When Frugality Doesn't Cut It #157

can count on to make some big changes in our life. Yes, sometimes there are other levers that we need to pull right in fru gality, we just can't cut back anymore. And so that's kind of what this episode is about. If you find yourself having gone into uh personal finance, diving deep and you're realize, you know what, I've made a lot of frugal moves, but I gotta do more in order to get my finances kind of where I want them to be. Well, that's what this episode is

going to get into exactly. Matt. Before we get into that, let's do a frugal or cheap And this is a frugal or cheap or just playing funny or ridiculous. So I saw this article. There's this guy follow on Twitter and he called this article flushing money down the toilet, And it's literally a little heads up of what this

article is actually gonna be about. So he literally goes through all of the things that cost money, about going to the bathroom at home, and why you should take your number two's at work instead of doing it at the house. Yeah, specifically number two is. It's it's not about the number one is because with number two's there's all these other expenses. You've gotta account for the candle, toilet paper, you know, maybe an extra flush, because you can't use the economy flush, right, like you go with

the full flesh, not the half flesh. Just potentially that plumber call once a year that you're gonna have to make in case, you know, it gets a little unwieldly. Well, what I love about that article, and we'll post this up in our show notes, but I love that he dove so deep and so hardcore into the numbers. Uh, there's even a calculator so you can assess your own

personal situation, your own usage. Yeah, So since we're talking about frue gality, I just thought that was funny because a super frugal person would probably potentially think about something like that. And I'm not gonna say it's something I've never thought about before. I just never have dug into this amount of detail. Yeah, if it's something that you can kind of keep in the back of your mind and that can slightly modify your behavior, I'm like, all right,

well then it's just a little more natural. But it feels cheap if you're going way out of your way in order to make number two happen while you're at work. Well, we'll say, for me working from home, this isn't something I personally can can do, right, Like, my office is my home, So for us, that's an expense we realize ourselves, except home office deduction. Oh that's good point. Yeah, there's a percentage because I use a room in our house, so you get to write off some of your utilities.

It's a well a percentage of the size of your home and then utilities as well, so boom, I can go whenever I want. I think one of my favorite parts about the post, besides the calculator, is that he calls it. You know, we talked about opportunity costs. When we talk about money, he calls it the poopportunity cost. So, yeah, it was clever. If anybody wants to mess around with that calculator and your poop jokes to Joel, yeah, feel

free to tweet your best poop jokes at us. I didn't totally understand the part that he's talking about the opportunity cost. Is he saying that while you're at work you're missing out on you know, what he's saying is if you poop at home as opposed to pooping at work, there's this opportunity cost of your money because while you're at home, you're spending your own money, your own time, on the water bill, on the candle, on the running of the fan with the electricity, all that kind of

st So obviously it's just a little bit. It's a little poofy, but you know, especially since we're talking about frugality and maybe win frugality doesn't cut it well, this kind of went a little too far, but super funny and and definitely worth talking about on the show. Yeah, we'll share that with y'all as well. All Right, man, let's quickly mention the beer that we're having on the show today. This beer, Man, I've been drinking this for

over ten years. This is Hibernation Ale is old school, Yeah, by Great Divide Brewing. Well, you said you've been drinking it for ten years. I don't think i've had it in eight years. It's been four ever since I've had this beer. This is one of those that I think you and I both kind of fell into years ago.

But this is one that we've st you know, let's kind of set on the backshelf a little bit when you when you go to the when you go to the beer shop and you see it, any kind of a little tip of the cap to it, but you don't really pick it up. I'm glad that we are able to share this one today. I mean, this is an old aale and I love a good old alee. So we will talk about this one at the end of the show. But for now, Matt, let's get onto

the topic at hand. We're talking about when frugality doesn't cut it, when it's not enough, and Matt, you and I both agree that frugality is a great tool in our personal finance. Swiss Army Knife. We're pretty approval fell as ourselves, and we love seeing the frugal steps that our friends and our listeners are implementing into their lives. Oftentimes they're doing things that we hadn't even thought of, right, And it's encouraging to see that. It's inspirational and it's

educational for us. It's creative as well. Yes, I love that super creative stuff. I love just seeing how people are saving money and it just makes me want to go harder after saving more of my own and making frugal cuts. But frugality alone doesn't cut it. There are times when we need to prioritize other tools in our personal finance Swiss army knife to help us achieve our

