Rules for Mindful Spending #095

of your life. But I feel like lately you and I, I don't know, we've been having some discussions lately just being intentional with our time, the energy that we give towards our kids. Yeah, and it's no different when it comes to our money. So we're also gonna be talking about sales, how they may not be the best thing for you or you know, depending on how you view sales.

That's fighting words for some people. You know, some people love a good sales sale, right, and they will fight you to the bitter end to let you know how important it is to buy things on sale. And I'm not against it all together, but that'll be kind of an interesting thing to get into in this episode, Matt. Before we kind of get into it, I wanted to ask you a question, kind of a frugal or cheap question? Would you buy a mattress off of Facebook yard sale site?

Like would you go there and buy a used mattress from somebody? Okay, so Joel, you're asking me this question, which tells me that you don't know the story about when Kate and I got a mattress off Facebook? Did you know that? I don't think I do that. Wait, I knew you guys have a used hand me down mattress, and and so do we. But we actually, I guess kind of third hand knew the folks that we got it from. Well, okay, so that's sort of our situation,

but it was second hand knowing through Facebook. It popped up on Facebook, and it was a girl that I knew in college, which sounds kind of weird, but her and I we were in some classes together and the journalism school. We're Facebook friends. And then turns out they live in Atlanta, in a nearby neighborhood and they posted a really nice mattress like it was one of those fancy one air sleeper two thousand uber fancy you know

what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, And so I thought this is kind of weird, but is it kind with the remote in it, you can like sit up in it because those look awesome. No, no, I wish. Actually I kind of don't wish because I feel like those are just bound to break and it's sucking, right, you know. I always chalk those up to me and for old people. But I don't think it's a case anymore. And I would totally rock. I'll be able to sit in bed

and read I do it. That would be nice. Yeah, anyway, But I ran over there and it turns out they actually live the next door to some good friends of ours as well, and so they know them. And so because that it felt less weird. I guess it's like, Okay, I know you from college, you guys from college, and also your next door neighbors to some friends of ours,

it still felt weird. So because it was in such good shape though, the mattress was in really good shape, and because of that, that's currently still the mattress that Kate and I sleep on. So, if you didn't have a connection where you knew the person, would you buy a mattress from someone in the neighborhood. I totally rando

a random person off the r tail site. Man, I don't know that's that's such a hard question because you can't go over there and like look at it and say, oh, it looks kind of stained or oh it smells weird, right like once you go over to it to get it. I don't know. I think you can. I think I would. I think that you can shop it and give it a sniff. I think i'd have to say, I'm backing out of this one. It looks a little wonky, like I'm not in Okay, wait how much is it? Though?

So mine was free? Okay, Like ours was totally free. So I felt like if I was going over to pick it up, I had to pick it up. You know. Yeah, if you're paying money, it's a different story. Well, I don't know. I saw one the other day on there is a king size bed. They said it was three months old and for bucks with the platform that goes underneath it, and so I was like, it's like a good deal man. I was like, that's a good deal. I think I might check this out. But then I

got kind of the weird vibe. She was like, you're gonna have to pick it up tonight, but I'm not home until eleven. I was like, well, that's really weird. That's like late, and I pick up. I don't think I'm doing that, and then she's like, can you help me back this into the van? You go first, Yeah, slams the doors on you, and all of a sudden you're getting driven off to a rock quarry. Yeah, exactly. Who knows where I end up. So yeah, because of the weirdness, I refrained kind of out of the deal.

But I think also actually mattresses have gotten cheaper with the foam the phone ones that, yeah, the ones that shipped straight to your door and stuff, and so you know, I'm planning on doing a little more research on that front because I think we would like a new mattress at some point in the near future. And I'm okay paying some money for something good because you sleep a fair amount on a bed, so your life, man the third of your life, so I think it is worth

spending some money to to get a good one. Do you want to hear how I justified it with Kate, how we would go and get a free mattress from some raindo I knew in college? I told her I would I would tie it to the roof of the car.

