Episode three eighty two, What we learned from No Spend January.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver a with your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are talking about no Spend January today. I know it's the middle of February, but we're not recording this episode until the last till January thirtieth, so that we could really get all of it in because we usually record a month ahead of time.
Right, so we are just wrapping up our no Spend challenge and hoping that this can be a good one to queue up. Really anytime you're thinking about doing a no spend challenge. We just did it in January, but you could do that at any point for a couple of weeks, for a whole month, And hopefully this might be inspiring towards that. With some of our successes and I don't know pseudo failures, did.
We learning opportunities? Learning opportunities?
It's either a blessing or a lesson.
But first, this episode is brought to you by my favorite things literally My Jill favorite things. That's a sponsor, hot dogs, gum well, landscaped, mid century, one story homes, sunny showers, finished projects, living and a live plants five thirty pm in the summertime, the sound of loose stones under a slow moving car, the smell of shoe stores, and the front letter. It goes out three times a week to your email and is full of great things. More of our favorite things like what's free that week,
Ways to save both big and small. We are getting even more granular on that, like how to get the best bang for your buck on pots and pans, kind of stuff and money, mindset shifts, journaling, prompts around finances, just all the goodie goodie good stuff. So make it one of your favorite things. Frugal friendspodcast dot com. Yes, those are very specific things specific.
I think it's great to have, like list very specific things that you love, like the sound of rocks under attire.
Oh yeah, when I was little, about six years old, I realized that I loved that sound. And we had a little sidewalk in our backyard and I put pebbles all I collected pebbles for hours to then make a trail along the sidewalk of those pebbles that I could then ride my bike over just to hear the sound of stones undertires.
That's very specific. Yeah, it's a little further than I thought you were going to take.
My mom got it on videotape because she came out and was like, you know, you're gonna have to clean up all these stones. And I had a speech impediment at the time, and so in this little home video, I'm like, you mean not have to clean up every single single walk, every single single walk.
I was just straw.
That's Kai also gets that way with toys, like all his toys are strewn everywhere, and I was like, Okay, it's time to clean up. He's like, there's too many, and I was like, I know, there are too many. Let's get rid of the toys. I just had too many pebbles yet side right, Okay, imagine my life back and forth.
The school, uphill both ways, I'm playing with rocks and still the rocks outside.
Anyways, we're talking. We're talking even more about our lives in this No Spend January episode, And we also asked you in the friend letter, what was your hardest thing about No spend January, and we were so kind of shocked but not really to realize that most of you said passing up a good deal, so like next was definitely cooking at home or skipping and outing with friends.
Very few of you were with me on skipping malades, but so many of you found it hard to pass up a good deal, and so we're going to be talking a little bit about that. But we did have a lot of you saying things like dining out was your biggest expense of twenty twenty three, so that was really hard. Not being able to stock up on a good deal was hard, which we talk about the utilitarian kind of impulse spending in our psychological reasons that we
impulse by. That's a really good episode to listen to. But yeah, just a lot of different things that you guys have been doing that have become habits unintentionally or become coping mechanisms unintentionally. So that was kind of the reason that we wanted to host this no Spend challenge
for everyone. So whether you did no Spend January or you want to do a no spend challenge or January, they're always useful in small doses occasionally, so some episodes that you can queue up besides the episode three seventy eight, the psychological reasons that we impulse by episode three forty how to prepare for a no spend challenge, and then also episode two eighty six should you try a no spend Challenge? So we delve into why a no spend challenge is not a method to just save as much
as possible, to spend as little as possible. It is a method to learn about your spending, to reset and reprogram some of these habits, some of the ways we get our dopamine hits. And we're going to talk about that a little later, but this is going to be an interview of the two of us, Jill, So we're going to interview each other about how no Spend January went. And we kind of know this because we've been talking about it, but we're just going to share it with the greater community.
Right. These are the conversations we have when we get together for dinner, so might as well have a conversation in front of you all. Yes, So with that said, then let's talk about Jen. What we wanted to get out of this no spend challenge? How did you approach it?
So my reasoning for doing the No Spend Challenge is I wanted to reset some of the habits I had created around buying, specifically clothes, coffee, and takeout. And I also just roped in Amazon in there because I was buying a lot of clothes from Amazon and I didn't like that about not just the impulsiveness of it and how easy it was to get them, but I personally want to learn to buy better quality, more sustainable, more
durable pieces of clothing that are considered more expensive. So not luxury, We're not going quiet luxury, but actual, very like classic, durable pieces of that are of good quality. And so that's the person I want to be. I've previously never been that. It's that lingering scarcity mindset that tells me like I have to get a good deal on clothes, like that's the thing I have to get a good deal on regardless, like, regardless of quality.