money goals. So today we're going to discuss the role that frugality should play in our financial lives and how to use the other tools at your disposal when just adding more frugal hacks to our life won't do the trick. That's right, man, So let's go ahead first and define frugality. There are a lot of different definitions of what people consider to be frugal, right, I mean, you and I we go back and forth often on the show, and

we say, is this frugal or is this cheap? Like even our own definition of frugality and cheapness can vary depending on the specific situation, but for this episode, here's how we're gonna define frugality. Frugality is the small changes that you can make by cutting around the periphery of your budget. Right. So some of these changes can be bigger than others. It could be as big as maybe

cutting cable. What can be as small as making your own soap, or maybe even flushing one less time because you are going number two at work, right, But frugality is essentially looking at those line items and seeing how you can save a few more dollars every single month. You're kind of you know, you're you're tightening the belt just a little bit more, trying to squeeze a few more cents out of that line atom. Yeah, yeah, we

are of course all about this. You shouldn't skip out on frugality as you're on your journey to achieving your financial goals. You have to use it well. But there's some obvious limitations to frugality because it can only take you so far. Some folks have a greater need to practice extreme frugality, right, But lots of people listening to

this podcast likely don't fall into this category. If you have a smartphone, you listen to podcasts, and in particular, if you're listening to a personal finance podcast, the likelihood that you have the ability to make other impactful changes is pretty high. But before we get into those changes, let's talk a little more about frugality and how we

should view it. Yeah, dude, So, I think the first thing when to cover is how pretty much everything in our budget should be initially on the table when it comes to making some of those cuts. Right, we should reconsider most of the expenses in our lives and not assume that anything is untouchable. This is reminding me of our interview with Liz, miss frugal Wood's. We talked with her about how she and her husband they cut their own hair at home, and by the way, that's something

I do as well. Yeah. Have we ever talked about that? I don't. I think you've mentioned it before. Have you talked about how I've cut your hair before? I think we might have posted a picture on Instagram one when you cut my hair, did you like? Dude? I don't have time to get a haircut. I don't want to pay the money as well. Our families were at the beach. Yeah, it's small aside. Anyway, I will say we're pretty frugal.

Not the best hair could I've ever had, also not the worst, so I'm fine with them where in the middle. So you know, we talked with her about how they cut their own hair. She also has this large, massive CEO two tank where she can make her own carbonated water and instead of buying lacroix or instead of even using her soda stream with a little CEO two cartridges

I guess, which are a lot more expensive. There are all sorts of ways that we can creatively cut back, and sometimes when we think that we are frugal, we actually aren't. Right, So we just haven't done enough research to see what other options might help us to save even more money. Our culture isn't a one that lends itself to frugality. That's an understatement. Yes, Like there are probably a lot of different frugal hacks that you haven't

considered yet. We've talked about free stuff, we talked about cutting the cord. Even cheap cell phone providers more frugal knowledge and implementation can have a real impact for the majority of us. Yeah, so I think it's important to say, just one more time, we're not talking trash about frugality.

We love yeah, exactly, there's so many good things that frugality adds to our lives, and even just honestly, the money savings is big, but just kind of that ability to realize that we can do with less is a huge part of why we love frugality. Oh and also too, and it can only not save you money, but I think there's a lot of joy that can come from being frugal as well. Like we've talked before about obviously using public libraries, right it's another mainstay right there next

to frugality. But recently, man, we've been using the Libby appohole because I've sinked it with my kindle and so, which is amazing because now I'm able to pull up books from the library on my phone in the Libby app and then instantly send them to my kindle. Dude, this has been huge for us. I've been reading The Magic Treehouse to my girls. They love it. It's a ton of fun and if they're really into it, I can literally pull up the next book and have that

into my kindle instantly. So I'm just saying that it's just a ton of fun. We've gotten a lot of value out of that. Ensure. We could purchase the e version of it on Amazon, right but they're about four dollars a pop and we've already burned through six of those books. So that's twenty five bucks right there that

I've saved, just a small frugal win. Yeah, And I mean, I think the more that we are have our eyes open, and so much of that does involve kind of bringing in other voices that have a lot of wisdom on how to become more frugal, how to save money, what areas you can cut back, what apps you can use, wright stuff like that. There's all sorts of frugal tips and tricks out there that you know, there's a lot that we aren't privy to, and we rely on our listeners and our friends to kind of hear more about

those things. But yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, frugality, it can be kind of uh fun, it can be a joy. We can almost also kind of gamify our ability to to institute frugality into our lives are but