At the time, we had a station wagon and so I strapped it to the roof really tight, and then I got on the interstate and drove really fast, and you're like, that'll get rid of well, that'll help air it out a little bit, you know, like get rid of any funk, any sort of like you know, debris. I don't know stuff that by that I mean, I guess, so like like I drove fast and all the dust kind of stuff came out, and I'm telling you look really good, was in great shape. We sleep really well

on it. Man. That's all I can say. All right, sounds good. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying your free mattress. I will say, though, at some point and then to just in future, I will spend money and actually finally get us a decent adult mattress, because we're still rocking the free one as well. But for now, let's mention the beer that we're having on the show. We're drinking National Cherry Blossom Festival by Old Ox Brewery. And this is a beer brought to us by our friend Andrew

that you mentioned Old Ox Brewery. This is kind of I guess on the outskirts of DC, maybe like a an ex herb as Andrew, our buddy, likes to often say, uh, this is a collaboration though with a national cherry blossom festival. They made this beer with them, and they say a portion of the sales benefit the National Cherry Blossom Festival. So it's pretty cool. I like cherry blossoms. It's the next time of year, right when the when those come around, And we'll discuss our thoughts on this beer at the

end of this episode. But for now, Matt, let's get to the topic at hand, rules for mindful spending. And it turns out that we all waste money. You met waste money, Matt. I waste money sometimes, but not on mattresses, but not on mattresses. Have never wasted money on a mattress. We're just grossing out all of our listeners talking about mattress. Just let's just stop. So we're probably cheap. I think

that that most people will agree on on this front. Yeah, yeah, but often we are more wasteful when we're feeling tired or lazy, and being aware of some of the ways that money flies out of our lives can help us realize when it's happening so that we can change our habits. There's a minimalist writer named Joshua Becker, and he wrote on a blog that mindless consumption turns into excessive consumption.

And I think he's spot on with that, Matt, that when we begin to spend on things without thinking about it, we begin to be people that overspend. And that's a problem in our culture, that's a problem in many of our own personal lives. And I think there's a lot that we can talk about in this episode that can help people find some rules to implement when it comes to how they spend their money and doing so in

a more thoughtful way. Yeah, Joe. And the first thing that's worth noting, right, is that, contrary to popular belief that like, we're not against spending money, but we want to make sure that we're spending money on the things that matter. What we hate is that mindless consumption, Right, Like, I've got a cargo bike that costs two thou dollars. I love that thing, I write it daily, and I gather a whole lot of joy and utility from that thing. Like, but two thousand dollars that is a lot of money.

And I think a lot of folks listening to this would say, Mande's not gonna spend anything on a mattress, but he's gonna spend two thousand dollars on a bicycle. That seems crazy or unbalanced. But for me, spending that kind of money on a bike, right, a bike that I would not be able to get for free, is something I am more than willing to do. That I'm happy to do, and it's something that I did very deliberately,

with a whole lot of thought. Yeah. So a good way to kind of take stock as we get into this topic is to take a look at your recent purchases. Maybe check out the last ten Amazon orders that you made. Are you using those items that you purchased? Would you purchase those items again? You know, it reminds me, Matt, thinking of of those last ten purchases I made of a purchase probably like ten thousand purchases ago, that I

made when I was in middle school. I bought a second Dreamcast off off a friend nice and so he came with all these games and the Dreamcast I think was probably the least successful gaming system ever made. Maybe I don't know. I don't think it did very well, but I had a lot of fun with it. For for a few days. But I just remember that pretty much all my savings went into that one purchase, buying that seg of Dreamcast, and honestly just didn't move the needle in in the ways that I had hoped when

I was a kid. And I remember wishing that I had money to do other things that summer, but I had blown all my funds on that stupid gaming system to play that crazy taxi game, and uh, and so it was just looking back, like, I don't know, I kind of keep that in my mind when I'm making purchases now, like is it gonna end up being a

purchase that feels like that Dreamcast moment? Or is it going to be a purchase that I feel like I'm actually going to use and implement into my life for the days and weeks to come, And and running it through a filter like that for me helps to truly go back to my middle school self and say, I'm I actually going to use this or am I gonna be bored with it in a few days or weeks?

And and I try to avoid purchases like that. And I think going through your recent purchases, your recent purchase history, can help you as you attempt to make better stock of future purchases. Joe, I love that the Sega Dreamcast. I don't even know what a Dreamcast is. Like I know what a Sega Genesis was. I guess it was. It was after the Genesis, Like, I guess it was

just a non fun Sega. Yeah, it had a couple of cool games, but it never took off because yeah, they just I don't think they had enough variety or enough good games to justify its existence. So that's the what though, Like looking at what you're purchasing, the next thing, the next filter to kind of run your purchases through is why. Ask yourself why do you spend money? Like why are you spending money? And try to identify the triggers that might be causing you to spend your money.

