Frugality Gives You Options #028

I currently, right now, I have made ninety dollars and sixty seven cents driving my car a total of three dred and forty three miles that you would have driven anyway that I would have driven anyway. And here's the thing. I've been on vacation and I've been biking a lot, so I haven't been driving my car nearly as much as Yeah, you don't take your electric car when you go to the beach, right, Yeah, of course I couldn't make it there. So, uh, it's been it's been good.

It's been a fun experiment. A lot of people ask me if I work for Salesforce, because so, let let's set it up for everybody. I got my car wrapped and there's a company called rapid Fi. You can download the app they will test your driving and kind of decide whether or not you will work for one of their campaigns. And so I got signed up for their Salesforce dot Com campaign and so I've got this this

advertising wrapped around my niecean leaf um. And so for a lot of people that commute to drive a long distance in major cities, this could work out really well. But for me, I just I bike too much and I don't drive enough when I do drive. And so you know, I've I've made ninety bucks, like I said, but uh, I just I don't see it for me being worth it ultimately. Wait, so when did like the campaign start for you? Then? Has it been like a month? Yeah, it's been a little over a month at this point.

I think I think a month and a half at this point. Okay, so you're not quite making, I guess as much as you thought. But a lot of that has to do the fact that, yeah, that you haven't been driving. Yeah, exactly how that was gonna work out, because you know that campaign and the incentive to drive, it's kind of like it's the opposite of what we like to do totally, which is biking and not driving places. And I knew that I just I wanted to give it a shot. He's worth trying to see how pan out.

I love kitchy, weird things, and this was exactly that. And uh, the cool thing is about Rapifi two they have these things called swarms, and so they'll still shoot you a message and say, hey, if you can drive in this one part of town for an hour on Saturday from one to two, we'll pay you an extra thirty bucks or something like that. So it's kind of cool, like there's these additional ways to make money. I will

say all about that, Yeah, right, I will say. The downside of rapifi is the communication is terrible, uh, within the app. And so I was having an issue with the recording, you know, my driving for a minute, and so I wrote them and they said, well, you haven't updated the pictures from your car. Apparently supposed to do that every two weeks. I didn't know that, Like the

app didn't prompt me to do that or anything. And so just to like make sure you still have it on your car, Yeah, exactly like that, it's not messed up or I didn't rip it off with my own bare hands or something like that. So you had griff feded on your own car on the on the picture. Yeah, so I think you know, ultimately I'm I'm essentially beta testing Rapidfi at the same time while they're kind of

trying to see if they're business model flies. But hopefully they'll get better at some some stuff like that communication and notifications through the app. But definitely a worthwhile shot for me to test this out. Ninety bucks for doing nothing essentially and how long? So how long does this campaign end? And I guess my big question is, aren't like, will you do the next campaign that you qualify for?

So they say it last for two months, and so yeah, I'm guessing it's a couple of weeks then for you coming coming to a close pretty soon. And no, I can't imagine I'll sign up for the next one. Like we said, just getting down there, putting the wrap on, going back down to take taken off all that stuff. You know, it's just kind of an inconvenience and then finding out that maybe the miles aren't getting tracked and

having to follow that. It's just it's just kind of a pain and I just don't need that in my life for the little amount of money it's making. But like I said, if you are driving a lot, if you're commuting to and from work, you know, miles every day each way. You know, rapified could be a great kind of side piece of income for you. And I think for a lot of people it would be worth it. Just not worth it for me in the way I live life. Nice enough about my car, though, I saw you.

You've got some beastings on your hand. What happened working over at the rental house? You said, So, I've got a couple two or three yellow jacket stings. Not bees, man, So yellow jackets, I think are I know, are way more painful because I've got I get you get stung by a bee like you're cutting the grass or whatever. You get stung on the on the leg or something, no big deal. Yellow jackets, on the other hand, hurt way more, dude. And my hand has been so itchy

and swollen. It's actually the best it's been right now. But it was look pretty puffy. Man, a few days ago, I was over there. Oh okay, yeah, So the reason I was over there is my h VAC went out over there, like it crept out completely. You know. It's really fun and July to have your HVACT go out of your rental property. Oh man, I felt so bad for the girls that are over there. But so this is the newest rental and I knew when we got the house that had an older system may not last

very long. So it was no surprise that that happened. Had the cash set aside and my special little fun that I have set up for that that property, and we went we went ahead and just replaced the whole system, not just the condenser. Is that was the condenser, the compressor, not just that, but were like, you know what furnace

to what it was. The furnace is about twenty years old and they would have had to retrofit it and kind of do all this fancy duck work just to get to hook up and say, you know, you may as well just go ahead and do it. Have a fresh system in there. You know, it's good, everything works together, all that kind of stuff. But my fat girl, she's good, by the way, which I don't think you hear that very often. H H, fat girl. I know I love that normally here like H fact H. Fat guy. She's

a legit man. She's got a crew, she's got her like company. Hat I love it. It's her own company and I've used her for projects in the past and she's you know, she's awesome. But that being said, I still don't like partying with uh bucks uh in the middle of the summer. Man, isn't it no fun? That's no fun? So wait, how did the beast things come up?

Them billy yellow jacket stings? Oh so I was over there showing her where I wanted the new unit because the current compressor was actually installed under the deck, which is not something that you want been there and done that I had to move it before. Yes, I was over there showing her where I wanted the new one to go, and dude, there was like a nest of twenty of them underneath the old pad, you know, like the plastic path that they set the thing on to

keep it level. Yeah, yeah, we we all got got lit up. Did she get stuck? I felt bad, but she kind of rolled with it. She's tough. She's probably used to running into all sorts of crazy things in that line of work. So yeah, I think I had more tears than she did, and I was like, no alt So, speaking of beastings years or worse, I think probably than what I got, but I was clearlow jacket stings yellow. Yeah, sorry, my bad way worse. So I was cleaning out the gutters one time at my rental property.

I was, you know, two floors up on the edge of you know, certain death if I fall if I fall down these two stories, or at least, you know, not being able to use my for reas of my life. Right.