I think it's also important to be warned. Extreme frugality can have negative consequences in relationship to our money and to others, and it can also have negative consequences just for ourselves because it might not be fun to cut back on some of those expenses that we truly enjoy in life, right, Matt, Like, if we try to over frugalize our use of craft beer, Uh, it would probably

be pretty miserable. That's why we kind of set out a few things in our personal lives that we're willing to say, you know what, We're not gonna let frugality really touch those areas of our lives because those are places where we've decided it's important to put our money it aligns with our values. And so, like, let's give an example here. I think avoiding expensive coffee typically is

a pretty smart move, right. If you go out every single morning to to get a four or five dollar coffee, that can add up and and it really does equate to a major expense in your life. But not spending that four dollars just wants to have a great two hour conversation with a friend, Well, I think ultimately that's kind of being more cheap, and that's letting extreme frugality

infringe on having a great conversation with a friend. Yeah, that's a classic example of imposing your cheapness on somebody else, right, because it's affecting that relationship. So it can definitely have a negative impact on that relationship. By the way, Okay, what if you were going to a coffee shop to meet a friend and they were already there and they didn't have coffee, and they're sitting there, what would you do? I'd buy their coffee? Would you buy their coffee? Yeah?

What if they don't want coffee? What do they want? Well, what I'm what I'm saying, What I'm getting to is that you're using the space of the coffee shop and it looks like they're not going to get coffee. Would you get coffee for yourself? Yeah? I mean I think it's it's probably really cheap to take up a table coffee shop and not have purchased anything. But that's what

I'm getting too. That's not cool. Yeah. So I mean if if I got there that you know, my friend was already there and they had a cup, I feel like that kind of puts me off the hook a little bit. I'm like, Okay, I can get a cup of coffee to kind of join them. You know, there's a lot of things to consider here. It also gives me the freedom maybe to not go ahead and get that fancy latte that I'm going to be tempted to get, right,

carmelatte or a quartado. That's my favorites are so good. Yeah, well yeah, I think really more than anything when it comes to the negative consequences that frugality can can bring. It's not to say that frugality has to have these bad ramifications. It doesn't have to affect your relationships negatively, but I think it's just important to mention that it

can write. You know, if we're not careful, and if we let frugality kind of take the driver's seat in our life as opposed to kind of be in that passenger person holding the map helping us out. You know, if we let it take over the driver's seat, it really can run them up, and it can hurt hurt our relationships and the people closest to us. Completely agree. Man. Something else to keep in mind is that if you are an extreme frugal light, there is also a diminishing

value to continuing to make hard attempts at frugality. This is, you know, when maybe the effect is in full force. Your initial frugal cuts can be quite helpful, allowing for some major financial breathing room, But then those secondary frugal

moves will offer far less benefits. I'm thinking of For instance, you might be spending over like a hundred and sixty bucks a month on cable, and over the years you've also picked up a number of those different streaming services, right, and so you're just paying way out the nose for all the TV that you don't actually watch, when in reality, you can make some pretty big cuts. And you know what, Hulu last Black Friday, they did that two dollar a

month deal again. And if you happen to snag that deal, you might say, you know what, I can get about eight of all of my TV watching done through Hulu for two bucks a month. That's the savings of one and fifty dollars if you're paying one sixty before. And that first cut is huge, massive, But guess what, you probably don't need to be agonizing like should I cut that two dollar a month Hulu? Don't worry about it, Like who cares? It's only two dollars, But those bigger

cuts certainly can be worthwhile. But just make sure you're not getting bogged down in the details and the minutia and just all the nitty gritty of trying to reduce your expenses even further when there's a little chance of that maybe actually even happening. Yeah, the first frugal cut

can yield major results. And then those smaller frul cuts that we try to make sometimes maybe we're putting too much time, too much effort, and we're we're thinking too hard about that when there are other things that we can be focused on that can help us make bigger moves with our money, bigger moves with our personal finances as opposed to that two or three dollar cut, Right, And so let's talk about those things, Matt. Let's talk