You know, in those instances, you can either sort of fight those urges and be super disciplined, or you can just remove those triggers altogether. But I think a lot of times folks think, well, no, we I shouldn't just remove those triggers. I should try to beat it. I should be disciplined enough to to kind of conquer that. But in the end, if the results are what matter. We'll just do what you need to do to achieve the results. Do what you need to do to spend

less money. And I think sometimes willpower can be overrated. Essentially making the decision ahead of time for yourself as opposed to trying to fight it in the moment. It's so much easier, right, So if you're smart to fight it ahead of time when you aren't in the moment. Oh yeah, just like you said, like it's it's not an incorrect way of doing it, it's probably like the

most smart and efficient way to do it. Yeah, it prevents you from having to make a more difficult decision when you're in the heat of the moment and you want to hit click, or you're at the store and you want to buy some stuff. Well, taking into consideration like what makes you spend, why you end up making purchases that you regret later on, and doing that hard work up front can save you getting to that point where you are making crazy purchases that you shouldn't be making.

And it makes me kind of think of like QVC shoppers, and I don't want to lump them all in one category, but I've just heard way too many examples of You're not all terrible people, right, I'm sure there are fine people that shop on QBC. But I've just heard in particular of older people that live alone, they watch a lot of QVC and they end up buying a lot

of things with money that they don't have. And I think if we can even just take stock of kind of those emotional reasons potentially that cause us to feel a certain way, or that trigger a mood for spending or a desire to satisfy ourselves in a way, I think those are the kind of steps necessary to take in order to make sure that we become mindful spenders. Yeah. Man, you know a simple example I'm thinking of is when

you go to the grocery store and you're hungry. Folks tend to make decisions based on how they feel in the moment about what they're purchasing. Well, it's not that difficult to make the decision ahead of time to to go to the grocery store and make sure you have something already in your stomach, because if you don't judge me, I needed those four packs of bacon. Okay, I did I need it. But again, that's just a simple step.

It's it's something a parameter that you set there for yourself, and it's like, Okay, I don't go to the grocery store at eleven thirty on a Saturday, because by the time you get there, it's like twelve and by the time you're you know, in a certain aisle, twell thirty and I start getting hungry at yeah, exactly. So it's it's good to set rules like that and have those in place. Yeah, it's also important to ask yourself, who

are you making purchases for? Are you making purchases because other people around you are are doing something, are living in a certain way. I think it's easy for us, especially in an age of Instagram and photos in front of us all the time, seeing what other people are doing, what they're taking in, how great their lives are. Because they're showcasing just the best parts of what's actually happening.

It's easy for us to justify purchases because, uh, we see how other people are living their lives, and you have to ask yourself, how has that worked out for you in the past. Has that led to not having any money in the bank in your emergency account when an actual need arises because you are spending most of what comes in asking those questions what, why, and who are just really helpful in formulating good ground rules for mindful spending in your life. Yeah, Joel, and quickly, you know,

like talking about the who makes me think of high schoolers. Right. I thought you're gonna say the band, the Who, the Doors, the Who, the Beatles. Those are bands we don't know anything about. We're too young, It's true. But I think about like high schoolers. Do you think of, Oh, I'm doing this because like of social pressures and stuff like, oh, I need to get this kind of phone because you know the quote unquote cool kids, that's the phone that

they're getting, or play hacky sack. But I think this also applies to adults, like even college big purchases, not just like small little stuff. But I think a lot of times there's social pressures and a desire to conform to like what other people are doing. That can range from students, so you know, with like little gadgets all the way to like big expenses like adults. He might even feel pressured to go on a fancy trip that maybe you can't even afford. Like you said, there might

be a real emergency in your life. I just won't feel like it's worth noting that it can span all ages and it's not just something that like, oh, that's just something that kids feel. Yeah, you can see that in kids more clearly because we're we're adults and we can kind of see the dumb things that kids do. But it's something that we all deal with, and often I think it's it is worth it to ask ourselves that very question and to sort of question our motives.

