Episode four sixty five, What to Budget for this Winter.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life. Here your hosts, Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill. And it's cold outside, baby, it is but not here, and it's it's hot.
I'm going to the beach later. But for most of.
The people in our listening audience, there will be a change in how you spend and what you spend on in this season, and so we're going to remind you of some of those things and also share with you some data that might make you feel better about where you're spending is headed.
Yeah like that, nothing super new here. We're just kind of utilizing this episode to be your little PSA reminder women and encouragement on Yeah. Remember these bills are coming up. Are you ready? You've got time to prepare now? Yes, So here we go.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Spring, the next season on the calendar, And if you want to be ready for our what to Budget for this Spring episode, you're gonna want to start saving and you should start saving in a high yield savings account, preferably at CIT. They've got a really great apy and you can open an account their Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash ci T be ready for whatever Spring springs on you.
Yeah, and couding you can make for your break. You can make your money grow in a high old savings account. By spring. You could have an extra few hundred dollars.
If you keep your emergency fund in a high healed savings account, it can pay for your manicure and or pedicure every month. You could get a pedicure every month with the money you make just from keeping your emergency fund in a high held savings account.
Extra h yeah, extra cash, we got.
I love it so much, all right, So winter, we try to do a winter episode every year, sometimes more. Last year we did Frugal Living Tips for Winter. That was episode two sixty four. You know, we do our frugal holiday episodes. We got episode four fifty six, how to have a Frugal Holiday that was very recent and so this one we're talking specifically about your budget. We also have our our budget toolkits.
Every month.
The last Friday of every month, we send all of our friend letter subscribers a budget toolkit for the next month. So you will have just seen some of this stuff in the budget toolkit we sent out on Black Friday, but we're here to expand on some of it. If you don't get the front letter, you didn't see it. Frugal Friends Podcast dot com a pop up. Whenever you move your cursor away from the screen or stay there long enough on your phone, a pop up will come up and it will ask you to join. It's free.
But so today we are going to start with a little a fascinating study, as Jill puts it.
So this one comes from Spectrum News. It's titled Expect to Spend More when It's cold outside, and this is based on a study that was conducted by marketing professors at the University of ox Oxford and the City University of New York looking at cold temperatures as being a contributing factor to our spending. Wild setup. I don't even know how they came up with this setup, but here's
what they did. They ran an experiment with one hundred and twelve students and they were asked to hold a cup in their non dominant hand that contained water at either an uncomfortably warm or an uncomfortably cold temperature, and while in that hot or cold condition, they were presented with a hypothetical situation where they were asked whether or not they wanted to purchase insurance for an antique clock.
So bizarre now, they still separated these to these groups even more, half of the students were read a strongly sentimental description for the clock, and the others were read something really objective without sentiment about the clock and asked would you want to purchase insurance for this clock. Here's what they found. The students were willing to pay significantly more for the clock's insurance after reading the highly sentimental description of the clock, but only when they were in
the cold condition. When in the warm condition, holding something uncomfortably warm in their non dominant hand, the description of the clock made no significant difference on how much they said they would pay. So that's why I called this a fascinating study, because I think even the minds of the people who came up with this study is fascinating, like how did you even think about this specific scenario?
But ultimately finding that we will make possibly spending decisions when we are feeling cold that are different from how we might choose if we are not cold, and so just I don't know that that is live in Florida. Why we live in Florida, honest to goodness. Yeah, And I'm sure we could just probably conjecture around the rest of it why that might be, whether it's discomfort or
we know that buying releases dopamine. We know that cold, dark settings can often make a lot of us feel a little bit more down than what we typically feel throughout the year, and shopping and buying and doing something that's going to release that dopamine could increase this time of year. Ultimately, I think it's just something important to keep in mind that my spending decisions might shift depending
on the season. Apart from the pressures of spending that can happen, just how I respond to the various contexts that I'm in, the temperature, the darkness that's happening outside. I think, knowing ourselves and how we experience those these different environments throughout the year, how it affects our spending. So that could include looking back on your spending last year,
doing a transaction inventory for last winter. Is there any surprising purchase says that you see that possibly we're just because of the season, and how can that inform you this year?