And so I'm cleaning out the gutters by hand, and I hit this nest of bees and they totally you know, I get stung like four or five times on my hand in my arm, and it's all I can do just to just to keep going, like just all right, I'm okay, I'm okay, back up, back away from the ledge, and yeah, it's just not fun doing that kind of stuff. But I can see, like the old school comedy, just the ladder like tipping back like you freak out and just smashing. So I was like sitting on the roof

doing it. I wasn't even I wasn't on the ladder. I was sitting on the roof. So, oh my god, maybe like not the safest way to do it either. I don't know, I probably wouldn't depends. I mean if you have a low pitched roof, sitting on the roof is isn't a bad way to go. But that does make me think of one more thing before we get to the beer we're drinking. I think we're really it's icing people to wanna get their own get their own rental property going. So in that same house, I just

recently had new gutters put in. Yes, so they were ripping away from the house, and Uh, that's just not good for the waterflow, right for what you know, water can get in between you know, the walls and the facial board and the utter. Yeah, yeah, that's bad. You don't want that happening. So I got new gutters installed. And it's worth, by the way, the extra hundred dollars to get the gutter guards put on. When when you're

negotiating that with your gutter installer. Uh. And then this was a small house, so on a bigger house it could be you know, more than that, a whole two hundred dollars, right, But one while they're up there, put the gutter guards on. It's you going to save you from having to clean out leaves often. And if you

hire someone to do it, you know, that's expensive. To get done every six months, so instead get out your flowers for itself and like in no time one year or something like that, completely and just not having to worry about it think about it. Yeah, it's so nice.

So I've done that. Every time I get new gutters on at a property, I always, you know, put the extra the leaf guard, not the you know, they do advertisements for these specialty leaf guard systems which are really expensive, but just the regular old metal ones that cover it was a little a little great like little screen that exactly, but just put those on at the same time. Completely

worth it. That's more and more. I'm at the stage in life and maybe this is because we're getting older, we're out of our out of our full years, but I'm willing to spend just a little bit more to kind of do something the right way, you know, just go ahead and do it properly. Again, this kind of

goes back. I mean, if you listen to the last episode we talked about rental properties, we talked about how Joe and I both want to be landlords forever potentially, Like this is kind of like our long term a long term gig, and when you start thinking it, thinking about it, through that lens, and I started thinking, Man, do I want to have to come back in like five years and deal with this sort of problem again because I just kind of went went with the cheap

route on it. Yea more and more, I'm like, all right, let's just spend an extra a few bucks now and just to save the headache of a having to revisit it, but then also to to have that expense again. You know, I'm definitely getting the mindset of doing it right the first time. Yeah, I completely agree. Uh And that actually, you know, makes me think about the topic that we're

about to address. Frugality like do do we doesn't mean spending the least amount possible or uh, like we're gonna talk about doesn't mean getting value from what you purchased. So we'll get to that in one second, but first, let's pop this beer. Nice dude, I know you're so excited about this beer. You literally, I mean you basically skipped through the door when you when you come over, I was like being over to the house. I was

like beaming from from ear to ear. So this, wait, before you say it, you're gonna be so proud of me and all of our listeners are gonna be so proud too, because I looked up how to say it. Look at you? Yeah, because okay, so since you know, can I try and then you tell me if I'm right? Dre Fontane? Would you say it one more time? Dre Fontane? Okay, So I saw that some people say that from what seemed like the most legitimate source. They say, so the

emphasis is on, Hey, so it's Dre fontanees. That's all right? Sure, I don't know, man, we've gotten caught up with some names. We've through some recently, you know. I figured if we can at least maybe say the dang brewery. So again, that's Dre Fontane in and yeah most I think most people just say free Fontaine because I mean in the translation literally three fountains. Yeah, that's right, right, Okay, So that's it. That's all I'm gonna say. I want to

let you give the rest of the scoop. Having been to Belgium, so I feel like I might be guilty of saying this. Every time I would say something like I'm so stoked for this beer or this is my favorite style. I feel like that happens a lot, which means I like a lot of beers and I have a lot of favorite styles. Uh, this is definitely right up there, though. This is from one of my favorite breweries of all time that I've ever had anything from in the whole world though, in the whole world. Yeah,

right there, right outside of Brussels, Belgium. And again, I don't know how to pronounce it. Well, I'm gonna say Dreef Fontaine, but this was their ud Creek, and an ude creek is spontaneously fermented beer that is aged for multiple years with cherries. Then I've had just a couple of their beers before. They're hard to come by here in the States and they're kind of expensive. And this is one that I bought on my trip to Paris.

I got it at that beer store when I did the beer trade with Chris, and so I'm I'm really really excited to have this beer again because I love everything these guys do, and a good creek cherry beer is, man, it just does it for me. Yeah, and it's got this beautiful red color, Matt beautiful, Yeah, nice kind of a ruby burgundy looks gorgeous, you know what, Like it just looks like a cherry. You feel like you can actually stick your hand in the beer and pull out

a bunch of cherries. That's that's the way I feel looking at this. So cheers, Bunny, cheers. So delicious. Once I stop salivating after drinking this, I can actually talk. It reminds me of like an old banana peel. Oh no, I'm not selling it, but it's got that you know. You know what I'm saying. You taste it, so, you know, you know the way an old banana peal smells like when it's kind of been sitting there at the bottom of the lunch sack. I can see why you say that.

You feel it. Yep, you know. The weirdest taste was so they but I like it. Yeah, I'm saying I'm not saying that like, oh, gross old banana. I'm saying that this is sort of what it what it evokes. I guess I don't know, but I mean, if this is what old banana peles tastes like, dude, turn me up up for more, no doubt. So I'm so glad you're able to bring this back to you. This is

delicious me too. So tree contane food creek. Man, if you do find it, it's it's just got this big number three on the bottle in a big green bottle. So yeah, it's delicious, all right, Matt. Onto the topic

at hand. Frugality gives you options. Yeah, and I think we really wanted to cover this topic, Matt, because we've talked you know in some ways you know how to cut your monthly bills or that you know there are articles on our site about how to shop your insurance arounds that you're paying the lowest amount possible, and there are a lot of ways that you can save money or think about money differently. We've covered a lot of topics at this point, but but ultimately, in my opinion,

frugality kind of undergirds everything. And without a solid mentality and reason for frugality, uh, all those other things just out in the ether don't seem to really make a lot of sense or click with without that kind of core view of frugality and belief in frugality as a principle of life. Yeah, that's right, I think frugality. It's it's about time that we've sort of talked about and spending entire episode. I know you've been wanting to do this for a minute here, and so to actually spend

some time talking about frugality. Uh, it should become very clear how that's like a core pillar of poor not poor and the life we we try to live in our attitude towards money and so a common view, uh, that a lot of people have that we hear often is that I make enough money to have the kind of lifestyle that I want to live, So why what I even want to be frugal and why should I skimp on things? I think that's a lot of people's view, right.