about those bigger moves that we can make win. Frugality isn't enough, And we'll get into that right after the break, all right. So we're back from the break, and we're gonna talk now about some of those bigger expenses, some of those bigger things in our life that we can focus on in order to make some big changes when it comes to our finances. Yeah, the way we initially defined frugality, we said it's cutting around the periphery of

our budget. It's those smaller trims that we can make, and when frugality doesn't cut it, we have to make major t So we have to take an ax to those big things, right. Yeah, not around the periphety, We're going straight to the heart of it. Yeah, it's okay, a quick example for you that before we kind of launch into those let's talk about eating maybe a little

bit healthier. In the same way that frugality won't cut it when it comes to our finances, there are I think other areas in our life where the same principles at play. So, for example, I think about the food we eat and trying to stay maybe a little bit healthy. Right, So an attempt to do that, you might be making the switch from regular ice cream to the ice cream that has maybe no sugar added or even the low fat stuff right gross. Yeah, Yeah, we don't need to

get on that. So while that might make a difference, if you really want to move the needle, what you should be doing is you shouldn't be looking at low fat ice cream. You should be looking at not eating ice cream altogether. You need to you need to avoid having that bowl of ice cream right before you go to bed like that's what's gonna make the big difference, or or or sparing lee every once in a while. You know, you have a bowl of ice cream, but

but good stuff every now and then. But if you're eating the low fat every single night before bed, you're right, yeah, that's not a good move. Also, see how this food example parallel how we approach beer. Yeah true, but it's those paradigm shifting ways of looking at a problem completely differently that'll actually lead to massive change, not just those

tiny little frugal tweaks. Yeah yeah, So that one of the major ways that we are able to move the needle wind frugality isn't quite enough is to look at the major expenses in our lives. When frugality just isn't gonna cut it, it's time to go big, right, So let's look at a few areas in our budget where we're talking about these major hacks as opposed to just cutting around the edges, just nibbling and taking off pennies

and dollars. Well, of course, housing is probably the biggest line item in your budget, So let's talk about that real quick. Yeah, on average dude, Americans of their budget goes towards housing that is a massive amount. That's a big chunk. So instead of focusing on the smaller things like letting it mellow in between flushes or pooping at your place of work, it's important to look for ways

to drastically make changes. And so, yeah, one of those things might be house hacking that's putting an extra room on Airbnb, or looking for acute duplex so you can have a full time tenant next door. You might want to consider downsizing alltogether. Maybe you realize that you don't need all the space that you have anymore or ever, right, yeah, or maybe you've never needed that space and you're just

finally realizing that. Yeah, And so you realize you're living in three thousand square feet and you're like, you know what, square feet would do me just fine, and it would simplify my life a good bit and at the same time, it would save me a whole lot of money every month. You might even want to think about relocating. Ask yourself why it is that you live where you do. Going through that exercise can really help. I mean, I think there's all these ways that we can consider tackling the

problem of how much housing costs us every month. And if you can lower your housing costs from your budget to twenty of your budget, if you can make a big move like that, well then we're not talking about getting rid of a ten dollar streaming service. We're talking about moving the needle in a major way pretty quickly. Yeah, and here's the thing too, some of these changes can seem kind of scary, right, Like we're talking about changing your housing, and to a lot of people, their home

is like represents security and it's this sort of safe place. Right. But here's the thing, Like, thinking through these things is an incredible exercise, like you said, to help us to focus on what it is we actually prioritize. Because yeah, you hear us say, oh you should consider moving, and that sounds ridiculous to some people, probably to a lot

of people. But if you actually take the time and think about what is it that we value, that is when your priorities can begin to realign, and then you can start placing priority on the things that actually matter to you. Right. So, for instance, maybe you moved to a city because you originally got a job there five or six years ago, but now you work completely online and you can move anywhere well, that's a good time to reconsider, like, why is it that we're actually staying here.