Yeah, I think it Hopefully it gives you a little empathy for yourself, because we go through these seasons where we're like, oh, I'm doing really well, and then we enter a new literally weather season and we fall off, you know, of this progress and we feel like it's us, when in reality, there are a lot of factors that contribute to our performance, and so the only thing we
can really do is focus on our actions. And in seasons we may take more actions that get us further faster, and in some seasons we will not be able to take as many of those actions. But your actions are really the only thing that you can control, and you have to give yourself grace in Yeah, the psychologic the psychology of cold and darkness obviously not an excuse.
But reasoning informative.
So let's look at some of these things that we are going to have to do to prepare our finances for cold weather. And this is from Harvard Federal Credit Union. You know, we love a credit union.
So of course, expect heating bills, especially if you live in the north. You all know your heating bills are
going to increase. This isn't new knowledge, but I do think these types of expenses can creep up on us every year, especially because we're still recovering from the holidays as we move through January, February, March, and so having our sits on this kind of early December can really help us to be aware and maybe even inform some of how we spend throughout the holidays, knowing of the winter is still ahead.
Yeah.
Alternatively, if you're in the South, your heating bills might be less, this might be an optimal time for you and your energy costs. So I would I would compare your twelve month energy costs and if you're not going to do budget billing, which I don't necessarily like but can't decide if it's going to be most helpful for you, maybe that's something you switch to at this time right now.
Or use the money that you have been that you are saving, especially January February after the holidays, and use that surplus to pay down some extra debt, pay off a credit card, or to put extra in your savings a for Goo friendthpodcast dot com, slash the ID.
Yes, if this is historically a more expensive time for you if you do know energy costs are going to increase, even just because we're at home more often and so we're utilizing all of our utilities. Definitely check with your energy provider, your electric provider, to see if they're offering
any incentives or doing any energy audits. We had that done by our electric company, and they actually sent us some really helpful stuff in the mail for free to help us on all sorts of energy costs, like help with sealing up windows, help with not using as much water, some things to kind of disperse the water a little bit more that you can put onto your faucet. So they'll do these things. I had no idea and like,
I'll give it a try. It'll probably be gimmicky. Who knows, but they actually sent us some really helpful things for free that we then didn't have to buy, and beyond that, really sealing up as many air leaks as possible. I think this goes for both people in the North as well as the South. Just when heat or cold can exit your home, it's going to raise prices on your electric bill or your heating bill. However you are, you know, heating and cooling your home, and this is something I've
learned from Eric over the years. I mean he's worked in construction for a long time, really highlighting how important it is to have sealed windows and doors, and I just kind of like, how much is one little crack and it really does impact the temperature of a room. I mean, we got to experience that firsthand living in the RV, how much it can shift just having these minor, you know, cracks open, So how much more so in
an entire home. So taking the efforts to do some calking, to maybe do some of the plastic over your windows, to do some weather stripping around your doors, these efforts could cost you know, less than one hundred dollars or be given to you for free by your energy company and potentially lead to some savings. Yeah.
You just put like a screen, like a plastic over your windows in our recording room as in an effort to lower the temperature.
Yeah. Yeah, it helps to filter the sunlight. So it's still like I can still see the sun and still see through the window. It just darkened it a bit, and it has helped so much and being able to keep this place cool while not needing to have big thick curtains over the.
Windows, right, Yeah, and it makes it so you can't see inside the windows.
So it's also a safety thing, which stinks for you since you just admitted recently that you like to peep on people's Christmas lights.