I think it's so true. I think there are these things that we do, these spending choices that we make that become baseline level of decisions in our lives that we don't even realize we can act because they feel so normal and everyone around us is doing it right, and we don't even question them because they do feel like this thing that isn't even possible to eliminate because it's just so pervasive in the world that we see

around us. Sort Of on the flip side of that is being intentional with our spending right, and that feels amazing, Like that feels really good. Mindful spending and making a solid purchase is a great feeling. However, impulse spending, that's what makes you feel like you have a hangover. We've got an episode right where we talk about the holiday shopping hangover. Oftentimes, what a company is that spending as

well are large amounts of debt. And when you don't feel that you're in control of your spending and you're just being you know, pulled along by your credit cards, well that's when you wake up the next morning and regret those financial decisions that you've made, no doubt, buddy. All Right, So we're gonna get to some thoughts on how to plug those spending leaks, and also an interesting discussion on sales and how they affect our spending. We'll

do that right after the break, Okay, Jill. Before we talk about, you know, those spending leaks, we need to talk about the big spending, the big ticket items, and the bulk of our spending goes to three main categories, housing, food, transportation. We've done whole episodes on these, and you know, it really may not feel like wasteful spending because you truly need a place to live, you need you know, you need to eat food, and you need to get from

one place to another. These are bigger topics that have earned their own episode. But don't leave those stones unturned, in particular, when we get to the rules that we're gonna sort of implement here at the end of the episode. You know, I like a good rule, Matthew. And it's not that those bigger categories aren't important, but I feel like the small things is is where the leaks kind of arise in our lives. Those spending leaks add up. Matt There's this thing that my mom used to always

tell me. I can't remember exactly what it was now, it was basically essentially that all these small things add up, right, and they're all really important. And I kind of was like, whatever, Mom, I hear you, but I don't care. When I was a kid. I think it's the lyrics from All the Small Things song, Remember that one? Oh yeah, Yeah, that's that's probably what that's gotta be. Yeah, that's why she was referring to. But yeah, I think she was right. All the small things do add up. But that's just

not how we like to approach our spending. Oftentimes, we don't think about the small things nearly as much as we should, and I feel like we actually need to kind of recapture that belief that a penny saved is a penny earned, and that the small stuff does add up in more ways than one, right, It adds up and how much money is going out of your account and also adds up in how much clutter is encompassing

your house. And our culture can be so frenzied when it comes to like shopping for sales fifty off, sixty percent off Black Friday, all that kind of stuff. I think that's one of the ways in which spending leeks arise, don't you think, Matt, Yeah, man, absolutely, you know, just the very fact that a sale exists can be a trigger for somebody like they hear, oh yeah, they're sixty percent off sale, Like that's fantastic. I'm gonna go spend money that I wasn't planning on spending to begin with.

But it's a deal exactly. And I gotta say, man, this is what I fell prey to earlier on in my life. I was thoughtful with my money, but that was the thing that got me, the sales. It was the sales. It was like, oh, well, how it will never be this price again. I have to make the purchase. I have to buy that because because it's cheaper than it's ever been before. And you know, the best way truly to save off something is by saving of your

money and not buying that at all. And of sometimes those kind of purchases can fall under the category of shopping, right, and so like shopping is the act of perusing looking for stuff to buy, essentially, and if you happen to see a sale, sweet, then you pounce, you know, like you see that there's a deal. But what we want to do instead is to intentionally seek out a deal because you've identified a need or at least a very strong want, Like you're not just going through the motions

of looking to spend money. You know that this is something I now need to purchase because I've again identified a need or something's broken, and then moving forward with

that purchase. Like let's take, for instance, matt the mattress that we mentioned earlier, right, and I think, you know, I'm thirty five years old, I'm kind of ready for a non hand me down mattress, and I'm starting to do the research, and so you know what if a sale pops up after I kind of know what I'm looking for, well, I'm more than happy to buy it at a discount, but I'm not ready just to pounce on on a mattress before I know what I'm getting into,

and so I think, yeah, that's kind of a helpful way, at least for me to frame it is. You know what, this is already on my radar, and that's very different than shopping for something based on the sheer price alone, with it not having been on your radar previously. Joel, And you know, a way that you can sort of remove sales from your mind, a way to get it off of your radar altogether, is to remove yourself from

the different sale newsletters. Once you make a purchase from an online retailer, they have your email address, so they're basically going to constantly bum arg with marketing emails. You know, those sale algorithms are really good. They're always showing me exactly what i'd want. Yeah, man, it's so true. And it's the thing that I didn't realize that I quote unquote needed until I actually saw it, and then it's like,