They either think what's the point, like they have no reason to to be frugal, or they think that they already are being frugal, and in reality maybe they're really not. We'll spend a little bit of time talking about that. But I mean the biggest answer though to to the question is that things change. Right, So your income, jobs, the goals that you have in life, all that can change. And so if you think that my life is fine the way it is now, I can just spend every

penny that I make towards you know, sustaining my lifestyle. Unfortunately, that's just a near sided sort of view to life and in particular your finances, and so spending less than having the ability to live on less. I mean, that's the answer, right, and essentially that's what frugality is. Yeah, mat And I've never really heard complaints from people that you know, saved too much money, that thought about their future,

that were lived on less than they made. But man, I've seen the plight of people that have done the opposite, right, that have that have racked up credit card debt, that owe everybody and anybody, and that have sacrificed, you know, frugality for the current lifestyle and wants as opposed to needs, and that puts you in a tough financial situation as well as like a mental situation right to have those things you know weighing over you, as opposed to having

you know, money set aside in your bank account that's ready to cover any expense that comes down, like your h VACT expense. Right, Like a frugal person that has you know, the savings set aside to cover you know, more than five thousand dollar expense that just boom happens. You know that you know it's gonna happen at some point, but most people have no idea how to handle something like that. And that's why we think frugality is kind

of this core. I mean, essentially, it's this framework to how you live life, Like frugality has to be a huge part of this framework for how you live life, or you're gonna live on on steady footing and that's just man, that's just a tough way to live. And

so that's yeah, that's why frugality is so important to us. Yeah, what you said earlier honestly makes me think of the sort of end of life comments, you know, the discussion you hear people have when they're on their deathbed, and how what you said is like, no one is ever sort of at their at the end of their life

saying oh, I've I've saved too much money. But what I think what you do here is you hear people say, oh, I work too much, And I think our answer to that would be that when you spend money and you're not frugal and you spend spend, spend, you are forced to work. And that is the biggest regret that people have. You hear people talk about how they spend way too much time working and how they did not spend enough time with their loved ones, with their family, or with

their friends. And that's essentially what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to take the steps necessary now to not keep us locked into working long hours for the rest of our lives to where we aren't doing the things that matter most to us. Yeah, so we're gonna discuss, you know, white frugality is awesome, and how it builds resilience, and then ultimately we're gonna get to kind of some practical takeaways for you on how to kind of bring frugality back into focus in your life. But first let's

kind of define it. Frugality in my mind, is a question of value, and so sometimes it does mean buying something more expensive but using it for a long long time. Right, that's actually a frugal move in my opinion. Whereas I know that you know, the common thought process towards frugality is you know people that that where you know, six dollar Walmart shoes or something like that, or don't have things.

You know, there are things break, they wear out. It's almost like I think sometimes you think of like a hoarder, someone that has a lot of things, but they're all cheap possessions, And in my mind, that's not frugality at all. That's someone who you know, who buys too much crap um and who has a mental illness that too. It's

like a legitimate thing, right. So, but in general, like, being frugal doesn't mean being cheap, right, but it does mean buying things that are of value to you, being you know, conscious about the things that you are purchasing and making sure that what you are buying is going to add value to your life. And I think you know, actually, in the time that we're in right now, it's much harder to do that, even because you can one click

on Amazon. Amazon sells these little buttons man like one push, Like you can put it under your desk or something like that and just push the button and I guess it communicates via Wi Fi to Amazon that you need more toilet paper or whatever that is. So it's so much harder to be a mindful frugal shopper in today's

day and age. But that makes it all the more important because we have all of these competing messages for our attention, these advertisements and these easy ways to buy, and so you know, frugality is uh take it takes much more like training of your mind and resiliency towards you know, some of those marketing efforts and those easy abilities to buy so that you can kind of create this discipline of frugality in your life. Joel Man, I

completely agree with you. Right. Yeah, So, like the entire marketing and advertising industry with us out there, that is all that they're trying to do. They're trying to market you. They're trying to sell you the latest and greatest shiny thing,

and frugality couldn't be any further from that. And they're spending tons of research trying to figure out how to get in your head to make you think that like that you need what it is that they're selling, and like who's on your side of the court, right, Like, like who is on your behalf fighting those companies and

keeping you from from making those things? Like you are like that is the only thing and you know, hopefully us to like I'm gonna say, you and me talking to this here, but yeah, I mean it's a kind of a constant battle. It's because it's it's going to be a constant, uphill sort of struggle to essentially fight against that. But yeah, man, for me, a short definition for frugality is just thrifty and efficient, Like what's not

to like about that. I hear those two words, I'm just like, ah, like that sounds so good, like simplicity, the efficiency, thriftiness. But unfortunately, the entire advertising industry is out there and there's just that negative connotation that's associated with just the very word frugality, and it makes you think cheap, denying yourself, and like nobody wants to say no to themselves, and discipline and all these sort of hard words that have these these connotations that we try

to avoid. But it's like frugality equals buzz kill or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like I'm going to be the lame down yeah, wet blanket, like not here at the party. Yeah. Um, you know that's up to us as consumers. It's up to people like us talking about this hopefully as well that are able to get others to talk about it and hopefully sort of change the attitude and the culture around the word frugality

just in and of itself. Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, you know, when it comes to advertising and marketing, usually the trick is to make you feel bad about where you currently are or that you are lacking in some way, form or fashion, that you don't have enough or that you know, your life's a bummer until you get this new product. But you don't need an Ellie de bulb but with a speaker in it that plays music in every room. And you know what about one that changes colors? Okay,