Is it because we're just used to the neighborhood, or are there other bigger reasons that are keeping us here. I think when you can actually think through some of these things, that's when these kind of big audacious moves like this, like moving out of the city to somewhere that's maybe more affordable, that's when something like that seems not only doable, but something that you're excited about because

you've identified an incredible way to save a ton of money. Yeah, I think Matt, it is important to note when we're talking about this that when you move sometimes there are other expenses that you incur. In For instance, where we live it's pretty bikable. I can bike to work, you know, you can bike to pick up kids from school and and that kind of thing. Right, instead of having another car, instead of driving more where we live, it enables us

to save money in other places. So, yeah, certainly some secondary benefits there. Yeah, So I think if you're talking about moving somewhere else, you want to incorporate all the potential increased costs and decreased costs that you might face. And on that note of cars and transportation, what transportation is this other potential place for us to make a

huge dent in our monthly spending. And the thing is, it's not agonizing between a car that might get thirty five miles to the gallon versus forty miles to the gallon that ultimately is a very small item in our budget. The gas costs that will incur typically don't make a huge different in our lives if we just increase our fuel economy a little bit. But the bigger thing is

considering what the purpose of our car is. If it's just functional and dependable transportation and it's not for status, well then we're going to be able to make a better choice. We're gonna be able to save a lot of money doing so. This means not having a car payment and definitely avoiding leasing a car. By the way, if you do have a lease, it's important. There are two great websites you should check out, Swap a lease

or lease Trader. You can get rid of your lease and you can find somebody else who's looking to take on a lease, and then you can discount you at a discount, and then you can get this cheaper method of transportation that's going to save you potentially hundreds of dollars every month and all that note, also avoid the car subscription services as well, because that's an even higher premium that you're paying for absolutely zero work. But guess what you're paying out the nose for that jump. Yeah.

Those Maybe maybe one of these days those things will come down in price and we'll be able to have car subscription services that just aren't insanely expensive for the common man. But it seems like a lot of them are eight hundred thousand buck right now, and so yeah, I would probably avoid those two. And Matt, I think another thing to mention is that for folks out there that have a car payment, consider selling your car, taking that hit, and then buying something to drive that's less expensive.

And when we start talking about cutting things in this fashion, like selling a car to your upside down on taking the hit and then buying a car that's even cheaper, well we have to talk about the sunk cost fallacy, which I don't think we've ever talked about on the show before. Sometimes it makes sense to cut loose a recent new car purchase or recent purchase of any kind, even if we're going to quote unquote lose money on it.

We keep expenses in our life oftentimes because of how much we've invested in those things, as opposed to weighing our decision based on how beneficial it will be for our future finances. So sometimes Matt, it just makes sense to cut our losses and do something more productive with that money. Well, this actually makes me think of Seinfeld. I know you're a big Seinfeld fan. I used to

watch it back in the day. I've watched classic show. Yeah, I watched very few episodes of that, but one that I am aware of it was the one where Elaine she had gotten the punch cards at the subplace and she had gotten enough punches on her card that she was going to be able to get a free sub.

Did you know the one I'm talking about? Yeah, and she loses the card, right, she loses the card and so she's spends the entire episode basically trying to find her her card, and people that are always like forget about it, like let it go, and the whole time She's like, the subs are terrible, but but I'm halfway there. I have to keep beating them so I can get

the free one exactly. Well, she's more than halfway there, she is right there at the brink, and so she's she's committed to finding that card and it doesn't matter that the subs are crappy. She's emotionally invested. And so that's the fallacy part of the sunk cost problem here is that we become emotionally attached to what we've committed our time and what we've committed our money to that it doesn't matter if the benefit we receive afterwards isn't

that great, we're so committed to it. Yeah, So I think that's a good way to think about purchases that we've already made that maybe we can cut ties with. It's like, would you make that purchase now, regardless regardless of how much money, regardless of how much time you've

already sunk into it. Yeah. And when you're talking about the car specifically, Matt, if you spent twenty thousand on a car and it's worth, you know, twelve thousand dollars, now, well, would you buy a car that's worth twelve dollars for twenty grand? No, you probably wouldn't. And so if you have the cash on hand and you're able to to get out from out of that car and buy a cheap used car that can revolutionize your finances going forward.

And so yeah, I just think it makes sense to put that on the table, those bigger cuts, even if it involves maybe a more difficult emotional move like selling a car that you've got so much money invested in. Yeah, totally man. And another thing too is consider maybe moving to a one car family. Right if you've got a family, if you have a household and you've got two cars, but maybe you're really not using that second car all that often, Well, like it's worth considering selling that car,

getting rid of the insurance on that second vehicle. And you know what, if you are a single individual and you only have one car, if you live in the city and you've got good options, good alternative transportation options, I think it's worth challenging yourself and thinking through, like what would it look like for me to not have

a car. We talked about this often, but I mean with the technologies with ride sharing, bike scooters, all the things out there, there are incredible ways to be able to move around a city in an urban environment where you wouldn't necessarily have to have the vehicle. And one thing I think that gets overlooked the ways car pool feature is really neat. It's very similar to ride share. Have you tried it yet? I haven't tried it yet.