I totally have to have that in my life. And it's really hard to be a mindful spender when that stuff is being shoved in front of your face constantly, constantly, Right, it's so much easier to shut it down, like we talked about earlier, if you remove it from your life altogether. Right, So, if you're not even getting that email into your inbox,

it's much easier to curb that spending. But once it hits your inbox, once you open it, once you're perusing that sale, once you're looking through for stuff that does look cool or interesting or whatever it may be, that's when it becomes really hard to shut it down. In progress. Yeah, as you're looking at it, you think, man, they totally know me. That's totally my aesthetic. And now lately do Instagram ads. They are so stink and creepy because they

know things that I have only thought. I swear there's things that I have not even said out loud. I only think them. And I think we've talked about this before. But then the next day, guess what shows up in my Instagram feed and add for the very thing that was only in my brain the day before. It's weird. It's weird, man, it's weird. But Gmail makes it really easy to unsubscribe from these emails, you know, like they've got who it's from, and then right next to it

it says unsubscribe and so on. Those newsletters. If you want to manually make sure you're removing yourself from those, that's an option. But if you're looking for a one stop shop, also check out unrolled dot me. This is a site where basically you give it access to your email and there's a little bit of a privacy concerned They say they're only concerned with the commercial like retail style emails that you're receiving, but fact is they have

access to all of your emails. So if you're, you know, more concerned about privacy, that may not be for you, but that can be a very easy one stop shop where you can go in there and just unsubscribe from all of them all at once. Yeah, that's pretty slick. Another thing we should think about is kind of what spending we have that's automated, So money that's coming out of your accounts every month that you've forgotten about you have to stop up flow, and that takes a little

bit of intentionality and being proactive. For example, maybe you're still paying a cable bill. I don't know. I bet you that some of our listeners, Matt are still signed up for cable and they're paying more than they know, or they don't even know what they're paying every month. Maybe you have an Amazon Prime subscription and you're just not getting enough use out of it. Maybe you're paying for multiple streaming accounts and really you only use one.

Maybe you have monthly bank fees that you're not sure even what you're paying, or an annual credit card fee and you don't even need that credit card. I mean, there are all these sorts of things that are coming out of your account every month or every year. They are all sorts of things that you're spending money on that get automated, and it's just really easy to let those things go and not question them and not start

making proactive choices to change where your money goes. And so it's really important to take a look at the spending choices that you have automated and seeing which services or subscriptions that you can opt out of. Yeah, Jill, you know, this makes me think of a whole sort of other category of spending that at I like to call either wishful spending or optimistic spending, which is like the gym membership. It's spending that you do and you know that I'm not you know, like I'm not going

to the gym all the time right now. But if I keep that expense there, I think it will change my behavior, it'll force me to go exactly, But in reality,

you never end up changing your behavior. And because it's not this massive expense, you kind of keep it around and it kind of becomes this pet and you get to three or four those and before you know, you're spending hundreds of dollars every single month on something that you're not taking advantage of, whether it be museums or an audible subscription, just you know, something like that where you think, well, I'm going to do more of this in the future, but in reality, like you don't have

the time for it now. Like if you don't have the time for it now, like will you really make time for it in the future. Maybe you will, but you know, it's definitely something worth considering. So Mats advice

be a little more pessimistic. I like it, Matt pestimistic spending, all right, So we'll get into some specific ways to zero in on that spending that gets automated every month and how you can fight that spending in your life, as well as some specific rules that we think will be really helpful as you attempt to lower the amount of money that you're spending so you can keep more of it for yourself. We'll get to that right after the break. Al Right, be'st buddy Automated spending right now,

we're gonna talk about ways to dial that back. In order to do that, you need to make sure that you are tracking your expenses. Uh. There's a site called ask trim that purports to help you find wasteful spending. That's another one of these sites that you have to give access to your information and they take a big cut when they do find you savings. Yeah, it's not awful. It's not ideal, Yeah, exactly. You know, man, we prefer just a more manual approach, which is by budgeting and

tracking your expenses. You need a budget or win nab for short, is a helpful way for you to see all your spending in one place. Pretty much, any budget or expense tracker or software will help you to prioritize, to save, and to budget. We've talked with some listeners who've used dollar Bird. We've talked about them before, Joe on the on the podcast. It's that app that organizes your expenses by category, but you have to manually enter

