eating and that sort of thing. Again, it's the awareness piece of can think but it's not that big of a deal, but then actually look at it and realize, no, this is actually an area where you could save significantly based on how much you're not using or throwing away that it could make a big dent in that budget and debt payoff journey. It requires

so much self awareness. I mean, the whole debt free journey requires self awareness, and food waste is no different. It's like look in that person in the mirror and being like okay and just not being in denial, but yeah, being self aware of how much food you're wasting, how

much food? I mean, you know, we have this mindset and especially in our you know, our culture is very visually based, right, Like, you know, I think about I'm on Instagram a lot, right, so I think about just how people want to fill their feeds with things that are just beautiful and abundant. And I think we're kind of you know, we think of having enough as being as having like an abundance of something, But if you're

not actually you know, like talk about produce. The number one wasted thing is produced, right, I mean it is because it doesn't the shelf life isn't going and that that's the number one wasted thing produced. So but produce is the healthiest thing, right. We want to fill our cart with this abundance of produce, and it's like, oh, you know, you fill your fridge with the rainbows of

produce and you think it's healthy. But if you're self aware, it's like, it's not healthy to have a bunch of produce. It's healthy to eat a bunch of you know, it's like are you throwing it away? And doesn't look beautiful when you take a picture of your fridge? Or but how sad does it look when it's going in the trash? That's that's a real thing, like talking about image, right. It Actually I've realized this and it took my husband to point it out to me that I care how

my grocery cart looks. And he's like, don't fool yourself. You like waffles too, Like you're just worried about what the cashier is gonna think. But then we get home and you're not going to eat that rubar But it's a pretty purple Yes, No, I I totally get it. And I still kind of feel that way sometimes when I'm putting my stuff up on the belt at Aldi and I'm like, do I have I have a frozen pizza? Do I have enough spinach to counter that? Nobody in

my house right exactly? So that is I mean, that's about being self aware, is realizing yes pro I mean our family. You know, with my kids, you eat at least one fresh produce every for breakfast, luncheon, dinner. You got to have some sort of produce, and we have an abundance of it for snacks, but not in over

abundance that's going to get wasted. We just don't. I'm acutely aware and intentional about how much produce I bring into my house, and I bring in just enough that is either gonna that we're gonna get is gonna get eaten, or it's if there is excess, I figure out ways that I can freeze it or reuse it. But I just am like, I am not going to throw pro dose away. And sometimes that means that I'm not bringing I'm not bringing in abundance of it in my house.

I'm bringing in only what we're going to eat. That's a great segue because I wanted to hear your tips for reducing food waste, so only bringing in what you were realistically assume that's a great one. Do you have

any others? Yeah? Well, I mean when I think of every time somebody asked me for tips on reducing food waste, like how did you do it, I'm like, it goes back to like maybe what you learned an elementary school about wasting anything right, reducing waste across the board, it's those three rs, like reduce, right, reduce the recycle, and that's like the most basic way to think of it. So we just talked about reducing, reduce the amount of

food that you are bringing into your home. And I do this by mainly, and I talked about it on my YouTube channel. I have like a whole video where I walk you through the steps of my zero food waste meal planning because it's this process that I use where I always take inventory of what I have before

a meal plan or make my grocery list. I always take inventory of what I have, like everything, what's in the freezer, what's in refrigerator, everything that I need to use up, and I kneel plan around what I have because that means when I'm going to the grocery store, I'm not buying things that I don't need. Um, not only am I not buying things that I don't need, but I have a plan for the things that I do have to get used up. So I'm reducing how

much I bring into my home. And if you're not buying it, then you're saving money, right, and you're also not going to waste it. So reducing is honestly the number one way that you can reduce waste. And that's across the board for anything. Reducing your consumption. So you know, yes we need food to eat, Yes we need lots of healthy, nutritious food to eat, but be realistic, be

self aware of how much you actually eat. How much is actually an appropriate portion size for you and your kids and your husband and all that, Like how much you actually need, and stop over buying, stop over buying, and stop worrying about that image. You know, and it's not helping an image for anybody else. It might just be your own image, Like I want that's yeah, exactly, I want to eat more healthy food and all that,