I think it's got to be a tough thing. And this is what I hear from people. I don't know if it's true for you too, But when you're done having kids and you're wanting to come into now what is my style? But also I'm beginning to feel like my body is getting back to normal, but yet all of my previous wardrobe isn't quite right for me anymore, and wanting and needing in some ways to have a
bit of a refresh. But then I think that that refresh can, as you're describing, create than certain habits around. We can keep thinking, well, yeah, I do need more, but never pausing to say, but it is my closet done now, at least for a time, right.
It is that weird place where I'm ten months postpartum my second and last baby, and I am I dress differently, I am different. I have a different lifestyle than I did when I bought a lot of my clothes. So I don't want to limit myself and not buy clothes. I want to love the way that I look in the body that I have. I want to love my body, and a lot of the clothes that I have are too tight and they make me dislike my body. So it's not that I want to take a fast from
buying clothing. I want to buy new clothing. I need to buy new clothing. It's what kind of clothing that is. And so I've just been like but I started out doing like old maybe Amazon, and I was like, no, wait, stop, this isn't the type of wardrobe that I want to build. So it was those specific those four things that were my no spend challenge, not everything, but those four specific things.
Yeah, you are better at identifying specifics more than I am. And I think that's the theme about these challenges throughout for me is I don't do that well with hard constraints. So I definitely entered into this. I did my own version of a no spend challenge with the recognition of kind of who I am, how I operate, what's going to be the most beneficial way to engage in this
and not just frustrate me. So I would say for me, Michael, was to utilize and harness this time for settling into contentment. I know you and I have talked a little bit about some of the shifts that we are making in our business and our own personal finances, and twenty twenty four represents really me stepping even more fully into frugal friends with you, and what that also means is taking a little bit of a pay cut because I'm stepping
away from other things. So this came out a good time because I've been ramping up for this of recognizing we can't buy on any renovation project that we want to. We can't go out maybe as often as we previously have out to eat. So there's some natural things that are coming, but for me need to be sustainable through the rest of the year, not just January. So it was for me a little bit taking the time to step into what is the rest of the year even going to look like and in what ways can we
slow the pace on our spending. So that did mean a hard stop on renovations for us. We had already bought some of the supplies and materials for the backsplash in the kitchen, and we still had some money set aside to do some lighting, finish up some lighting in the house, so we did have permission to purchase those things.
But it's not as if, oh, anything that we see that we want to replace, which our minds did get into similar to what you're describing that habit of we've now created spending habits over the last three years of we're renovating our home and so we're buying whatever needs to be bought now recognizing we are at the end of our renovation and if any other thing comes up recognize contentment that, yeah, that might be a nuisance, but
it's not a problem that has to be solved with money. Yeah, I'd love to replace this door that isn't completely sealed up, and you.
Know bugs might be coming in.
But we've also lived with this door for three and a half years, and let's keep living with this door, to use an example, So it was it was that with the renovations and eating at home even more. January is a hard month for us because it's Eric's birthday, and so I'm never going to say no, let's not celebrate your birthday or let's not have friends come visit
for your birthday. So, with eyes wide open, knowing these things were coming, we just put parameters around how much will we go out to eat, how much will we spend? So we did earmark funds for that. We did still spend, but in a very kind of boundaried and intentional way.
Yeah. I think that's I hope that's encouraging to people listening to this, knowing like you can design your own no spend challenge, And ultimately it's about reprogramming your habits and the way you seek to celebrate, the ways you seek to you know process, you know, the pain of the day, stress, stuff like that. It's just to reprogram stuff like that. And so this was how we both did it. And Jill, what was your biggest takeaway from No Spend January?
I think I was encouraged by my methods are working. I had a lot of friends who saw followed you Jen on social media, and they're asking me too, are you also to no Spend? Partially like cautiously, like does this mean that we can't go out to eat together? Are you also doing this? And I did in my own way obviously, but to recognize that impulse spending is not a huge issue for me, And I say that cautiously, not in a oh so this podcast isn't accessible if
you do have issues with impulse spending. It is a big issue for a lot of people, and I can recognize that. But I also want to be honest about the fact that we've been doing this podcast for almost six years, and so our minds are more on our personal finances, and we also have our own personhoods that are more equipped in some ways than in other ways. That I think it felt good to say, oh, I have actually done some work around this where I'm able to eat at home or often.