Right, but those are people who put their Christmas tree in front of the window. They want me to peep, So yeah, you don't want me to peep. Next is winter preparation, everything from clothing, household prep, vehicle prep and so and possible increase medical bills. So I would say first is that we're looking when we are looking at clothing, we are looking at second hand. Winter clothing is the best type of clothing to buy secondhand because coats are not worn that often in a lot of places. That's
why they end up on these second hand sites. Sure there are places where coats are run into the ground, you're obviously not going to see those on Poshmark, thread up. And so this is where I would say, buy your very quality coats and everyday jackets from a place like Poshmark or eBay. I see a lot of the same item literally from the same cellar is posted to both Poshmark and eBay, and you can often it's cheaper on eBay,
So look at these things. We use Benny b e ni as it's a chromeixt and it can help you if you're looking at what's a very good coat brand Patagonia, So you're on the Patagonia website, you want the puffer jacket, it can pop up and show you that same exact puffer jacket on a variety of secondhand sites. Honestly, most of the time it's Poshmark because that one's just the biggest.
But so prepare now for to get these things, because it may take you a few weeks to find the type of coat or any clothing ski stuff like if you it's great if you want to take a ski vacation or something awesome. Don't wait to the last minute where you're buying all of your kids new ski clothes new because they've all grown out of last year's. Look at the consignment stores, the resale stores and places like Poshmark. And then you've got your vehicle prep if you need it.
And then and again possibly increased medical bills because people kids are sick. Get investing maybe in a nebulizer. Then you can I if you buy one of those yourself, it's much cheaper than getting it from the doctor I have learned and shopping around. If your child needs something like tubes in their ears, it's a very like in and out procedure. Don't wait until they need it because
of all the ear infections and sicknesses. Do your research on what the cheapest option is before they need it, because I made that huge mistake this year and it costs me a lot of money just because I was panicky and I wasn't prepared.
Along the vehicle lines, I will say again this especially for our northern friends, recommend you know, checking your tire pressure, your battery, your brakes, if those things need to be updated now. That can really help with just safety and eliminating the potential costs of what having low pressure, a flat tire, a battery that doesn't work for you when you're needing to get home from work, there's extra costs
that could be incurred. So check those things now. And there's also things that you can do to winterize your vehicle, from wipers to possibly getting winter tires or maybe even rotating your tires. There are things that you can do that are lower costs to be able to prep your vehicle that could potentially save you more in the long run. The next thing on this list that I will point
out is grocery budgeting. This was really interesting. They cited this the research and stats on spending on groceries on an at home food through the winter that food expenditures tend to rise in the winter months, specifically on eating at home, which is interesting. I mean, good on us. You know, I think nobody wants because it's cold and darty, and so we don't want to go out, so we are eating at home. But that does mean that we're
then spending more money on groceries. And I think if we're not aware of that shift that happens, we could find ourselves still spending the same amount that we that we typically do on ordering out or going out and increasing our grocery budget and possibly food waste. So I think, even planning for how do I want to be eating in this season, are there seasonal shifts that I want to make to the ways that I'm purchasing food and whether or not I'm eating out, how often I'm eating out.
Even if we do have a typical routine of when we allow ourselves to go get food out, that could shift. We could just you know what, no, I think this winter, I'd rather do more pot lucks with friends or big bowls of soup or chili with the family. I don't need to have my typical weekend out. I'm finding ways that i want to be at home more and just kind of adjust in that way. But recognize that food spending goes up. Maybe some of that is just for comfort,
whatever it is. Be planning for whatever your food budget's going to look like, because we know it's one of the big three food transportation, housing, and so if you're not making a housing or transportation decision this winter, definitely be looking at what the food's going to look like.