that you may need that. No, no, of course you don't need that. And you don't need because I would rather have the one with the speaker in it before I'd do the color totally. I mean that would be kind of cool. But and you don't need, no even necessary and like a speaker, and you don't need you know, the newest generation of iPad. And there are all these you know things that and there's these you know these yeah, these crafty commercials that cost millions of dollars that are

produced to make you feel like you need that new thing. Dude, is it no wonder that the number one thing that Alexa does or like the Amazon little Echo dots and you know, all those things, Yeah, what are the best at doing that? You hear people complaining about that their kids accidentally did ordered crap completely, Like, is it is it any sort of surprise that the best thing that those things are good at doing is purchasing things. It's like it just feeds into their model, you know, like

this is what they want, like wake up. Well in this In my mind, the scariest things about those speakers are, you know, what we're training our kids to think is normal and to think is right, you know, and and and to just order things blindly through this void activated speaker, not knowing what the price is even more frightening. So, now that we have a definition of frugality, Matt, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Let's get back to it, man, Let's talk some more about frugality.

You want to talk more about now why frugality is awesome? Yeah? So, in my opinion, and the title of this episode is frugality gives you options, And I mean the reason for it, It all starts with that options are at your disposal if you lead a frugal lifestyle and and that just doesn't happen you know, overnight or you know, in a month or two of being frugal. Uh it, you know, it takes a kind of an ability to go in that direction over a long period of time and and

save and be frugal. But ultimately, if you do that, if you can live a frugal lifestyle over an extended period of time. Options that weren't previously available to you manifest themselves, and so you can, as an example, decide that you know, one of the parents in a family and a nuclear family wants to stay at home with the kids, and that's just not an option that's open to many Americans these days, both parents feel compelled to work.

Another option if you maintain a lifestyle of frugality is that it gives you extra time to find a new job if you get laid off, as opposed to taking, you know, the next job that comes along with a company that you don't like, or at a pay that you're not okay with but that you feel forced to

take just because you need that job right. Another potential option open to you if you maintain a frugal lifestyle over a period of time is that you can take a job that pays less just because you're going to enjoy it more and you'll have more time at home, you know, with your family and in your neighborhood with

your friends. But those are the kind of options that only manifest themselves to people that maintain a frugal lifestyle that save a good portion of what they make that refused to you know, spend up to the limits of their income. Yeah. Man, that's right. And honestly, to another way I like to look at like the options, right that frugality gives us is that I sort of like

to replace the word options with goals. And so in my mind, it's hard for me to be frugal if I don't have a reason to be frugal, right, and so we like the way we're talking about it here is that frugality gives you options, and so in my mind, it all starts with the options because for me, like those options are my goals. Sometimes they do arise like that where you realize that there's something that you can do.

But just the way my brain works, I like to sort of put those options out there as goals almost that I'm just you know, striving towards. And so when I have those options, when I have those goals set out before me, for me, that gives me purpose, right, and then in pursuit of that goal, that specific goal, then I can choose to be frugal, you know, to achieve that specific option. Let that you know that goal,

what that looks like. I think from person to person varies, you know, for something, for one person that might look like one thing and for another person that might look like something else. Because everyone's goals and their options that they're considering are all different. I think it's kind of up to the individual as to where to cut back. Yeah, man, for me, that helps so much to consider options interchangea with the word goals. Yeah, that's great, man, that's a

great thought. And so sort of on that note, like you kind of gave some examples right of, like sort of the different options that might come up for folks, and even other things too, I think, like starting a business, Like if you know that there's something that you've always sort of wanted to try, well, if you're frugal now, that gives you the flexibility and the you know, even the potential the option to try starting that business down

the road. Oftentimes there's a lot of debt that is associated with starting a new business, but that doesn't always have to be the case. And then another one I was thinking of too, is like maybe what some would consider a less noble goal, but even like a sweet vacation or traveling. You know, once you are financially independent or or once you retire. I think that's a noble goal and I think that's something that is worth driving towards. Yeah, and I think even if you don't have well formulated

goals right now, there are reasons for frugality. I think for me and for a lot of people. I know, there are things that pop up in life that you want to be prepared for and that you might not even have an inkling are going to be something you're interested. And so, you know, when I was started being super frugal and saving you know, a large percentage of my income just in my early twenties, I hadn't met my

wife yet, I didn't have kids. Some of the goals that I have in mind now weren't cemented at all, and actually, you know, weren't even really on my radar. And so, you know, the act of being frugal, these goals that you think of and and dream up are great things to keep in the forefront of your mind.

But also realized that even if you don't have well formulated goals right now, maybe especially if you're you know, in your late teens early twenties, there's still a reason to be frugal because those goals will manifest themselves over time, you know, as you grow. And so I know, for me, you know, being frugal even when I didn't have those clear cut goals. And also because you don't really know

what's going to happen to you in life. Yeah, that's where I thought you were going to go initially, like the bad stuff, right, Yeah, there's that too. And and so I got new men sick or somebody else getting

said completely. I got an email from a listener and it made me think a lot about my my own reasons for frugality because he told me that his wife, you know, had gotten sick, and um, he was really you know, obviously it's you know, it's a terrible thing, but he was really really glad that he had been frugal for so many years because he was able to take off work essentially just quit his job, um for

at least a year. He he thought that he would be able to just be without a job because he had saved so well and he could just spend that time with his wife. And I think about how many people go through something difficult like that, having cared for a parent or a spouse or a child, whatever it may be. You had to be able to have that

option to do that. He said, like, obviously that wouldn't be a goal, Like, I guess you couldn't really or you wouldn't want to use the interchangeably like as like, oh, that's a goal, that's something I want to I want to have happened. But that is something you'd want to be able to do, right, completely, want to be able to have the option to care for those people, And it's not something you're necessarily working towards hoping that that

takes place. But like you said, that's a great way. Yeah, as far as it manifesting and having having that option

to do that, it's great. Yeah. I think most people, you know, something like that happens, and I think the guilt of having to work and then also try to care for that loved one or you know, and this is just one scenario, but that's just a difficult place to be and not to mention just timing wise, you know, you feel drawn away to work and you feel like you can't spend time with them in the way that