it in. But I know that that's something that you sort of take this sort of guilty joy in doing, like manually paying your bills, manually entering things in so that you feel the pain. You know, it's so easy to make purchases these days, and when you have to actually document it and rub your own face in your own mess a little bit, it kind of causes you to think twice about it versus it just being this one and done thing that you never have to revisit. Yeah,

you know instantly enough. On a recent episode where we talked about cutting your monthly energy bills, I talked about how I manually set my thermostat and I don't have one of these nest learning thermostats like you have, which which are really cool, but I actually like to go and move it up myself. And and some days during the summer, right were trying to not let the air run at all during the day. We'll bump it up to eighty two or eighty three even, that's what we've

been doing lately. It's crazy. We'll just let it get super hot of there because the doors are open, the kids are running in and out, and we just don't want the A C. Running while the doors are open, like they just feel so wasteful. And you know, when we sit down at dinner, we turn on the A C boom it's running. We feel cool while you know, while we're eating, and we let it run, you know, while we're sleeping too. And so that physical act of

me doing it. We had a listener right in and say, that's so dumb, dude, just you should automate some more things. And that's probably true, Like I should probably be a little bit better at automating some things in my life. But there's something at least for me and my personality type about viscerally seeing it and being engaged with the thermostat, being engaged with a bill that comes in the door,

and having to face it, having to look at it. It. Actually it changes my behavior and for me, that's really important. That is part of the way that I'm able to spend and live a little more mindfully is by tactfully and actively engaging with the things around me, whether it's my thermostat or my electricity bill. Yeah, man, that's so good. I think it's good that you've identified something that works for you. Uh, And I think that's so important is to folk us and do the things that work for

you as an individual. But you know, when it comes to tracking your expenses as well, like you don't have to use a fancy app. It can just be an Excel file or Google sheets like something where you are just tracking those expenses. It can even be this thing called pencil and paper. I have ever heard of that. That's what my friend Mindy does. She's literally got this early book on her kitchen counter and when she walks into the house, she breaks out a receipt and writes

down what she got it down real quick. And so it's just it's pen and paper. Man, it's old school. I like that too. But yeah, like the whole idea behind tracking your expenses here is to basically give yourself a snapshot, because if you don't know where your money is going, then you can't make those adjustments and you

can't make those cuts to that automated spending. All right, So let's get to kind of maybe some of the rules that you can implement before you spend money that will help you decide whether it's a wise purchase or not. And so the first thing you need to think about is some of those points that we actually mentioned at the beginning of the episode, which are things like what am I buying? What I buy it again? Why am I spending this money? And who am I buying this for?

Am I making this purchase just to impress the people around me or just to live like the people around me? Running a purchase through those filters? It's just really helpful you have a quick example kind of going back to the why am I spending this money? You know, we talked about identifying those triggers. I thought of when Kate

and I we went on a road trip. We drove up to New York City, and we knew that we along the way, we're gonna be attempted to stop at tons and tons of fast food because it's a pretty big road trip, and we identified that ahead of time. So instead of trying to fight that in the moment, guess what we had there in the car Snacks exactly. We had tons of snacks. We had had not pistachios

that would have been good. We had almonds, we had some fruit, but we had a hole off of bread and peanut butter and jelly, and Kate sat there and made us sandwiches and we just drove right past the Chick fil A's, and there's other restaurants that we wanted to stop at because we were going to New York where we had already planned out some of the nicer, expensive restaurants that we really wanted to spend our money

on while we're on that trip. So that's just a quick example of how we were able to think just a little bit ahead and avoid spending money on these, you know, mediocre to average fast food restaurants and instead kind of keeping our eyes set on the prize, which was amazing Ramen that we had mapped out all across the city. Well, I like that. The only thing I dislike about what you just said is Chick fil A

and mediocre, Like that's not accurate. But but for the most fans of Chick fil A, it's delicious, diet, stink, and chicken. I do agree with you, though. Another thing that can be really helpful before you decide to buy something is to organize the things that you already have. You know, there's no need to buy something if you already have it, and we tend to have more enjoyment of the things that we have if we know exactly