It is not as big of a.
Challenge as it would have been four years ago. So my methods of meal planning, meal prepping, cooking at home, repurposing food, reducing food waste, I just kind of increased that by maybe ten to fifteen percent in this last month, and it's working, I think too. I was encouraged by I don't actually have to shift that much. It was good to see that I can. I can buckle down
a little bit more when needed. But there's not these massive AHAs at this point because I've now set rhythms in place that are working, and I think that feels good to me that I don't have to throw and overturn this whole thing. I've made small changes over the last six years that are sustainable and they're continuing to work.
Yeah.
I felt similarly, I have definitely gotten out of the routine in twenty twenty three. Having a baby will throw your life into a loop. It's a new You're you're essentially creating a new life literally and figuratively, and so there's a grace period that comes where you are in survival mode, and then, uh, there comes a period where you say we're gonna shift in these places, and then you get a little more sleep and you shift in these places, and you really do have to to plan
it out. Like my first shift was in my body and moving my body. I signed up for the half marathon, and my priority was moving my body and getting you know, those endorphins to you know, heal all the postpart and hormonal stuff that just goes awry. You know, whether it's you, everybody has it. So knowing that I would that was my first priority. And then once that was done, shifting
to you know, figuring out re entering the business. Really, I had taken really six months off of you know, in some capacity doing frugal friends, and so I had to reacquaint myself with our business. And now January kind of marked the now I have to reorient my spending habits that I have not been focusing on for the past nine months. And so I think my my biggest takeaway for me now with two young children, a business, a renovation that is in the height and we'll talk
about that in a bit. We are at the height of our renovations. I think the biggest takeaway for me was that right now easier is better. Simpler is better. The simpler that I can make dinner, the better. The simpler I can make my routine means just making things very very easy for my future self. That was really helpful, Like when I was making a breakfast or a dinner, just prepping one thing that I knew that I would
need in the future. That was helpful because sometimes I could do that and sometimes I couldn't, And so the times that I couldn't, already having at least something prepped made the practice of just getting dinner done or getting breakfast done doable, whereas otherwise it would have seemed like this insurmountable task that I could not handle, along with getting two kids ready in the morning by myself, getting them out the door, and getting this business, like my parts of it running.
Yeah.
Yeah, it seems even from my watching you on social media and chatting too about it, that the reset really did help you to plan and think ahead and be prepared for this is coming up, especially with food. You did a lot of food posts which were really helpful and to see how the things that you were implementing, maybe from a financial motivation, helped you with food, with making your schedule more simple, and experiencing benefits kind of
across the board as a result. Yeah, okay, So we talked about what went well, what our biggest takeaways were.
What about the hardest part.
The hardest part was literally January third. We started the most crucial and invasive part of our renovation. January third. It started. We wanted to start it in August, but it was just very hard to find somebody that could start and they could not start until January. And we also had a tenant in our rental on the back side of the house move in January second. So it has been so stressful. Every couple days, something gets taken out, something goes up. I have half of a kitchen right now.
It's just been so hard. We had to refund our tenant half of their rent for February because of he works you know, remote, and it was very hard for him to work and take calls with all the construction noises. So all of these things combined made it a horrible time to do a no spend challenge. But I tell you that's honestly one of the reasons I wanted to do it because I've done these before under perfect circumstances, and to do one in this very inconvenient, very challenging,
worst seemingly possible time to do one. I wanted to do it because of that, because I wanted to show people this is what can be done right, and you're surely not doing it. You're house surely does not look like mine while you're doing it. So if I can do it in some capacity, I think.
Anybody can write the motivation of that, but I think that there's more insight that can then happen as a result. If you're able to do something like this challenge under extreme circumstances, how much more does that set you up for life beyond when things do look a little bit more normalized and you are able to get into a bit of a rhythm with your spending and your habits and that kind of thing.
Yeah, how about you.
Again, The seemingly unnecessary restriction is a tough one for me. I just to there were times where the challenge to me felt like, don't spend for the sake of not spending. It wasn't that you don't have the five dollars to buy this thing, it's just don't spend it. And so I think, even working through my mindset on that of what is the purpose behind this, what freedoms and permissions do.
I have what?