but you probably are eating enough. You're eating what you know, So anyways, that that's the number one thing is to reduce and um that is really and even when we get more on like a you know, really thinking about the food waste epidemic, that's what experts would recommend. They would recommend reducing the amount that you purchase in order to not have to throw it away. Um, you know,

because it's about supplying demand too. If we are buying for you know, twice as much produced as we actually need, they're going to keep supplying twice as much produced then we actually need and the way the food waste cycle is going to continue. So we can make a difference by reducing our consumption and just decreasing that demand because we don't really need it right. So and then you know, you go into the other idea, which is to reuse. So I t this to food waste. Reuse food in

different ways, so reusing leftovers, um, preserving food. I really love my freezer. I freeze everything. Most things can be frozen if you walk down the freezer aisle and kind of take a look at all those convenience foods or prepackaged foods, anything that is an ingredient, and one of those things can be frozen in your own freezer by yourself.

Like you don't have. You know, there's not some magic potion that enables you to like, you know, freeze a green beans, like you can freeze your fresh green beans, you know, so just I freeze food. Preserving food when you can, UM and reusing leftovers is um so important and that takes some creative thinking. It takes some resourcefulness,

that takes some trial and air. But if you have that that mentality of I'm gonna waste as little food as possible, I'm gonna meal plan around the food that I have, You'll figure out ways to use what you have on hand. And UM that's that use portion. Figure out ways to use food in different ways and keep it simple. Like you don't have to be coming up

with some like you know, extravagant meal from leftovers. It could just be that maybe you just have like a pot leck night at home where you take out all the bits and scraps and put it on the table and tell everybody to just have a little bit of everything. I do that like two or three times a week in my house because with six people there, you know, I might have a little bit of chicken left and a little bit of you know, pasta left or whatever.

It's not enough to feed everybody the same meal, but everybody can kind of do a potle style and then we use up the food that we have, So I do that all the time. So that's that reused portion. And then there is the idea of just when it

comes to reducing waste, maybe that recycle portion. If there's food that you just cannot you know, eat anymore, but you don't want to throw it away, Especially with produce, you can recycle those produced scraps into composts something like that, you know, but I do always put this disclaim around there.

It's composting or regrowing food is like kind of like a trendy thing and you see a lot of it, but actually it only UM will reconcile about one percent of the resources that it took to produce that food. So keep that in mind. The best way to reduce food waste is to reduce the amount that you're bringing in and to read it, those are really the ways that you are going to stop throwing through the way

which will absolutely lower your grocery bill. Nice excellent tips and UM taking notes on it so we'll have it in our show notes for people who are like, wait, okay, what are all these different things what applies to me. We touched on this already a bit, but I'm curious to pick your brain a little more on how do

you stay healthy while saving money on groceries? Yeah, well, actually, so the crazy thing is that when I started this whole journey of reducing our food waste, you know, me planning differently and um, trying to buy frugal ingredients, um that I could make stretch across the board for my family, I ended up buying a lot more like wholesome ingredients. So I was making beans and lentils from scratch. I was making soups from scratch. I was making chicken broth

from scratch. Um. I was eating up more produced because I didn't want to throw it away. Um, you know I was. I realized that, Wow, you know, I'm not buying convenience food because convenience foods are expensive. I'm not buying a lot of processed food because there they can be more expensive as well. So there's kind of this thing where people are like, oh, you know, cheap food is unhealthy food, and that's not really the case. The cheapest food in the grocery store is going to be

like your beans. Your dry beans is gonna be your flower to make your own bread if you want to. I mean, you can get really where if you're only using holonger. It's gonna be those whole chickens you know that are like cents a pound or whatever. Um, those are all very very healthy foods and uh, and produce that's in season and all that. Those are all very very healthy foods. So I found that I actually ended up losing I mean not that weight was never losing

weight was never a goal for me. But I ended up losing weight when we started at Free Journey. I think it was, um, me just having being super intentional about you know, we were we weren't eating out at all, so we were eating all home cooked meals. I was cooking from scratch mostly, and um and when I say cooking from scratch, I don't want you guys to think that. Like I hear that, and I'm like, don't. I don't bake bread or anything like that. I might bake some

to go with our soup. Those are easy, but like I am not a good cook. And I created a cookbook called Simply Frugal just to like prove to people how basic it can be learned how to cook, because I'm talking like when I'm cooking from scratch, Like I learned how to boil upon out of beans and you know, put that on a thing of rice with some lettuce and you know, And that's what I mean by cooking from scratches. You don't have to be some amazing cook.