where they are. So Emily and I Matt the other day were reorganizing our launch room area that's where all my tools are and kind of some of our miscellaneous items, and it turned out we had so much packing tape it wasn't even funny. And that was why that's such a random thing. I feel like to have it. It is it is. I don't I don't know why there's so much packing tape, but I guess we we were out of packing tape, and because it wasn't well organized,

we purchased some more. And and it turns out we had some already and so we just have more than we need for probably the next twenty years um. And so it was really helpful to get organized so that we know where it is. It's easy to find, it's easy to see, and it just makes us feel better about our space and what we have, and it just

makes everything a little more usable and user friendly. And so, yeah, anyway that you can organize the things that you currently have, whether it's your wardrobe or your laundry room, that's gonna be helpful in curbing unnecessary spending in your life. Yeah, I can get behind like garnering more enjoyment out of using something when you know exactly where to find it and where to put it back when you're done with it.

This makes me think of my grandfather, my grandpa up in Illinois keys like a hardcore superorganized kind of person. I think this is where some of my organizational roots, uh kind of stem from. I remember even seeing this as a little kid. But he's got this massive pegboard with all the tools on it. And not only do all the tools have their own specific spot where they go,

but each tool has been outlined on the pegboard. That way, when you use the tool, you take it down and you're you're working and you think, oh no, like where does this go? Like if you can't spots exactly where it goes, or maybe you've pulled a few tools down and you can't remember exactly where it goes, well you can see exactly where it goes because there's an outline of that tool drawn on the pegboard with a sharpie.

It's a little tip if you are into d I y ing your fixes at home and you've got a bunch of tools laying around, look into a peg board. I've got one of those actually down to my cross space as well. Baller move matts Grandpa. But they're not outlined though, so yeah, I gotta step it up. Yeah, you do need to step it up. Another filter that we need to run, I think everything through in order to spend mindfully is to think about the secondary cost of the items that we buy. Will it take up

extra space? Will it take up extra mental energy having that purchase or having that recurring expense. Will that thing that we buy or spend our money on actually end up wasting our time? And I think those are interesting questions to ask ourselves when we make a purchase, because we don't think about that impact that it's going to make after the fact, and maybe we would make a different choice if we did. You have that mental energy towel.

That makes me think of decision fatigue, which is one of the reasons that we love all these so much, is because you go in there and guess what, they don't have tons of options of all the different items that you need. They basically just have one or two options. And because of that, it makes it so incredibly easy to go in there, get what you need, get out. There's almost zero decision fatigue because it's just automatic, like you know exactly what you're gonna get and it's not

something that you have to think about. Yeah, and that's why you wear a black turtleneck every day too, right, Yeah, exactly, just like the Rock in the eighties. You don't know what I'm talking about. Have you seen the picture of the Rock with like the black turtleneck and the fanti pack like leaning against the stairwell. No, I'll dude, you gotta look it up. It's classic. All right, I'll check it out. Maybe we'll post that picture in our show.

I know you're talking about Steve Jobs, and that's like that's this thing, right, like the life optimization gurus where you just basically have the same outfit, but like that's the whole idea behind that is to minimize the number of decisions that you have to make every day so that you can focus on the things that you truly

do when to spend your time and energy on. Yeah, and the things that we buy truly do have an impact on the mental space that we have, like like literally just decluttering kind of that tool laundry room area. For us, it's a good breath of fresh air when I walk back there. Now, are bikes are easier to get to? Yeah? You feel so good getting your bikes because you know exactly where they go when they're done,

exactly to find them. Everything has its place, and you know what that organization is kind of a constant thing. I feel like it's hard to keep it in that pristine state for for a long long time, but every time we do it, it feels really good and and I think it actually really does kind of make us more mindful about what we spend. Another quick rule for mindful spinning jewel is to think about our purchases in

life hours. We would encourage you to equate the cost of a good something that you want to purchase to the number of hours that you'd have to work in order to buy that gadget in order to buy that gizmo, and then to ask yourself before you purchase it, is this something that I would be happy to trade my

time for? When you can start equating the things that you own with the amount of time that you have on the earth, which is kind of deep, I know, like I'm you know, we're talking about how much time that you're gonna live and stuff, but like it's true, if you are going to have to spend time to earn money to then purchase the things that you want. If you can cut out that middleman and equate instead that this item costs this much time instead of this much money, I think a lot of times that would