I need to try it, but I've been I've been really really interested to check it out because the prices are so much cheaper than if you were just to take a lift or an uber even like the uber pool right. The it's it's it's basically cost like fifty cents a mile, and you're sharing this ride with someone else who lives in your part of town and works kind of close to where you work. And so yeah, it's a really sweet option for for folks that are

trying to eliminate car expenses in their lives. Yeah, because I do see that on as an option with Lift and Uber right, like you see the shared option, And it's not that much cheaper, Like a lot of times it's just a few bucks, I mean, depending on the length of your trip, but it's a few bucks more and it sometimes will take a lot longer, and so I'm just like, well, I'm not gonna try to say three or four bucks and have it take twenty minutes

longer to get to my destination. To me personally, that's not worth it, yeah for sure. But yeah, man wags carpool, you gotta check that out and report back soon. All right. I'm gonna put that on my February to do list. I'm gonna try and waste carpool. Yeah, all right, I'll report that. Gonna love it. All right. Let's also talk quickly, uh some about food. Not everyone can make a dramatic cut here, cheaper cuts of meat or maybe eating less

meat overall, our our frugal moves that can help. And you know, eating out less obviously can can have a big impact on the amount of money that we put towards our food. But there are some folks out there who could save a lot of money by shopping at maybe aldi say, instead of shopping at whole foods. That would make a big difference. Yeah, or even just packing

their lunches, eating at home, eating leftovers. The percentage of our budgets that goes towards food and goes towards groceries is about and you know, what we're talking about here might sound a little measily. We're talking about these big cuts that we can make in our lives, right but

here's the thing. We eat every single day, and so when you make a small change that happens three times a day, well that adds up because we eat every single day, and the small changes they compound, so you get to the end of the month and it can be a noticeable difference in your budget. Yeah. I think when we're talking about food, Matt, well, if you took the the hyper frugal approach, you'd be cutting coupons, you'd

be saving fifty cents on a particular item. But when you're making a massive change like you just suggested of a whole food shopper switching to shop at Aldi instead, well, right there, that's one move, that's the big change, and that's one move that saves you a ton of money every month, as opposed to clipping the coupons, taking a lot of time and trying to lower that cost of your food bill on the periphery. With these little nibbles, you're taking this big bite out of your food bill.

It's just by making that switch to all the right. I like the usage of a big bite in this example, Jill, Well, thanks, I thought it fit quite appropriate. Yes, So basically, the super frugal person is pinching pennies and counting dollar bills. Like you said, there might be clipping coupons just to

save fifty cents. Whereas the person that takes this approach, that takes the approach of looking to the larger things, the larger steps where we can have some big impact in our life, they're looking to save hundreds of dollars through these bigger moves. When fruality isn't enough, you have to look to those larger line items in your budget. You can't count on being able to optimize something just

a little bit more. Yeah, I completely agree, Matt. Well, the other side of the coin, when frugality isn't enough, well, it's not just about acting those bigger line items and saving big money in those ways, but it's also we have to look at the income side of the equation.

And we'll talk about that right after the break. Alright, So we're back from the break talking about how frugality, how it won't always cut it, and the reason it won't always cut it is because sometimes, like you said, we need to look to the other side of the equation, and that's to earn more money growing your income. That's gonna be another tool in your money arsenal to help

you save more when frugality isn't enough. If we continue to make cuts to our spending, like, there's gonna be a point at which you can no longer make any cuts, right, Like there's a baseline to living. You can't get blood from a turn up, isn't that what people say? Or from from a rock, Like you can't make a rock bleed? That too? Is that the term turn what I'm saying rocks? I don't know if either of them going on with people trying to make things bleed kind of messed up.