And probably part of that had to do with me. I probably would have done better if I had set more clear parameters around what I.
Am and am not doing.
But then I kind of wanted to push back on my own parameters, if that makes sense.
I kind of approached it like.
I'm gonna do the best I can in these categories, but also I know what I can spend in these categories. If I happened to spend, then no big time. Is kind of how that went. And so, uh, I did impulse buy some herb seeds. I say impulse by meaning I didn't totally plan to buy those seeds that day. I did plan to buy them eventually. I want to be growing my own herbs to further supplement my cooking at home, my making of my own salad dressings, all that.
So it didn't feel like a failure in any way to me really, But at the same time, it was funny to me because I don't think that without the challenge that I would have bought them, if that makes sense. Like I think I'm a little bit twisted in my mind, like because I can't spend. It's now is when I want to versus without those restraints. I think I'm a little bit more of a restraint to myself. This might all sound twisted. Maybe there's somebody who's listening.
I understands when it's natural for us when we can't do something is instantly when we want to do something. Yeah, And I think what I've tried to emphasize on social media is that it's that's why we say it's thirty days. We are not doing a year long spending no spend. Frugality is not a race to the bottom spending. But when you give yourself thirty days and say I'm not going to spend on these things, it's not I can't
have these things for thirty days. It's a challenge to be like, how can I get the things that I want without spending? That's the challenge.
And you know what, I found five dollars in the parking lot of home Depot and then I turned around and spent those five dollars on the herb seeds.
At home Depot.
There you go.
So that's how I got around that one.
I mean, so I did something similar or I needed to get a booster seat for Kai because I needed the car seat for Atlas because he's a large baby and he grew out of his infant seat. And so what I did was I listed a rug for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and this was back in December. Once it's sold in January, I then took that money and bought the booster seat that I needed. So it wasn't a I can't buy a booster seat until February. It just forced me to get creative with how I acquire
the booster seat. So I mean, maybe there was a plant exchange or a seat exchange you could have sought out before you just went into Low's. That's the creative part of the no spend challenge. You see restriction, we see opportunity for creativity.
Yeah, and that's the thing I think without the challenge, for so weird reason, I probably would have found another way to get it. Because also similarly, I was out with a friend walking around the streets of Tampa. We went into this shop and I've been wanting loose leaf tea that is on my wants list and has been there for over a month, and we came upon a loose leaf tea shop and I was about to buy it and then for whatever reason, gave myself a pause.
I was like, nah, I'll buy it another time, or I'm going to look up and see what other options there are for purchasing, or I'm going to maybe look into growing my own tea leaves and making my own tea. We're still in that research phase right now. I still haven't yet bought it, So you're right. I think there are times where we can want something and then give ourselves that pause to say, how can I get it in a different way or a more creative way.
Yeah. I think that's a great example because maybe you research it and you realize, oh, that was a good place to get loose leaf tea. Making my own tea is hard and I don't want to do it, don't need to do Then you can always go back and get it or buy it online. Like, but it does make you confident in that you made the right decision and just impulse by and not sometimes like if you don't know if you got the best thing, then you may not even use it because you don't know how
valuable it is right, You don't know how good it is. Right. But if you see something you do the research, and then you go back and get it. You use it more quickly because you realize the value in it.
Exactly.
Yeah, were there any unexpected things that you learned through this process?
So I read Dopamine Nation while I was on the Noespun Challenge. I'm actually still reading it and the so I'm reading it for the book like that we are writing. And so I actually learned from this from this psychologist who sees almost exclusively addiction patients and studies the effect of dopamine and addiction and overconsumption. Obviously, over consumption and addiction are not the same thing, and I have I
have a hard time. We don't talk about shopping addiction here, mixed feelings on it, but we all over consume in some place, not all the time, but we all over consume. And so something that she does for her patients with an addiction where she can so obviously not drugs and alcohol, but she recommends they do. They abstain from their addiction for four weeks because studies have shown that after two weeks your brain is still desiring the same pleasure pathways
that the quote unquote drug of choice gives it. But after four weeks, studies have shown that your brain has actually started to reprogram the way it seeks pleasure, the pathways through which it seeks pleasure. And I was like, gosh, darn if that doesn't sound like a no spend challenge, And I was just so affirmed. Yeah, and hoping that other people will see that. It just it's a continual reminder that we don't do this for the sake of
just the deprivation. We're not trying to self discipline ourselves just for the sake of spending as little as possible. We are trying to We are allowing our brains. We are giving our brains the opportunity to reprogram themselves so that we can receive ve dopamine from healthier places or at least less expensive places, and that we require less dopamine because the more we can, the more we consume, the more we need to consume of whatever drug that
is quote unquote drug, and that includes shopping. The more we shop and the more we spend, the more we need to shop and spend to create the same dopamine response we did it first.