cause us to rethink our purchases. Yeah. I think if you're looking at let's say, a new smartphone, and you realize that the cost of that new smartphone is going to cost you thirty seven hours let's say of work, well you might think, again, it's a lot of time man, about whether you actually need a new smartphone. Or secondarily, if you can get by with a smartphone that costs a heck of a lot less money and therefore a

hey couple lot less of your work hours. So maybe you decide to opt for a really nice two dollar smartphone instead that only costs you eleven hours of your working life. I think setting up the scenario in that way helps us realize in a way the value of the money that we're spending, because we're recuating it directly to what it takes to get that money. So it makes a big difference for us if we think about it in the proper terms. And the last rule is

to consider buying, used, or even borrowing something. There is a good chance that you could spend a lot less money buying used or even spending no money at all by borrowing something. Oftentimes, it is just so easy for us to hop on the computer, hop on Amazon or wherever it is that you buy things, find exactly what you're looking for, and just click that one click purchase button,

and man, that's gonna show up in a day or two. Instead, just think about how much money you could save and how many relationships I would say that you would be able to deepen by asking a friend or a neighbor if there's something that you can borrow that they might have. Yeah, it's the path of least resistance, but it's not the best way for your dollars to flow, because more of them are going to flow out of your pocket if

you spend in that way. And our friend Katie Woke Stanley, who came on the show I don't know, a couple of months ago. Her slogan, her motto is use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. And I think that is a helpful way for us to think about our spending so that we can be mindful spenders as opposed to people who buy or whatever gets put in front of our faces by marketers, or advertisers or even our friends and neighbors. We need to realize

that mindless consumption does turn into excessive consumption. And so if we can be mindful, well, we can save more of those hard earned dollars. We can think more about our future as opposed to just the here and now. Yeah, Joel, in that episode with Katie was episode number seventy two, and that kind of dovetails nicely with this episode. So if you haven't listened to that one, check it out because we talk a lot about rampant consumerism and consumption.

So Joel, speaking of consumption, we just consumption that beer and uh, I would love to hear your thoughts on it, man. Yeah, we we certainly did. Today on the show, we drank National Cherry Blossom Festival by Old Ox Brewery, given us by our friend Andrew. Thanks Andrew. And this was really good man. This beer has cherry juice in it and also hybiscus. I feel like that hybiscuits, that kind of floral notes actually hit the hardest in this and and then there is a touch of that cherry juice and

they balanced nicely. This is technically a sayson. It has that Farmhouse says on quality to it, but with the cherry juice in the hybiscuits flour like the fruit and the floral, it really is an interesting mix. And I thought this beer was was really tasty. Yeah, to me, man, it was totally fruity and it drank like a fruity triple.

There are a lot of Belgian beer flavors going on, and yeah, I kept thinking like, this tastes a lot like a triple but with cherry juice or it kind of reminded me of like that cane fruit metally with like the little macerated cherry that kind of thrown in there as well. I can see that, you know what I'm saying, So imagine like a Belgian triple plus some of that doll canned fruit mixed cup kind of mixed

together with a little bit more cherry. Which kind of sounds a little negative, But I really enjoyed this beer. That's not what we normally have, but really interesting and quite enjoyable. Yeah, that was a fun one. All right, Joel, We're not gonna bounce back and forth with our final thoughts on this episode, but do you have any some parting wisdoms, some parting words for us. Crap, you're gonna do that to me? Okay, I want to put the

pressure on you. All Right, here we go. Well, I think ultimately when we spend more mindfully, it feels good. It actually feels better than impulse spending. But impulse spending is what we're all prone to do because we're reacting to what we see in the world around us. We're reacting to the clutter in our own lives. And so yeah, hopefully some of these rules that we laid out can help people make more mindful purchases as opposed to the

expedient one. I mean, that's what I hope for myself too, because I know my tendencies, uh to to buy something just because it's on sale, and I need this reminder just as much as anybody else. Nice you nailed at buddy. Thanks man, that's gonna be it for this episode. You can find our show notes up at how It's a Money dot com. Check them out. Yeah, and if you like this episode, and if you're joined the podcast, you know we would appreciate a review from you on Apple Podcasts.

It means a lot. It helps other people figure out what this show is all about. So Matt, until next time, Buddy, best friends out, best friends out. Best friends out, best friends out sure right, or stealing? We highly recommend stealing things. Uh just kidding,