you wanted. So I think, you know, there are are a lot of reasons for frugality, but a good one is for those things that are going to pop up that you have no idea what they are yet you can't even cement it as a goal in your mind. But that frugality and having a savings mindset can provide these amazing benefits at completely unexpected times in your life that you can't even plan for and don't know whether

they're going to happen or not yet. Yeah, man, that makes me honestly think of what you're saying in a second ago, right, like how it's okay to start and it's encouraged to start being frugal now, even if you don't necessarily have goals. And I think that even if you do have goals, even if you have like say you're like, well, I don't want to have kids. That's just a goal of mine. It's a kill of mine

to not have any kids, to have children. And if you have kids and that's your goal, that's terrible, Like you can't do a coming from the dad's of daughters over here, or you might say that like, oh, I love my job. My goal is just to keep working. I you know, I love what I do. I find

great satisfaction in that. And the fact is things change, goals change, people change, the people that you work with at work, like they change, and I just know myself as well, and I know that I changed my mind, and so I might tell myself that, like, this is what I want to do forever, but who dude, who knows, Like I don't know what, like what I'm really going to be thinking in ten years or and so some of that is sort of like taking care of your

future self a little bit, because you know that, like even though right now you say, oh, this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. I'm going to be a landlord for the rest of my life, which is what we said at the beginning of the episode, or a podcaster. We'll be doing this till the day we die. We know that for sure exactly. That's not going to change, mark my words. But you know, like

we love it now. But it's just wise to be smart, and it's just it's just wintse to to look ahead, to not be so nearsighted into plan Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom to raining even if you don't know what you're planning for. Yeah, man, that's that's so true. And something else as well is to not be so tempted to just tell yourself that, oh well, I'll just work more or you know, I'll just earn more money.

I think for a lot of folks, especially for younger, younger folks that sort of had their whole career ahead of them, that is a huge temptation, right, And so there's a there's sort of two sides of saving money, right. You can either spend less or you can earn more. And I think there is just so much more emphasis placed on earning more, Like that's the exciting thing. That's what you hear people talking about. Like those are the raises and the advancements and the promotions, all the exciting,

like the big windfalls. That's what people focus on. Nobody focuses on trying to be more efficient, right, Like like I said earlier, thrifty and efficient and simple, Like what's not to like about that? Like the more complicated this world gets, I feel like, the more that to me that sounds appealing being frugal. And that's what being frugal is because as soon as you stop working, your income

stops coming in. And if you're used to spending every penny that you have and you are not frugal, then gonna find yourself in a world of her with zero margin in your life. Yeah, man, I think we've mentioned that word on the show before, but margin, dude, that's huge.

And there's so many people living lives right now because of a lack of frugality with no margin for error, right like no HVAC that can go out, no transmission that can fail, or man, even a lot smaller things than that, you know, an electricity bill that's a little bit higher that month that they can barely afford. And frugality is the key to placing yourself in a situation where that's not going to happen to you. And I think, uh,

frugality too. Sometimes it gets positioned as clipping coupons or you know, cutting Latte's out of your life, right, And sometimes it is the small things that add up, the tiny things that are you know, dragging your budget down or are killing you every month, And you know that is definitely a part of frugality. It's looking at every

purchase and seeing where it adds value. And maybe you do need to cut out eating your lunch out at work with your coworkers and brown bagging it, or you know, not getting coffee a couple of times a week out at your favorite coffee shop and brewing it at home.

So there are definitely things like that, But then so much of the time, you know, frugality is about the bigger expenses, and it's potentially leasing a car or buying a new car versus an older one, um not shopping around for things that you are buying that are necessary, and paying too much for the things that you you know are buying that are necessary, and then also just buying things needlessly that don't bring real value into your life.

And I think we get fixated sometimes on these just these smaller purchases that really have very little to do

with our bottom line. Right. It's like we're kind of like stressing and over like a few bucks here and there, say on like your grocery budget or something like that, when in reality, I think like some of these bigger purchases, like some of the monthly expenses that that are just sort of on automatic, like auto pay that happened to you every month without you even realizing it, without you even considering it, or even bigger expenses to like you said,

like like car payments and even like your house, like your mortgage, those expenses if you look at it as a percentage of your total expenses, has such a larger impact on the amount of money that you have leaving your bank accounts every month, whereas I think we spend the majority of our time just fiddling with like that tiny little bit, say with groceries, because that's something that you like come in contact with, right like on a

day to day basis, or not day to day. But when you're going to the grocery store, you think, oh, no, eggs are more expensive this summer. What's going on, which is true, by the way, I don't know what's going on, but let's bring on a skilled economist to find out. And so you know, you might think, well, I'm not gonna get it eggs anymore because that's gonna that's gonna mess up my my grocery budget, when in reality, that's only making like five five dollar difference, you know, like

saying you're in your monthly grocery budget. When they then just go home and they've got the cable bill sitting there and they're paying you know, eighty bucks or something like that, and they're not even considering how that's impacting

their their monthly bills. I think some of the smaller things just get overblown sometimes when in reality it might be worth looking at like the big picture and look at the actual percentages of what you have, you know, going out of your bank accounts and starting with the biggest ones and working your way down and then seeing

if that would have a better impact. You know, I think actually for me being frugal on some of the bigger things, being super frugal, you know, renting out part of our house, driving older cars that are are paid off. Those sorts of choices over the long haul that we've done for for so many years have created such breathing room that you know, when we do want to splurge just a little bit, especially like in the area of groceries, you like, you know what, we're beer, get that, get

this fancy beer that we're drinking. That's right, they're good beer. Or you know what, I'm gonna get some fancy steaks for this weekend, something like that, you know, a nice steak to to toss on the grill. You know, those sorts of splurges are so meaningful. Yeah, when you you know, when you live a life of frugality, and literally just this past weekend, I was at the pool, and I was talking to this random dude that I just met

completely unprovoked. You know, we weren't talking about frugality or anything like that, but he you weren't showing off, You're like porto port tattoo. But he mentioned how, you know, in his condo complex, he had gone from the fourteenth floor to the seventeen floor and the seventeen four with the top floor. I was like, oh, man, how's the