Yeah, we can retrain our brains, we can find new patterns of relating, we can form new different better habits. I think this is one of the things that helps to lay the foundation that we can springboard off of, because without some of that hard stop and realignment time, the rest is not going to come from there. And then it's fun to see it backed by science.
How about you?
So I learned or experienced more confirmation than I love spreadsheets, and I think something unexpected is that this no spend challenge just even heightened my awareness of my financial landscape as a whole. My attention to it then helped me to get other life admin stuff done. I finally got term life insurance. I finally switched our internet provider to get a better deal. I finally switched our internet to be paid for by the business instead of us personally.
We reevaluated our subscriptions. We went down to one streaming service. I think previously we utilized three, maybe four streaming services, and now we're down to just one. And both Eric and I have commented how much more we like the boundaries of that. It helps us to simplify where we're going, how long it takes to pick something that we're going
to entertain ourselves with. There's just so many benefits to that something else that was also super refreshing to me that I guess as a bit of a learning I would consider myself pretty decent at relational boundaries, but I think especially boundaries around finances with friends and recognizing that people people will want that like if we can speak
our needs to one another that is kind. And so we had a good amount of visitors in January over Eric's birthday, and I put something new into practice, partially prompted by this no spend January, we had friends who were going to be staying with us for a full week, and I knew we can't go out every day to eat, but I also can't supply all of our meals for
a full week straight. Previously, when I've had friends, we will go out some meals and I will just provide some meals at home, and it's we call it a wash whatever. We love to provide for our guests. But because of where we're at in our personal finances, I got a little bit more bold and was like, hey, we can't provide all meals. But of course they weren't
expecting that either. I just don't typically have those types of conversations with people, and I think the the acceptance and embracing and even like celebrating it that we receive from friends was super encouraging, and so I had to
put some planning and forthought into it. I made a spreadsheet of potential meals that we could have links to the recipes, a cost breakdown of what each meal was going to cost, the ingredients I was going to need to buy in order to make these meal, how much that was going to be, and then how much it would be per couple.
That was in some ways fun for me.
I did have to do that work, but they open arms, embraced it, said the meals that they were going to want to have. I did the grocery shopping, but then we cooked together and we split the cost of the groceries. And I feel like it really opened the door for this now going forward, where somebody else has asked to stay with us, and I got bold again with them and said, that's great.
If you don't.
Mind splitting the cost of food and doing a little vemo transaction at the end of the week, then you know, not for your stay, and obviously you're not obligated to eat our food if you don't want to, and then don't worry about it. But if we do, then I'm going to split the cost of groceries with you. And everyone has been like, yes, please, and actually do please charge me to stay the night in your guest room and all of this. So people, of course are very
generous and open to this. It's just a issue of stating my needs and that has gone really well.
Yeah, that's awesome. That is an improvement for you.
Yes, it is.
I've never met anyone that has more guests than you, and I've never met I've never met people that visit people like your friends visit you. So you are in a unique situation.
And uh, I think we make it so comfortable. Maybe if I start charging them, they won't come so often.
We don't know, you might have to make them like it's like, we'll provide the place to say, you buy the groceries, and that's how it's going to be. Yeah, well you'll have to get them to get all the groceries.
I'm discovering a new pathway forward. We shall say, yeah, do you know what is an old pathway but a good one.
And we enjoyed it the full month of January and every month before and after.
It never cost us money.
The bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, bfalo bills, Bill Clion, this is the bill of the week.
Hi, Jen and Jill. My name is Joan, and I'm super excited to be recording this Bill of the Week. I have finally, after eleven months, paid off my private student loan, which in January of twenty twenty three was at seventeen four hundred and eighty three dollars. I started listening to your podcast at the beginning of this year hoping to be motivated, and it's really worked. I track my spending for six months. I'm still meal planning. I budgeted for a while. I got deep into books that
the library about personal finance. I cut back on extra things like breakfast, love, takeout, kombucha, and I was going to have a month where I would just like let loose after I paid off my loan, and I'm not even doing that because I'm just diving right in with the same budgeting for my federal loan, which is thirty thousand dollars, so that should take two years at this rate, and I think I can do it. I'm going to keep on listening to the two of you, and I
super appreciate all that you do. Thank you so much for your podcast, and hooray for the skill of the week. Thank you, bye, hooray, congratulations, Joan.