Is like cooking very simple ingredients, just learning how to cook those staples, those basics, and it's it's healthy food. It's nutritious food that I cook. I cook very little processed food because that's just more expensive. It doesn't use So I found that eating out less, you know, cooking mostly wholesome ingredients with it helped me too. You know, I kind of lost the last of the baby weight, not that that was really even a goal of mine

at the time. I wasn't even focused on that, but I lost that last of the baby weight, and I've maintained a healthy weight for the last almost four years now, um without ever going on a diet or trying to buy any sort of diet food or anything like that. I feel like, you know, just go back going back to the basics of just intuitive eating, you know, eating when you're hungry and stopping eating when you're not hungry.

So that's something that we practice in our house. I never make my kids clear their plate, but because we are zero food waste home, that that's what we strive for. If they don't eat their dinner, I just put some seran wrap over it and put it in the fridge, and if they get hungry, that's what they're eating later on. But it allows them to still eat intuitively. They don't have to clear their plate because we're zero food waste family, Like, oh my mom won't let me throw food a way, No,

you're just gonna eat it later. Yeah, And so we end up, you know, we end up being able to balance this idea of eating intuitively, eating when we're hungry, not really having a bunch of food rules, but because we value um not throwing food away and and being resourceful and being grateful for the food that we have, it all kind of plays together, and our family I think is very healthy nutritionally because of that. Um. So, yeah, there's definitely you know, a lot of frugal foods can

be very very inexpensive. I'll just say that the staples in our house, and this might not work for everybody everybody has a different diet, but some staples in our house would be like sweet potatoes, black beans, and pinto beans that I boil from scratch and you know, just it's very easy to boil beans, and you know, um, whole chickens because that's just good protein. And those would be like some staples, and those are all high in

protein and fiber and they're filling and they're super affordable. Yeah. I think that's encouraging for a lot of people with maybe food allergies, because I was in a Facebook group the other day and someone was saying, like, I've just relegated. My grocery bill is just going to be high because there's so many things I can't eat, And I'm like, but the cheapest things are all things you can eat

according to the allergies you just stated you have. So I think that people with different dietary restrictions should definitely take this into consideration. Yes, um, and be and take that self awareness and reducing what you buy in food waste and be able to reduce your grocery bell. It's

totally doable. Yeah, And I think that that kind of plays into the other thing that we're talking about with like image and like feeling like you want to have a visual abundance of variety, right, like you don't, like, you know, if somebody needs to give you permission today to not have a super very diet if you don't want to, like, you know, you don't have to have a huge variety. You don't have to have thirty different

meals for the months. You know, you can eat the same meal on rotation and it's okay if if you like it, eat it. Most of the world lives off of the basics, and it's fine right now if you want to get creative and then use your herbs and spices in a fun way. But if you're happy with having a rotation of four meals, do it? Yes, yes, yeah,

in our mantra too. And that's been, that's been, I mean, and it's so there's so much freedom when it comes to that, Like it's so free to just be like, yeah, you know, if this is what I like, it's okay that I eat it once every week, you know, once or twice every week. Like there's so much freedom, is

so much less pressure. Like me as a mom of four, that's like your dinner on the table, you know, and I'm just like it's you know, I don't want to downplay it, but but definitely like reducing our variety of meals and just sticking to what my family loves that I know is nutritious has been so free for me. So it's kind of like a mom hack to like