view from there? Is it that much better? And he said, you know what, dude, you just kind of get used to it pretty quickly, and it's pretty meaningless, you know, he said, he said, it's exactly one of the saddest statements I think I've ever heard, I know, And then he said, it's exactly like getting a new car, a really nice new car. And he said it the way he said it made it sound like that had happened to him, that he had also made that misspeake. He's like,

it wears off super quick. And man, that like what he said was just completely true. And I'm sure you know, for three days that view from the seventeenth floor was a little bit cooler than the view from the fourteenth floor or just the same in the same way that you know, having that new car. Man, it's really cool for you know, a week, week and a half until a bird poops on the windshield or you know, you get that first bill in the mail or the first

thing in like the grocery store. Yeah, car bumps into the doors exactly right. So there are all these things that you know that seemed really cool in the moment or for a couple of days, but ultimately they're they're not really lasting and they're not fulfilling. But that sort of margin that you're able to bring in your life and the power that you're able to put back in your life by you know, living a lifestyle that is

centered around frugality, it's super meaningful. And you know, the other way of living where you you know, throw caution to the wind and throw frugality out the window, that's such a more tenuous way to live. And man, it scares it scares me, And you know, I don't wish that for for anybody, to to live a life where frugality is not important. And something else that frugality does

for you is that it builds resilience. Joe, you want to talk some more about this one Yeah, frug gality can really kind of provide you a buffer from financial harm and just like lifting weights. You know, we've talked about this metaphor a couple of times on the podcast

so far. We're all we're all about building that muscle, right, is that you're gonna say, yeah, and and but we we are all about building a muscle right of resiliency, and frugality is kind of this ultimate resilience against whatever storm can come. And you might love your job, but you might get a new boss and then your job isn't as cool, or your company's downsizing. There are a lot of things that you can't prevent, but frugality gives you that ability to you know, be lean and be

able to you know, shift on a dime. And I think too on top of that, you know, besides just being prepared to weather a storm, there's something about, you know, living a frugal lifestyle that teaches you, over time to kind of respect the things that you have and to go without some of the things that you don't need.

And I think especially right right now in this day and time in the United States of America, where everyone gets whatever they want whenever they want it, that that that that's the kind of mentality that we have as a culture, like immediacy, I want it now, drone it to me, bro like completely exactly and building that, you know, frugal resistance. It is like this powerful muscle that you can uh that you can work that that it kind of again is countercultural and you can you can develop

this for yourself. It provides not just a strength in your bank account, but like the strength of character over time, like mental strength. You're like resisting force of the advertising and marketing giants. It's a constant struggle, you know, we're we're constantly swimming up stream. It's something like a salmon.

We're having to to fight against this, and it takes mental strength to resist that, right, It takes mental strength to tell yourself to tell yourself no, not not just like the marketing, but to tell yourself that no, I don't need this new fingled comfort device, you know, like this new thing that's gonna make my life easier, that's gonna make me happier. Just whatever reason, whatever excuse that that you either give yourself or that you're fed, that

you're marketed to and sold. You're resisting that as well. You know, yeah, and I think ultimately too, there's something really visceral right about how frugality impacts you. I can see it in myself right when I do challenge myself to do something, the kind of reward, the intrinsic reward that comes when when that happens, you know, when I challenge myself to start biking to work and I actually follow through and do it, and then I know that the days, you know, when I failed to, I kind

of feel like a crummy human being. I let yourself down a little bit, exactly. And you know, nobody else knows. You know, it doesn't it doesn't matter to anyone else. And I distinctly remember reading this Mr money Mustache post along, you know, like four years ago, and by the way, amazing that the first time Mr money Mustache. I don't think we've talked about it before. We'll link to this

to this post in the show notes. But he got a letter from a wealthy New Yorker who made over a million dollars a year and kind of talked about how he had given in to you know, thirty or forty dollar taxi trips and buying you know, the finest organic meats and just kind of how he like let his spending slip, and he talked about how it didn't matter to him because it didn't make any dent, right, Like he he made so much money that he didn't care,

it didn't matter, but how like, ultimately it wasn't very fulfilling that he was missing out on this. And he saw Mr money Mustache and and his readers having this kind of sense of purpose and this fulfillment in their lives, you know, living a life of frugality and intentionality, and how he was just kind of, for lack of a better term, pissing his money away and and doing things

that you know, weren't fulfilling. And and it was just kind of interesting to see that perspective because I know that's true because I see it in my own life when I, you know, failed to rise to meet a challenge or failed to take on a challenge that I know is a good one for me to take on. Um And I think, you know, fru gality kind of provides you a lot of challenges right in in daily life,

you know, and and in your monthly budget. It provides that challenge for this chance for you to rise to the occasion and meet something that's like it's necessary for you for your financial health, but it's so good for you as a human, you know, to build that sort of resiliency and and to meet it head on. Yeah, to kind of like take control of your life, you know, like kind of going back to like the muscle metaphor. It's like you can see the New Yorker guy kind

of just getting soft. You know, he's just likely getting flabby, and he's just like not really working, and he's just like, all right, I'm just gonna spend money here. I want to spend money here. It doesn't matter the cost. I make a ton of money. But then yeah, he starts seeing other folks being tough, working the muscle, not getting brainwashed to spend all of his money and wasted away. And yeah, you kind of wake up to it and realized how inefficient and unthrifty that he's like the complete

opposite of frugality obviously. Well, and and we see that

in our culture, right, like the video game culture. And you know, there's nothing wrong with playing video games on occasion, I guess I don't play video games, but there that culture of you know, hours and hours of video games and you know, hours and hours of Netflix and chill those sorts of things of not challenging yourself by you know, reading a book or listening to a podcast or you know, figuring out a way to fix something that's broken and

instead you know just calling the professional, you know, whatever it is that there's all these ways that we just kind of give in um as opposed to you know, standing up and and meeting it a challenge head on and kind of embracing frugality. You know, at the same time, I think we're talking about you know, this kind of more widespread societal epidemic at the same time as we're talking about individual frugality and all kind of goes together. Man, Like,

it's all related. That's the thing. That's what's what's so weird about frugality is like, yeah, we're talking about money, but you can kind of see the way that like bleeds into other aspects of our life, not just financial, but like cultural and social and just like all the aspects.