We're so happy for you, uh and we're so thankful to have played just a tiny part on your journey to paying off debt. And please do celebrate it. Put a marker in the sand and celebrate your accomplishments, because so many accomplishments go by uncelebrated or not celebrated enough as we pursue the next challenge. And I just want twenty twenty four to be a year that we celebrate what we've accomplished, no matter how small.
But look at you, Joan.
You found a free way to celebrate like that is part of it. She called in. She left a bill. We're cheering you on, you are acknowledging it. I think there is permission if you want to celebrate and spend a set amount of money, but I think you're also highlighting our point here that there are alternative ways to meet our needs that don't always have to cost money, especially where it's going to help to keep us on track.
And you did that.
I truly think the best celebration is a public declaration. So on this podcast is great and we love it, but tell I mean on social media where people you know will see yeah, Because when we give each other in our communities permission to celebrate our financial wins, we inspire and motivate other people who we may not even know are pursuing the same financial goals. We give them permission to achieve their goals and also celebrate them publicly.
Keep going, Joan, you've got one down or I don't know how many downs you've got, this one to help, next one, next one to go, but you've done it and you can build upon that accomplishment and we're here for you when you pay that one off, call us.
You've got another bill along the way, call us. And if any of you are listening and you want a public de declaration to celebrate in a way that doesn't cost you money or just your name is Bill Frugal Friends Podcast dot com slash Bill, leave us your bill. We are ready for it, and now it's time for the lightning around.
All right, any new discovery about yourself? After no spend January.
I'm turning more granola.
I mean, I'm not surprised, but I'm glad you finally seen it.
I am inspired towards so much more DIY ways of doing things. I'm following more Instagram accounts that are low waste to zero waste DIY eco friendly products because a lot of that does coincide with simplicity and less you can use. You don't need twenty different types of cleaning products in your home, usually having three different types and a lot of them. Low talks, no talks is possible,
and it's definitely what I'm being drawn towards. But also all the stuff with food, making my own dressings, making my own bread, growing my own herbs.
That's so good for you. I am not there.
Where are you at?
I don't like to do it myself.
You're new discovery, my new discovery.
I am actually shocked that I posted on social media every day for thirty days. Yeah I am. I shocked myself. When I told you I would do it, I wasn't sure. Yeah, I wasn't sure I would do it, and I did it.
What do you think it was the public declaration knowing people are hanging on every word.
So this might be why I am currently really jiving with these public decoration declarations. It was so many times I was motivating. I was remotivated to stick with this challenge because people in my life saw that I was posting about it and would ask me about it. And it was that external accountability that I didn't even ask for. But it wasn't accountability. It was they were you know, how's it going?
Like?
I saw it and you inspired me to try it for a week. And that's what I'm beginning a lot of is that the public declaration and sticking with it was inspiring others to do it. It was giving permission. And that's why I started writing Personal Finance.
I was gonna say, that's kind of you getting back to your or that even got you into this.
That was the start for me, Yeah, is that I just started writing things that I had learned. It was the same thing every I was just it wasn't like a day in the life thing. It was just things that I had been learning and I just started sharing those things and hope that it would help other people who were where I was kind of get on the journey to where what I was learning. And my gosh, that was what motivated me to stick with the posting and to stick with the challenge. Was that public declaration.
And when we share our struggles. I wasn't even really sharing my struggles completely, Like a lot of it was stuff that I was just processing. But when we share openly, like the positive, negative, and neutral, we give other people permission to feel the positive, negative and new about these situations. And that was an unexpected thing, a new discovery, maybe a rediscovery right about me?
Yeah, we talk about you know, when thinking even about hobbies or what do we enjoy or our core values, we often encourage people to go back to what inspired you in childhood?
What did you enjoy then? And this feels.
Adjacent to that of what's going to help me stay on track? Well, what were for you in the past? What was a motivator five years ago when you had a goal that you were trying to accomplish. I think that you got into blogging about your debt payoff journey as a way to keep you on track is indicative of how you operate, and it's probably going to be.
A piece of that is what motivates.