Yeah, something I had not thought about until we were looking at this outline is that January is such a big month for people to start eating healthy, right, so like Whole thirty and all these healthy eating plans, and it is the hardest month, it's hardest season to find fresh food. Fresh food is like a lot of this stuff. The salads and stuff are summer foods and the winter
is comfort foods. So be careful if January is a time where you want to maybe like refine your eating habits, know that refine it in a way that's more in line with the season, so you can, you know, get healthy soups and stews obviously, but stay away from things that are just going to be set you up to fail, you know, with the salads and like fresh fruit stuff. They're also going to be more expensive in this season,
So just don't set yourself up to fail. If you do, plan to change some things about your eating and really make it a goal to minimize food waste, that's going to be the biggest way that you make it through. And prioritize easy meals because it can be very if we're not going out to restaurants, then door dash, uber
eats can be the next alternative. And so so delete the apps from your phone, increase the barrier to entry, and then just have these staples that you will turn to in these cases where you don't want to cook, so like the spaghettis or the jarred soups or something. Figure out what is a safe easy meal for you, freezer meals, whatever, so that you choose to eat at home versus re downloading the takeout app.
Yeah, because this can also be a really good time that we can enter into new rhythms and habits. We can habit stack, we can find replacement activities. This would be also a great time to jump start some of that meal planning meal prep that can happen this time of year too, which will help our budgets. There's not really a ton of other things that I think come
up in the winter. I think this is really just a call to know what your winter typically looks like again, look back at what last year was, to kind of know what to be preparing for, and just know that thinking and planning ahead is one of the best things that we can do for our finances, getting into that rhythm and setting aside the money when we can. I think it's easy to look back and say I wish that I had put money aside for XYZ, And while maybe you hadn't done that up until this point, but
you can start now for the next season. We love to talk about what's one thing I can do now that will make other future things easier or unnecessary, and saving putting money aside is one of those things. And so even if you want to go above and beyond, start thinking about the summer and your travel plans. I think we talked about this in a recent friend letter that part of our winter or planning can be what
vacations do I want to take in the summer. This is an excellent way to be kind to our future selves is to start thinking what will I want to be doing, and how can I start planning out my budget and my spending on my savings, so to speak, to be ready to be able to take the vacation that we want to take, or do the travel that we want to do, or the activities that we enjoy doing, and not feel so stressed and strained in the summer.
Kind of, I think part of our what to spend in any given season should always include thinking about the next season. I know you joked about that with cit, but it is true. Like part of winter spending should be spending on putting money towards savings.
Yeah, you might, and it might not. Like for spring break, you might need to be saving for a spring break camp, or like maybe that's when you're going to take your vacation versus summer. Or maybe you do want to put your in a summer camp. That's a big expense, So maybe you start saving now for that and you're just staying home for spring break.
You figure out.
What the next six months looks like, don't necessarily plan beyond that, because I think things change. Sometimes we plan too far and ahead and then we get disappointed because
things always change. But look at the next six months and figure out what you need to start saving based on what you spent last year, and just kind of look at the things you had to buy last minute, look at the things you bought that were last minute, and say, how can I avoid that or at least refine to feel better about it next year.
And truly, a hig yield savings account can really I'm truly not trying to like sound like a commercial here. It truly is a tip. It can catapult our savings efforts in that way. Like whatever money you already have set aside for emergency fund, if that's sitting in a high old savings account, you're earning money on that, I mean something around four percent ap y, which is excellent. So again, overendspocast dot com, slash CID if you don't already have one, is a great option to help. Like
I said, catapult that savings. Do you know what else? Catapults us just.
Through the holidays, through the winter, through warms my heart.
The bill of the week.
That's right. It's time for the best minute of your entire week.
Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.
Maybe you paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died, and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Duck bills, bffalo bills, Bill Clinton.
This it's the bill up the week.
Hi Jen and Jill and hey Goldie. My name is Liz and my bill of the week is a medical bill that I did not pay. I had to have emergency surgery a couple of months ago, and when the bill started coming in, the anesthesiology bill was really high. I had just listened to your episode on medical overbilling, so I googled the codes. They were the wrong codes,
and the going rate for anesthesiology. What should have been less than one thousand dollars total, was billed to my insurance company at almost seven thousand dollars, and the remainder bill to me was nine hundred and ninety seven dollars. I called the anesthesiology company and asked that, and they asked what I thought it should have been, which seemed like a really strange question. I told them what I found in my research. I put the bill on hold until it was reviewed. I just logged in to check
the balance on my account zero. So thank you to you beautiful frugal friends for saving me almost one thousand dollars. If you're ever in the DC area, I'll buy you both some margs and chippies. Okay, thanks bye?