just give yourself permission. Just keep it simple, Like you're doing a good job by feeding them and your kids are so simple, and you're also teaching them that it's okay to you know, eat nutritious foods regularly, like you know, like keep it simple, permission to So speaking of right, every freedom of the best time of the week, it's time for So 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. Build buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week, all right, Angela. Every week we have this one, and we never get tired of it. We invite our listeners or our guests to give us their favorite bill for this week or for their life of any time. So do you have a bill for us. Oh my goodness. I wish I knew somebody really cool named Bill to like mix it up for you guys today, But I don't. It's kind

of disappointing you. No, No, hardly any phil out their gyms, their little gyms. That's why we get so excited about it. That's so funny. I'm gonna like keep it super basic, because well, this isn't basic. This is huge for us. The bill of the week for me is definitely our mortgage bill, because y'all, we just paid so we became debt free a year ago and spent the last year building up those retirement accounts, um college savings, emergency fund and all that, getting like all that in order, and

now we're working on paying off the house. And just this past Friday we put our first principal payment. That principal payment that we put on the house was we put an extra two thousand dollars on the house. That took down the life of our mortgage. I'm using one of those amoritization I probably said that word wrong. Um, so somebody just kids, somebody say that word right. I

don't know, yes, you know theorization schedules. So I plugged that and that that extra two thousand dollar principal payment took four months off the life of our loan, just that one extra payment and saved us over twenty four hundred dollars in interest. Okay, just that one. So if we do this every month, it's gonna we're gonna have our house paid off in just a matter of about five years. So that was definitely that was huge for us because four years ago at Christmas time, we were

broke and broken and just financially suffocating. And today at Christmas time, this right, you know, right around Christmas time, we are working on paying off our house. And it's what we're doing now is returning dividends. So it feels like all the years that we lost being financially irresponsible, um,

we're making up for that now. And I hope that your listeners can hear that, hope that, like, you know, there's a lot of shame that comes from being very irresponsible with money like we were, but like let go of that shame and move forward because it is never too late to earn everything around. And now we're just in a completely different spot and um, yeah, the future is bright because of that. But you've got to do something about it. You know, you got to put in

the work. But yeah, that so that is my bill of the wet that extra mortgage principal payment towards my mortgage. So good. So yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing, Angela. How exciting and how much can be done in such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things like that's gonna seem in four years from now, who knows you might have your house paid off four

more years yea very close. Well, yeah, if you have a bill that you want to submit to us, whether it's your mortgage or you actually know a bill, call us. Visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. That'll connect you to our speak pipe and you can leave us a bill right there and we will play it on our show. And now it's time for Bill Lightning Round, so normal because we're talking about normal things today. Yeah, yeah,

so good. Um, So for this Lightning Round, I thought it would be fun that we all go around and share one or several ingredients you always skip in the recipe, you know, when you find that recipe and you see some non there and you're like, I'm never going to use that again. And then it just keeps coming up, and you're like, I'm still never going to use it again, even though I see it a bunch of times, always going to skip it. So Angela, do you have any of those in your home? Oh goodness, that was a

hard one. That that's a hard one because I basically I just skip whatever I don't have on hand, Like if I'll make recipes and skip whatever I don't have on hand, and I find that like, you know, just

add a little bit of salt right every thingum. But now recently, um, I was making I wanted to make I had like these rice noodles, and I wanted to make kind of like an Asian spin of chicken noodle soup, but I didn't have so I looked up a recipe and oh my gosh, like all these different Asian spices, like I can't even it doesn't I can't even think of them off the top of my head. But it was all these different like vinegars and Asian spices that

I just did not have. Because but I made that soup, I think the only thing that I had on hand was like some peanut oil like that I had and some rice, a little bit of rice vinegar and it totally gave it that. That was enough to give it kind of the authentic Asian taste for me. I mean, I don't cook authentic Asian food, but I was like, I didn't need all those other spices. So yeah, anytime I am making a new recipe and it's calling for something that I don't have on hand, I skipped it.