You know, Yeah, no doubt awesome. So we just talked about some of the things that frugality you know, does for you and some of the things that frugality is, but something that it isn't is that frugality isn't restricting, you know, I think again, frugality kind of gets a bad rap when it gets brought up. But frugality isn't keeping you from spending money on something that you love to do. Instead, it's consciously deciding to not spend money

on the things that you don't love. Right, there's a difference there, and then that gives you the options to spend money on the things that you do love. Again, whether that's now, if it's a goal, is something that you want to do now that you that you're aware of, or if it's something in the future that you really just have no clue. It's not the sort of restricting thing where you know, you're constantly telling yourself no, it's

just sort of reorganizing and re prioritizing or spending. Is this thing that I spend my money on, you know, going back to the New york Er, like do I really care about like the the taxi ride or maybe I can just hop on the subway like the rest of Manhattan? What is it that I'm spending money on? And does that again, does that align with my goals?

Is that align with the options that that I want to pursue, And I think to kind of put it in that framework, and to put it in that light is incredibly helpful to see frugality as something to be sought after, not this thing that you're just trying to avoid. So what's next for people? You know, Matt, that are they understand you know what? Okay, maybe I do need to flexus must Well maybe you know frugality isn't as

core but a tenant as I wanted to be. You know, how do people move forward in adopt like a more frugal lifestyle, a more frugal mindset in their own lives. Man, When I think it's so awesome about frugality is that it's something you can do right away. It's something that almost overnight you can change your life and start making decisions to not spend money. We touched on this a second ago. But how your income. You don't have a

whole lot of control over your income. Right you're employed, you've got a job, Maybe you'll get laid off, or maybe the company will get sold and your position will get absorbed or something. I don't know. There's only so

much control that we have over the money that we make. However, we almost have full control over the money that we spend, and so on that note, you can decide to sorrow that you're not going to spend the money that you spent the day before, right that you spent yesterday, even if it's not something that you have been doing, is something that you can right now take steps and start living a frugal lifestyle. And now let's talk about how you can switch to a frugal lifestyle. But first a

quick break. Knowing exactly where to start might be kind of tough, and for that, I think the best thing that to do is to dream. We kind of talked about this in the Why Behind Money episode, But to think about what are your goals? You know we we said that frugality gives you options, like what are those options that you want to have? What are those goals,

and then work towards those That's the first step. Look at what it is that you want to do, and then you can start making changes and start taking the steps necessary to achieve those goals. I think that's totally the first step. Then the next step is to kind of figure out, you know how and or you can cut back and there are a lot of great resources

out there for you. There are a lot of great blogs and podcasts and you know people that that that spent a lot of time writing and thinking about these things. And uh, you go back and listen to episode number thirteen, Ways to cut your monthly bills. That's a great one for you to think about. Just small incremental changes, you know, raising the temperature of your thermostat during the summer, you know,

being a little uncomfortable during the day. Maybe consider taking your lunch to work like I mentioned earlier, you know, eat at home at night, go out to eat less. The numbers on how much more it costs to go out to eat versus you know, what it costs to cook a dinner at your home. Their astounding um. Shop at thrift stores, you know, cut those regular monthly bills, you know, cutting your own hair even maybe you know, Matt cut my hair recently. It doesn't look too bad, Hey,

pretty good. So there's like a million ways that you can save right And I personally I thrive on these kind of tips and tricks. I I love them. I'm all about them. You know, in future episodes will give

you even more. There's an article right now on poorn up poor dot com about how to save on your insurance costs, and I give you a lot of tips and tricks to figure out how you can cut down your home and car insurance bills, you know, and that right there, that's a that's a bigger expense, you know, that could save you over a grand a year just by shopping your insurance around or or thinking about, you know,

how you approach getting insurance. And so there there are a lot of things like that that once you have kind of identified some of those goals and kind of made that mindset shift to switch to a you know, frugal lifestyle, a more frugal lifestyle, you know, learning some of those some of those ways to cut down the costs and figure out how to save more of your hard earned money. You just know that there are a ton of great resources around the web that will help

you kind of with those specifics. You don't have to be left to your own devices and just kind of with those vague goals with no idea how to actually achieve them. Man, another point I wanted to bring up to is that a lot of people think that they are being frugal when in reality they're not being frugal. And they think that well, you know, I don't do this, and I don't do this, but there's just so much in their life that they're not really paying attention to

that is a huge expense. The question is, then, how do you even know if you're being frugal or not. What you need to do for that is to look at your savings rate. But essentially, your savings rate is the amount that you're saving, So your your savings over your income creates a percentage, and the average American today

has a savings rate of less than five percent. So the question is do you want to be like an average American where you're working, you know, well into your sixties at a job that you can't leave because you don't have the option to because you make a lot of money there and you need to make a lot

of money in order to keep paying your bills. So yeah, man, it's hard to know, you know, how frugal you're being, like on the scale of like frugality if you don't have something to kind of measure that again, So so yeah, we would encourage you to, yeah, try to actually calculate your savings rate. Take what your take home pay is, figure out how much you're setting aside every year your

savings there, and that's your percentage. If you are sort of the average American and you're sitting aside five percent, consider trying to double that, try to get that up to ten percent. That would be huge if and if you are, say you're can, you're already setting aside, man, imagine if you could double that. And so if you're sitting aside thirty percent of your income every year, that

would be insane. Some listeners out there might be like me where you're self employed, and I mean personally my savings rate because my income flexu rates. I mean some years my savings rates like two percent, but then there's some years, like we've had years where our savings rates close. And so it's tough because it's not something that people

normally keep up with. But if you're trying to figure out where you are on this sort of scale of frugality, check check out your savings rate, because it's kind of

hard to pin down. I will say, if you're like fresh on the frugal bandwagon and you're deciding to, you know, kind of take this path, sometimes the first couple of years, you don't feel like you're making all that much progress you're figuring out ways to save more, You're finding these tips to spend less, and you know your bank account is growing, your investible assets maybe are increasing a little bit, but the true results of frugality, you know, bear out