Oh we mark out just marks and chippies. Alas, There's so many things I want to say about this. First of all, thanks for the shout out to us and Goldie how special, and thank you for sharing about this medical bill. I hope that you are okay. That's a very scary thing to have to go through an emergency surgery. You know, oftentimes when we know a surgery is coming, we can do some of this research on the front end, be able to pay for some things ahead of time
and it not cost as much. But you don't have that luxury when it's an emergency surgery and then you're just finding out what all you've been built. But good on you that you had the energy to go through and look at each of these get the CPT codes. That's something that we talked about in our interview with doctor Vergie Ellington. I forget what episode number that is, but we can link it in the show notes. She
was so so helpful. It is actually an earmarked episode for me to go back to whenever I have some questions on medical bills. But that was one of her biggest tips was to go back through and if it's not given to you, to ask the billing department for an itemized list of charges with the CPT codes connected to them, and then be able to research what does
that hospital charge for those CPT codes. Transparent billing is required by hospitals, so they do need to have their pricing listed for common procedures, so you should be able to find that on the hospital's web site. And again, well done. Seven thousand dollars bill should have been less than one thousand. You did your research, you pushed back and it came to zero, and well done, And we'd love to come celebrate.
And do you have such a you know what, I think we're going to replay. We replace our most popular episodes from like two years prior, and the Doctor Virgie was two years ago, and so I think on our next rerun we will replay her. That'd be great, yeah, because it is one that just it never gets old. It is still important and I think everyone should hear it.
So that was episode two thirty. So you can search for that episode.
Yeah, search for it in our archives on our website, or you can just start search Frugal Friends, Doctor Virgie Bright Ellington.
Yeah, no, come up, well, don Liz, thanks for calling in. If you all listening, have a build that you want to share, if it's about a bill that you didn't have to pay, if it's about putting your brilliant mind to work doing the research and lowering a bill, if it's about chippies and marks. If your name is Bill Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash Bill, leave it for us, and now it's time for the lightning round, all right.
What's a winter expense that somehow always seems to surprise you?
Jill? Okay? For me, it's registration of our vehicles. I think that this happens at different times a year for everybody. It happens for us because that's Eric's birth. Connected to Eric's birth that, yeah, he was born on January twenty fifth, so every January, you know, I'm recovering from whatever the end of the year beginning of the year did to our finance historically. And I do know this January we spend the most money on food, usually even more than December.
I don't know what happens to us well, I don't know. If we're tired. It's darker, it's darker, we're tired. There's not as many parties happening where you can just bring all your pot luck stuff. It's also around Eric's birthday, so we're celebrating a little bit more. I don't know, but that's happening, right. We're just going ham with the food. It probably some of it is, including hare, I'm honest. Yeah.
And then we get hit with these registrations for our vehicles and it just catches me by surprise every year. Of course, now that I'm saying it out loud, hopefully it won't catch me by surprise. I can remind myself ahead of time put money aside for this. And the weird thing is some of you who know me well might be like, Jill, NBD, you have one vehicle.
And I was just like, tell him all the most transmas you have, Jill.
You let the people know you, be honest with you. You know the cat's gonna get come out of the bag right now. Okay. I am very proud that we only have one car. Uh huh, however, how can you get around? Oh, this is really tickling me. We also have two scooters, and I have talked about that on the podcast before. This is not a huge but here we go. So we have two scooters. That's very fun and actually very helpful. There are plenty of times where I'm out in the car.