But yeah, that the Asian chicken noodle soup that I made was bomb. I mean, but barely anything in there. But it was good. Still. And Google search for is substitute should for? I'm always looking up stally works out fine? Yes, it only you try to substitute like vinegar for milk. Are you not gonna probably do the right thing there? Yeah? Um, So for me, it's always bay leaves. For some reason, I just do not carry bay leaves and every time

and I feel like I don't understand them. I don't understand bay leaves because they go in and then they come out and I don't know what they've done. Maybe nothing. Yeah that's the one. Yeah. Or I was making a recipe the other day they called for tamarin and I had to google. I was like, substitutions, I don't know what this is. I'm not going to buy it at all. And lime juice. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I love how you guys been in Google, like Goo,

Google this substitution. That's that's where we do every episode. We started with a Google search, and then we start we just help people like if they were going to Google whatever, the subject of whatever, the headline of the episode, we're going to find that's the Google search, and then we go through what you will find on Google. Said that, Yeah, I don't think we've actually ever like stated like that's what this show is. But yeah, we're just helping you

explore Google now as we are. That is amazing because it's so it's been huge. Yeah, it's been huge and everything that I've learned too. So it's that researcher researcher friends to help weed through Google. Yeah. So for me, it's fresh herbs, like every time fresh arstly fresh, this fresh that unless it's the summertime and I got it growing out in my garden. Oh you better believe. I'm doing some dry herbs that I've had in my pancho for five years and then they're never too old, they're

always there. We just keep in mind that if it calls for half a cup of fresh parsley, that's like one tablespoon of dried parsley. To be careful, you're not doing a half dried parsley on that one. Yeah, you're gonna have to google the ratios, but it's it's always fine. Yeah, that's such a good one. I also freeze, Like if I do buy fresh, freeze them. I need something else that you can do. But I'm with you. I could have said that one. I could have also said I'd

never use fresh herbs, like like you said. Maybe in the summer I grew some or them, but very rarely do I use fresh erbs. That's a good one. Yeah, Yeah, well, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. This has been truly one of my top ten episodes. Like, I had a lot of fun today. We're just gonna keep you on the line. We're gonna stop recording, We're going to keep That's what happens with friends when I love it. Y'all are the best frule friends. We are,

so we are lucky to be here. Yeah, where can people find more about you and what you're doing in your awesome cookbook? That's got some really yummy recipes in it. Yeah. Oh yeah, I have a website. I have a debt Kicking Mom and Kicking without the G so debt Kicking Mom dot com. Uh. And then where I started sharing was just on Instagram, So find me on Instagram same thing, debt Kicking Mom. Um. And then I also have a

YouTube channel. The YouTube channel kind of came when I started sharing more recipes and sharing more tips and I just wanted like a longer video segment than Instagram stories. So I also have a YouTube channel with the same name, debt Kicking Mom. So between those three resources, you'll be able to find lots of tips, frugal grocery shop, frugal groceries for goal recipes, how I save on grocery and household items, all kind of like my frugal tips um.

And also all about our story. So if there's bits and pieces of our story that you know, I know, I shared a ton today and gave you really the meat of it, but I share a ton of our story. I've been documenting our journey through the baby steps of paying off debt and now financial freedom paying off the mortgage. So um, yeah, that's where you can find me. Yeah, well, I hope our listeners go and hang out with you on Instagram and everywhere else because you are a delight.

Oh thank you. You ladies are too. I feel so fortunate that you had me on the show. So thank you. Who that was a jam packed interview. Yeah, so many good tips and relatable stories. We we got emotion, we got information and that's all I mean, that's all you can ask but you and that's what we're going to bring you more of in because when we asked in our Frugal Friends community on Facebook, that's what you said you wanted. You want more debt free stories, and we

are going to keep bringing them to you. It's going to be the year of debt freedom on the Frugal Friends podcast. What a good year for it, clean, fresh start, none of these odd numbers. We're done with the hindsight and foresight is and so we're doing new things this year. That means we're doing new things. So um, we are retiring our book club. We're doing something a little new because we want to thank you for your kind reviews on iTunes and Stitcher, like this one from Countdowner in