over the long term. After a decade of being frugal, you'll look at your bank account, you will look at your four oh one k or roth Ira statement and kind of be amazed at how you got there through these small, simple steps and that mindset change, through creating some goals and then finding some ways to to achieve them, through increasing your savings, right, finding more ways to incorporate

a lifestyle of frugality. And so not only will you see, you know, your bank account numbers increase and your investable assets you know, increase in number over that decade or two decades. I mean, it'll be amazing. You will also kind of see, you know, that resiliency level in your life just kick up a notch, two notches, four notches, you know, And that also has a kind of compounding

interest like effect in your life. Right, The more you feel like you can stomach uh, the more hardship you can endure and get through it, the more things that you can cut out of your life and still be happy and actually find out that you're happier for having foregone some of those things. Well, dude, that's what I'm gonna say, is that, like I feel like some of

those things that you feel that you're suffering. Maybe early on it is like working out, you get used to it and you're like, go, well, I'm not suffering anymore, Like what else can I then do? It's just like getting in shape. Like the first run or first few runs, you're gonna be sucking wind and it's gonna be terrible

trying to run one mile. But then when you're running ten miles, the first five miles are nothing, you know, And so yeah, it's all sort of relative to kind of your fitness, but also to sort of where you are financially and sort of how fit you are frugally. So test your frugal fitness level. That's what we encourage you to do. And you know, hopefully this this episode has not only kind of given you some some big picture thoughts, but then also kind of some you know,

finer tune little takeaways. Ultimately, you just have to know that you can do it. You can build that resiliency it just takes time and intentionality. But the whole reason behind it is that choosing to live a life of frugality gives you options, and man, those options are so sweet and so few people actually have them. Yeah, So, on that note, we would love to hear from our listeners. We'd love to hear from you guys, specifically about being frugal and the steps you've taken to to live on

less and spending less. And what has being frugal allows you to do now you know currently, or what is being frugal now allowing you to hopefully do in the future, you know, like, what are your dreams, Like, what are your goals that you are sort of working towards? Whatever those things are. From that you have said, we would love to hear from you guys and leave a comments on this episode, post on our website Poor Not Poor dot com, or even head over to our Poor Not

Poor Facebook group. Hopefully we'll get a sort of a thread going there where folks are sharing what it is that they're doing and ultimately encourage each other to be more frugal. Right, yeah, and like, like I said, the those goals, they're amazing, But then you you've got to know some of those tips and tricks and and a man of face. Our Facebook group and and Facebook groups like that are kind of the perfect place to be

to learn how other people are doing things. And probably the greatest thing about the Internet is the easy access to knowledge that we didn't have access to beforehand. That's my favorite thing about the Internet. I can, you know, listen to two hour lectures or two hour discussions or join Facebook group with people that have different or more specialized now that I have, and I can learn from those people. And so, you know, that's what our Facebook

group is all about. Hopefully it's a you know, a fun place for people to talk about, you know, what beers they're drinking, but then on top of that to kind of share their frugal winds and the ways that you know, they are changing not only their mindset but their habits. And hopefully as we get you know, more post about how people are approaching frugality and making changes. It's it's an inspiration to all of us. All right, man, what do you think about this? Uh? This beer dre

Fontane in the Oud Creek. Man, it's delicious. I love a good cherry beer, and you know this is man, pretty much the finest cherry beer money can buy. It is. It's really good. Man. I'm so glad you're able to bring this back. You brought this back with a suitcase full of other beers during your trip to Paris, and so yeah, I'm glad I get to enjoy the fruits

of your labor a little bit here. The best thing about that too, man, I love cracking a beer, and a beer like this, you know, stays good for years, for decades. Actually, this beer, it doesn't expire, it says until so you have plenty of We would have had plenty of time to drink that, but I just under the wire, you know, right. But I love drinking a beer, you know, months or years down the road from a

trip I've taken. It just kind of, you know, brings me back to that place where when I met Chris and I got the beer, and visiting that beer store and then just visiting Paris, just the whole trip kind of you know, floods back into my mind. That's one of my favorite thing about souvenir beers. It's the best, all right, Matt, Let's wrap things up. Frugality gives you options and you know, the key thing for me is

that things change. Man. You don't know whether that job you love is going to be here tomorrow, and circumstances in your life can change on a dime, and so adopting a frugal mindset gives you kind of options to combat those potential changes that might be on the horizon they haven't even crossed your mind yet. Also, don't be sented to just earn more money. Obviously we're spending this entire episode talking about frugality, and so the focus has

been on spending less. I think one of the biggest obstacles to frugality is people thinking, oh, I can just earn more money. That is just not a great way to think about saving money. As soon as you quit working,

your income will also stop. Frugality is much more powerful than a high income because frugality compounds upon itself and Matt, the thing about that mindset too, is that if you focus on earnings, oftentimes you're spending goes up in tangent with that increased income, which actually doesn't increase savings or a frugality mindset at all. And on top of that,

frugality builds resilience. It's like working a muscle. The more you practice frugality, the better you'll get at it, and ultimately the bigger buffer you'll have from potential financial harm. And then the good news, man, is that even if you are not living a frugal lifestyle right now, you could switch right away, like tomorrow, you could start living a frugal lifestyle. You could sell stuff, you can just

stop making the expenses that you currently are. First, though, you've got to identify those goals, figure it out what it is that drives you. And once you have those goals set, then look and see does you're spending a line with that? Are you putting your money and are you spending in a way that will get you to

that goal? And if not, make those changes. Yeah, and there are a lot of resources out there to help you make those changes, just like on our how to Money Facebook group, So tap that collective wisdom for kind of some of the more specific down in dirty ways to bring a mindset of frugality more into your life. Yeah, man, that's right. And a few episodes ago, we had our first episode that we dedicated purely to you know, a

listener's question. But I love that. It just felt like a much more practical way for us to kind of cover a topic. So, if you are out there and you're listening, and you have a specific question in regards to personal finance, whether it be real estate or tips on how to save money, just whatever it is it might be, email us at how to Money pod at gmail dot com. We read all the messages that come through and we try to respond to all of them and hopefully we'll be able to feature some of those

as full podcast episodes. That's right, and if you like this show, if it's bringing value to your life, please let us know. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening to the show. Cool, Thanks for listening. Best Friends Out, best Friends Out Man