Eric needs to go somewhere and he can just take a scooter anywhere within Saint Pete we can get to on the scooter. Were dragging it out, just can't cross the hat bridge, okay, dragging it out. We also have a boat. Now, before you get any ideas about what this boat looks like, it is a four seater center car console fishing boat that costs very little money used. And we live right on the water. Not right on the water. Again, don't get any ideas we live close
to water. I'm still your frugal friend. You can live on the water and be a frugal friend. Oh.
Absolutely, you're justifying all of these things, but none of them are bad.
Absolutely. Yeah. So that's just a very fun recreational vehicle that we have that we have to pay registration for and get this you have to pay registration for the boat and boat trailer. So even though they are one entity parked on our property, the boat trailer is considered something separate because we're not paying to dock our boat. It's not constantly in the water. We drop it in, we pull it out, so registration for that. And but wait,
there's more, y'all did know? Y'all did not know? We also have an enclosed trailer, not in r V, just like a utility trailer that. Oh man, We've had this thing for ten years, maybe eight years. It has helped us through every single renovation we've ever had. It's how we moved down to Florida. Helped us move. We fit everything we owned into this and closed trailer and moved down to Florida and then kept it through our renovations. Right, you got to pick up drywall and lumber and just furniture,
all sorts of tools. So I think we bought it used for one thousand dollars eight years ago and it has been worth ten twenty times its weight in gold. And then also have to pay to register it every year, and then we have to pay to register it every year. So yeah, we have one car, but we get one, two, three, four, or five six pieces of registration in the nail, and it just feels a little bit hard. She feels a little much. Yeah, so I gotta remember that this year
when my mailbox just gets stuffed. How about you, Jenny.
I forgot everything I was gonna say, because I was so enthralled with all of your registration because I knew all of them, thinking like, oh, people don't realize she only has one.
Car, but she's got a lot of things. She got. This property is full, we are filled up. Okay.
Winter expense, somehow always seems to surprise me. Ooh, I really, I don't get surprised because I just don't pay attention to my expenses. Just kidding, I don't. So maybe it's the here. It is the increase in taxes and insurance every February, and it's not something I can control, right like I can't. I don't have any other options for homeowner's insurance. And this property no longer has a homestead exemption.
It is our rental property, and so like it's the taxes are just astronomical, and every February, our mortgage goes up, you know, our total mortgage, not the fixed payment, but so I'm never prepared for that.
Well, because you also never quite know how much it's.
Gone and you can't, like I can't control it, so you can vote. But yeah, which I did vote for the thing that increases the tax exemption with the increase in value of the property. So I did make my voice heard in November.
Nice, So.
How much the city overall suffers from that vote because it passed.
Yeah, that's a tough one. And that's one of the ones that I wish I would have known in home buying. I don't think it would have made much of a difference in my decision, but maybe just my expectations. You know, I think we're sold this idea that you buy and then like you know what your quote unquote like housing expenses are going to be, and if you rent, you're paying more every year you're over year, you're at the whim of your landlord. It's like it's no different for homeowners.
We are at the whim of our local government and insurance companies like that goes up and it in essence raises your annual amount that you pay for your housing. Yeah, and so you know we bought our home for well, you know what would have been recommended solely based off of my salary. And now just four years later we are at about that like twenty five percent of our combined take home income is going towards, you know, our housing expenses. It's just like, yep, what can be done about that?
So Ramat has a good saying, and I don't know if he said originally, but I heard it from him. He says, when you rent, your rent is the maximum you will pay. When you own, your mortgage is the minimum that you will pay. And it is a very good wake up call as housing is our number one monthly expense and if we are not responsible, it can go up very very quickly.
Yeah, and all the more reason to really buy a home extra within your means, not at the tippy top of your budget, because it will increase year over year.
And you hope that your income also increases over thirty years. But you don't want and always, and you also want.