You for other types of goals going forward, and that can be to your detriment or could be leveraged to your best fit. And so when we can understand ourselves by moving through just this journey of frugality and embracing it, we can leverage our learning of ourselves in beneficial ways. I know that I don't love a ton of restriction when I'm already got good boundaries around me, So I'm not gonna lean into heavy restriction. I'm just gonna put up the good boundaries.
That's just me, and don't I still don't love a budget. I still don't love a spreadsheet, even though I do prefer it. But I am still loving monarch when I do check it. But yeah, I mean to each.
Our own, to each our own.
Yeah.
So thank you so much for listening. Whether you did know spend January or not, I hope that you will take this as an encouragement to experiment with ways to just live a healthier life financially, create spending habits and boundaries that you feel good about. And if this helped you do it, we'd love to hear a review from you. On Apple, Apple and Spotify, kind of like this one, what is going on with these names? BGA nine four
eight nine. I'm not evenna try and like pronounce it like it's like it's a word, it says new listener. I just recently found the Frugal Friends podcast and I love it. I went back and bingched old episodes. I am truly impressed with their evolution over the years. Their old episodes definitely have good tips, but their new episodes are not only informative but also very entertaining.
Thank you, Wow, thanks for listening.
That's interesting to hear that that take on it because we don't go back and listen to.
Our week episode.
We don't listen to any of our episodes. It's weird to hear ourselves talk.
But it is always interesting when I hear people say I binged your backlog, and I'm like, what must that be like? Because that literally means that, potentially, in the span of a couple weeks to a month, you followed us our journey over five years.
Yeah, and what was that?
Why was that? We love if that's you, We love to hear about your journey, yeah, or a five star review.
The renovations, Yeah, what not.
Anyways, I'm glad it's not only informative but also entertaining, because that's how we like our content.
However, you came to us wherever you're at, and however many episodes you've listened to. Although I will say I think this is my hot take. I think in order to review something you need to have listened to at least five episodes. There should be some parameters.
Unless you're just going unless you're just going to give a five star right off the bat, in which case I mean, listen to as little.
As you want, get a flavoring for it, and if you like it, leave us a review and rating.
It really does help our show.
It helps other people find us know if it's going to be right for them. And also get our friend letter Google friendspodcast dot com.
And try and no spend challenge. See what your learnings are gonna be. Please see you next time.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Will you do another no spend challenge one day? Yeah?
I really do think it's beneficial to just reset. It's not like a like a juice cleanse or something like. Juice cleanses are objectively not the healthiest. But it's just a way when you pick a couple things that you just don't feel your best about, like how you're spending gun, and you just sort of like, Okay, I'm gonna be really intentional about those for the next month.
Yeah, it's a way to clear the clutter. I mean truly, I say, Oh, I don't really know how well or that I approach this now spend challenge in my own way, But if you were to look at my transactions for this month, my paper is just.
Not very full at all.
It really did just simplify my transactions, which is also fun. Then I'm spending less time tracking my transactions because I don't have as much to write down, so I'm not looking at my finances as much because there's not as much to look at.
Yeah. Yeah, So I think it's just it's a healthy reset. And while we love visiting extremes for what they teach us, we don't love living there.
So so you know what we're doing instead, We're gonna go to a dollar sale.
Oh my gosh, Yes, Okay, I'm so glad that you talked about this. There's a place. Well, it will already be over by the time this release is. But they just announced this weekend they're doing we got like four thousand items. Everything's a dollar. It's a resale shop.
But yeah, resale and a lot of name brand or quality items. But they're celebrating their four year anniversary by giving everything for a.
Dollar up to fifty up.
To fifty items, each item one dollar. So we have to do our research on which brands offer quality and what our quality materials. That's something else I've been following on Instagram more and more is saying what what to even be reading on the labels?
I feel like what back?
And even now still we are our culture had this shift and we're reading the nutrition labels on the boxes and that's all well and good and it's good to be informed on that. But now we're getting even more informed and reading our labels on our tags and what is it made of? You are the synthetic materials? How will they hold up over time? How do they need to be washed? Do I have the time and energy to wash these things in the way that they need
to be washed? If they say dry clean only even that that could be a good material, But am I going to wash it in the way that it needs to be washed and care for it, and if not, then that might not be the choice for me.
Yeah, one hundred percent agree. So I'm excited to see what we pick up.
Yeah we will.
We'll be taking some video and that'll show up on social media too.
We'll do a haul video. Oh whoa, yes, thrift haul. Can't wait, see you on social