But once you get to that point, like, that's when you have to shift your attention to increasing your income. In the same way that we can't make a massive impact on our money with these small cuts to our expenses, we also can't make dramatic improvements to our income via the smaller and easier ways to quickly increase our income. But you know what, that's okay. I think sometimes people need quicker and easier ways to be able to make more money. And there's there's a time and a place

for the part time job in our lives. Right If you don't know what your scalable business might be well, there are ways to generate income by selling stuff on Facebook marketplace or through apps, renting your car out on Touro, doing tasks on task grab it, or giving folks rides as a lift driver or uber driver. Right, and even something like shopping arbitrage where you can buy stuff on deep discount and you can flip it. Well, that can

be great for quicker money needs. Yes, exactly, Joel. What I mean, what's at the core of this is the fact that it's a stop gap. These are temporary solutions. These aren't long term fixes. You know, on the surface, it might sound a little backwards for us to be saying you need to focus on the big stuff, but it's okay to use you know, lift if you want to, you know, give a few rides and make a buck

here and there. But we understand that not everybody has the ability to instantly start making way more money at their day job, right, And sometimes those side hustles take time to build, and so for a decent period of time we might be making nothing or very little doing a side hustle. But what we're looking at is this long term projection, this in you know, three to four years that's when we're able to start actually making good money. We we've turned it from from side hustle into a

small business that actually generates income. But but for that first year or two you might be making very little and pouring a lot into it exactly so in those instances you would need some of those quick fixes. And this is one way that it doesn't exactly parallel expenses because pretty much everyone listening to this podcast, they can make some cuts right now, literally today, and overnight they would be saving more at the end of the month.

But it is pretty difficult for folks to instantly start making more money in a way that is sustainable and scalable. And so that's why we're saying that. Sure, like we don't want you to focus all of your attention on these near term measures, but they're definitely okay in order

to get you to a certain point. I think the best way to sum it up, doing something part time short in the short term for some people probably makes a lot of sense, but for a lot of other people, focusing more in the long term makes more sense totally. So let's cover some of the large impact areas to focus our attention and creative energies. In particular for most people with regular nine to five jobs. Uh, let's say

maybe your current job isn't paying enough. Well, the best way to make more money at that job is to find a new one. And that's just time and time again. When you look at the numbers, the biggest way to increase your income is to move to another company. Yeah, or maybe you're even in an industry that doesn't utilize your skills, you know, to their fullest potential. Or like maybe you're even with a company where you see the limiting factors of your growth and you know you're not

going to progress. It'sund update that resume and start networking. Or you've done three and reviews in a year and you know your kicking butt, but your boss continues to tow the company line and say that a two percent raise is the maximum that company is willing to offer. And sometimes, if you're in a big bureaucratic business, that's

all they're allowed to do. And that's the time where it probably makes a good bit of sense to update your resume and to start tapping your network connections and seeing what else is out there where you could dramatically increase the amount of money you're making just by switching employers. But maybe you actually like your job right and you want to stay there, but you would just like to

make more money. So this is when you could ask your employer what you could do to make more sounds like such a simple question, like what can I do to make more money here? Um? But then here's the thing is that you actually have to do the thing that they say. But in this case, you want to focus where you already have a job. But maybe you've had that conversation with your boss and you know you're

not getting great feedback. So in this case you could be maybe a little more proactive and you can write a job description for a gap that you can see that you know you can feel. There are different ways where you can get a head at your current employer that don't necessarily involve switching companies. I'm also thinking back to episode one TIN where we interviewed re meet Joel. He had some amazing strategies when it came to negotiating with your current employer as far as you know what

steps to take, how to go about it. If you haven't listened to that episode, we would recommend going back and listening to that. Yeah, and his suggestion isn't necessarily

saying can I please make more money? He really walked people through how to present yourself, how to ask the question, how to follow through in order to ensure that you're not just getting that two percent raise that you're capped at every year, but that you're able to maybe move into a new position or you're able to find ways to get more compensation based specifically on what you're able

to accomplish in your job. And so it doesn't have to be leaving your job, even if you have some of those barriers that seem to have been imposed on you at this point. It could be just kind of taking another approach to management and being more creative in

how you ask to be compensated. Yep. Yeah, he did a really good job just sharing how we can communicate our value to our employers way who I really like man, And so, you know, like a lot of what we're talking about here is a side hustle that sort of round this out with maybe sort of a definition, because there is a difference between a side hustle and part time work. We talked about this in our side Hustles episode.