The flexibility to be able to choose to make less money like you. Even at the rate that we bought our house at, I was able to do that, take a pay cut to pursue the thing that I love doing, which is this talking to all you beautiful people. So yeah, hope that jogs your memory on what winter holds for you all, and begin preparing, set your expectations, maybe find ways to trim a little if you are anticipating. Oh yeah, that things come and do. So I can't spend as
much on XYZ because I want to be ready. I want to be kind to my future self and your current self. Yeah that needle. Thanks so much for listening everyone. We really love we love being with you, and we love reading your reviews, like this one from Kate, which says real budget talk that won't bore you to death five stars. Listening to these fantastic ladies is entertaining, motivating,
and educational. It seems like many budget podcasts and blogs are geared towards stay at home moms or just moms in general, and while that's not totally abandoned on this show, it's great to get some perspective from folks in a similar time of life, maybe married a couple of years, married a couple of years, no kids yet, killing that debt. I feel like they've really cornered budgeting for millennials. They'd really be beneficial for anybody, even my husband. Likes them ayay.
Usually he's only tolerating the podcast I play, but not with Frugal Friends. Thanks ladies for inspiring self deprecating humor and realness. Kate, what a lovely with you? They taking the time, Dad, Yeah, for putting all those words to paper and saying such specific things. We really appreciate the time that you took to do that. It does help us and it encourages us, which is fun.
Yeah.
We still like to have like our diverse opinions and different takes. Even though slowly we are becoming the same person, some of our opinions are still different. So tune in because one day we're literally going to be saying the same thing at the same time. So get in now.
Well, the water's warm, and if.
You enjoyed the show, please take a minute to leave a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners know that their husband's going to like it and not tolerate it, or that it's not all about sitting in the car line in your minivan, even though some.
Of it.
See you next time. Grgal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. We got five minutes, all right, what should we talk? About Oh man, I want it to be something juicy. You know me, I do know you.
We didn't really dive into recording our audiobook, did we?
No, we didn't.
Okay, well, we spent two and a half days in a legit studio recording our audio book.
Yeah, it was very fun. I got out of the house, I drove for potentially the first time and potentially two months.
I'm always telling Jill she needs to drive more, because it's a skill. If you don't use it, you lose it, and in an emergency, you will really need it.
Yeah. Yeah, look at me. Listen. I just hardly drive anymore, and it's becoming scarier and scarier. I know you're scared of it. That's the problem. I'm too young to be scared of driving. But I'm really I'm really leaning into my retirement era. But it was.
It was my very first time recording anything like that in a legitimate studio, sitting on an uncomfortable bar stool.
It was not the most comfortable comfortable at all. Yeah, that would be my notes.
I think most of the recording they probably do is for TV and movies, and so it's people.
Standing my My butt hurt more than my voice did same, and I had to tell you know, we're podcasters and not glute enthusiasts, glue enthusiasts, I don't know, just like exercise gurus.
I had to use my hands a lot, same during the reading, which I I do read ads with my hands, but I don't when we're talking podcasting wise, and I'm.
About to say, you don't use your hands now because I'm talking about using my hands when we're talking. I don't use my hands.
So when we're recording the show, I'm very still. Yeah, it's only when I am recording an AD or reading an entire book out last.
Well, okay, and that's because you're reading literal word for word and wanting it to sound as natural as possible. So we don't need to use our hands when it's just you and I talking because we are naturally we're not reading a script to have conversation with each other. But when you're reading something word for word, it really does feel like I need my hands for this to help me feel the realness of the authenticity of what
was written here, so it doesn't just sound red. Yeah, you'll be able to tell still because there are no mistakes in our talking.
Yeah, we had somebody in We had two people in our ears listening.
For if you count, you do I count? I was able to talk to you throughout it too.
Yeah.
Yeah, we were in different rooms, but there was a window so we could see each other. At first, Jill wasn't going to face the window and I said, please look at me.
It's not the way that the chair was facing. And I just didn't think to move furniture.
So, yeah, there were three people in each of our ears. And if we said something dialect like incorrectly, like regionally regional dialect incorrect aesthetic.
It was a hard one. And I think it's aesthetic.