d C. It happens to be five stars. She titled it Real Friends and Real Solid Content. I've been listening to the podcast for months now and have steadily worked my way through the back catalog. Jen and Jill are fun to listen to you and keep me motivated to live frugally and well. Jill's got a background in counseling and therapy and Jen's a personal finance writer, so I love that they balanced the technical side of finances with

the human side to that is that's what we're going for. Yeah, what a good summary of what to expect in the podcast. I like that. We also want to thank all of our friends who are sharing the podcast with their friends, because there's nothing frugal friends like more than more frugal friends. So we have a new way to enter our monthly giveaway in We're doing New Things, were Changing it Up. If you share this episode on social media or Facebook, tag us in it, we will pick one winner for

every five tags at the end of the month. Yes, and instead of books, we are giving away ten dollar Amazon gift cards, so still unlimited. If you tag us in an episode ode if you share it tag guess, that's going to be your entry and we will pick one winner for every five tags we receive at the end of the month. And you can still um still lift. It's a review to enter as well on iTunes or Stitcher. Screenshot the review and send it to Frugal Friends podcast

at gmail dot com. And we're just adding a new way to win. That's it. Adding a new way to win and new things that you're winning. So I'm excited about the gift card, can I most honesty? I'll tell you all of the winners of the book club have actually been winning gift cards for the price of the book because it's just easier. That's amazing. So that's a secretum that if you've won a book, you know that.

For the first few months, I was trying to send books and it was just difficult because international people were winning and I it was hard. So yeah, that's that's been going on for a while. So I'm just making it. I'm just being transparent about it. Now. You can spend it on whatever you want if you want to get a book, that's great, right, So it's it's up to you. We're giving you that freedom. You just need some new toothpaste, that's fine too. Yeah, clean those teeth, nave that dental bill.

Oh you guys, it's been fun. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be here doing it again next week. See you then. Herugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Syria. Jill. Yeah, say it to me. How do you feel about this new thing we're doing. I'm excited about it. I love new things. I like it when our voices don't keep repeating ourselves. Yeah up, you're good at that. We can't just keep being predictable. You've got to spice it up in life. Yeah, I you

be a little spicy. Usually I'm vanilla, but sometimes I'm spicy. Yeah. Basic, yeah, basic, basic with all the dried herbs. Um, yes, I do have quite a lot of dried herbs though, so do you have bay leaves? I do? I do? And here's why. I had this soup one time, which I'm not even a real big fan of soup, but it tasted phenomenal and I was like, what is the secret here? This is so good? And the girl said, my secret ingredient is bay leaves. So I got a chuckle to myself

when you said that, because I get it. You just throw it in and you take them back out. You can't eat them. But anything that I've had that has had bay leaves simmering in it has had really fantastic flavor. So I was like, I gotta get me some of those. Now. Granted, I actually haven't used any of the bay leaves. I still have this like thing of bay leaves in my herb her basket, but uh, yeah, I do love the flavor of them. What is the flavor? Can you pinpoint?

It is? Bay leaves? Is bai leaves, baby, It tastes like Baileys, like your bad bay in his flag, there's leaves and it's it's the bay. I live on a bay and they're on the leaves there, and so I just I couldn't describe the flavor, but I could describe that it gives it, um what's the word depth? Two the experience in your mouth. Okay, all right, I believe you. Yeah,

it makes Maybe I will get these bay leaves. You know, we're coming down to you and we're gonna bring our home to your home, and and together we could make something with with my bay leaves that I leave it and we can report, Oh we could even since two is better than one, make one without the Baileys and one with the Baileys and really decide is this worth it? The bottle of Bay leaves the Bailey off off. The baibleiaf challenge doesn't create the depth of flavor for your

palette that they claim it does. I'm surprised it's never in one of those boxes on those cooking challenges that you have to use, like you have to use this fruitcake. Well, these babies. The thing is, it's usually in something that would simmer, and those cooking things aren't usually a simmer process. Usually it's like you'll be done in twenty minutes. Babies require some time an effort. M So that's probably also why you don't buy them, because you want your twenty

minute meal. So true, I support that because you're basic, get back to the basics. It's a compliment you frugal