Aesthetic, Yeah, aesthetic. You have to really say the aesthetic.
We could not get that one. That one took her. That took a while, And I really wish we hadn't used that word so many times in the book. It doesn't it made three or four times in the book.
It made me regret some of the big words that I used in Uh. I think it was chapter four or it was the one where I used the like more of the psychology terms and I was reading that one and I was like, dang it, this is bad.
Including the names of all these different people were like, we don't know how to say oh, And that was for me. So the people that were in our ear was the engineer who was in the studio, and then our producer who was actually in New York City given to us by like a to us by the publisher. So the producer was more than one kind of checking our words and pronunciations, and the engineer was there kind of marking when we made mistakes so that they could go back and post and like kind of do the
different editing. Where was I going with this words aesthetic? Yeah, and I remember.
Yeah, but it was just funny something that like the she she kept giving like regional uh huh pronunciation like reasons that.
The name got the name. That's what it was. So the engineer at the we had to read the we had to read the credits of the book, and so it was a sign to me that I would read engineered by and his name. So he's in the studio in our ears and has the wildest last say, you got every single hard name in the credits and I got all of the easy name. Yes, his was the hardest. My mouth just couldn't do it. They'd say it i'd hear it, I'd be like, yep, got it, you were reading.
I'd read it, and I'd be like, so it was, I'll just say it. It was mocking it. I'm not I'm still mocking sturm. My my voice wanted to keep saying strum, mocking strum. I couldn't get it through my thick little brain. It's mocking storm. And I felt so bad because he's there. He's the only one to me mess up his name royally probably six to eight times.
And at the end, you said it, and the producer was fine with it, and he was like, can you try one more time?
Just like you gotta do that one again, sweetheart. I was just like, I am so sorry, Dan, can you leave the room for this because it's not happening And I don't mean to be offensive, but and we did fine. We did bond.
We both started crying during our acknowledgments. Yeah, which they say, don't they. The publisher literally was like, you can read this if you want, but it's recommended you don't read this in the audio book.
We didn't know why they didn't want us to read it, but they did say author discretion. And I'm like, I want to read the acknowledgments like I wanted to come from our voices. I get paid per published hour of audio, right, so we get an extra five bucks. So Jen went first and you started. You started crying on like your first acknowledgement. I was like, oh, first line, this is going to be rough, and I'm like, this isn't going to happen to me. I'm going to plow through through
talking about my dad dying. And I powered was crying, but I had to be quiet because I was still in the studio on the mic, so I couldn't make noises while you were talking. And I'm like, meanwhile, tears streaming down my face, trying not to sniffle because it's just such a heart wrenching. Chapter ten is so heart wrenching, and you were so vulnerable.
It's like, if you don't read anything else, just read chapter ten. Like, and I'm not saying that just because I wrote it, but it is so powerful.
Do I think for it to be as powerful as it is, you do have to read the rest of the book. I think there is a journey that you take, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah.
But yeah, so no, I powered through that and then I got to the first line of my acknowledgments.
This was on the same day, and I lost it. And then I'm like, that's not going to happen to me. And then I get like three acknowledgments down and I started crying.
I started tearing up too when you were, and I was like, I'm done though, So I'm like, fine.
Oh gosh, well we have hearts. You know. It proves that we are people who people.
Were wondering after the holiday anti hall episode if we had hearts. But I hope that now people realize that we do. And the book is a lot of action steps but also a lot of heart. It's a lot of both.
Yeah, it's a lot of both of us. Forgle friendspodcast dot com, slash book. No, that's not it.
It's by what you loovebook dot com.
That was in the that's the resources page for the book, and we've read that in the book. Don't go to our page yet. Yeah, don't go to it yet. I haven't established I haven't made it yet. You love it.
By the time this comes out, I might actually.
Maybe you should make that one for now, be like a sales page, and then we'll change. Are it might actually I might have actually done that. By what you Love book dot com. That definitely goes to the pre order's page. Oh my