There are different definitions that folks are using. But we want the goal and what we want to work towards is a job or or work that we can scale into something larger where you can actually own your own business. So for example, like you don't want to walk dogs on the Rover app, instead you want to quit your

own dog walking small business. There are ways that you can do something that you enjoy or something that you know that you're capable of doing, but you're doing it sort of in your own ecosystem and you're running the show versus being our participant being part of this larger system. Yeah. Man, And we just posted an article about kind of great freelance opportunities that are out there by our friend Taylor

on our website. And so for folks that are looking to see, well, what skills are kind of are people looking for and how can I go out there kind of selling those skills? How can I go out there starting my side hustle. I think there are just some eight suggestions in there for specific jobs to pursue and then the avenues to actually get going. So yeah, people should definitely check that out on our website at how to money dot com. But yeah, a side hustle is

different than part time work. You're trying to build something for the long term, and ultimately it can pay huge dividends. It can allow you the freedom to be able to work for yourself, which is really cool. And those artificially imposed limits that a current employer might be setting on the amount that you can make when you work for yourself, those don't exist. And that's what's cool. That's how you can move the needle in this major way by earning

more if you have your own business. This guy's the limit as opposed to those tiny raises that you're probably typically looking at every year. So true, man, that's right, and you know, like we've used this term before, but let's talk about widening the gap. Right When you look at the big picture, it's important to not only focus on increasing just your income and to not only focus on just getting your spending down. We need to take a balanced approach by looking at the margin between earning

and spending. We want to focus on both and look to increase that gap. That gap is so important and widening that gap by addressing the big impact areas that needs to be our top priority. We need to focus on the in both our expenses and the eight percent and our income. Those are the areas that we need to devote our attention and our creativity towards. And once we address those eight percent, then we can focus on and we can hone and optimize and tweak. But we

don't need to do that until that eighty percent is addressed. Yeah, man, there are too many of us that are clipping coupons, that are looking to cut in just these small ways around the periphery of our budget, and we haven't looked at these bigger areas yet. We've kind of left those on the table, and I think it's important to look at these bigger things first. We're not here to disparage frugality, right we we think you should find a frugal sweet

spot instead. Basically, we're here to encourage you to consider being more frugal than you already are. But I'm sure that most of you out there have found the frugality only seems to get you so far. You need more help, another boost in your ability to save. So hopefully you can look at these larger expenses in your life and also kind of these ways to attempt to earn more

so you can achieve your financial goals more quickly. If we're just looking at the small stuff, we're not doing a good enough job and we're not going to be able to to move our finances along as quickly in a positive directions as we probably want to. That's right, man, let's go ahead and take it back now, shift gears and get back to our beer. On this episode, we each had a Hibernation ale, which is an English style old ale. And I'll go ahead and say that the

artwork for this can I love it. Man. It's it's like baby blue and navy and white and it is winter all the way. Like it's got a it's got a picture of a person cross country skiing, Yeah, exactly across this sort of a winter mountain landscape. It speaks of winter and you know, the holidays, like the holidays are behind us, but still it's still cold as I'll get out out there and we're the thick of winter right now. Yeah, it does feel fitting, And yeah, I

love the name. Hibernation just makes me kind of like want to curl up the fire, curl the warm blanket and a beer in a book. Totally, this is one of the best names, especially for this style of beer. This this the flavors that are presented. Man, this one's perfect. Yeah. I think old Ales don't get enough street cred. I feel like I taste all the things I love about

winter in this glass. Kind of the spice notes. Old Ales have like a stout tendency in some of the darker, richer flavor profiles, but without kind of that thick mouth feel. And so it can be like this lighter bodied version of something that you might not enjoy necessarily if you don't like stouts, this is something that you might want to try. There's more spice involved. I feel like there's like a little bit of like dark fruit kind of somewhere hidden in this beer. And and so yeah, I

really really like this one. And it's just, again, like I said, a style that I don't drink enough of. It's one that I really really like and appreciate. And not many people brew a good one, but this is a good one. Yeah, totally. I like what you said about the dark fruits makes me think of kind of some dried dates or like raisins a little bit maybe big, something like that exactly, which totally fits within the flavor profile of this beer. It makes me think of my

my grandma, my dad's mom used to make this. I think we call it. We just called it brown bread. But it's this old school head that you would make using like molasses and you put raisins in it, and you would bake it in a coffee can, like an old school coffee can. Really, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, this is like Depression era baking Golden Rams. He doesn't make stuff like that, although he probably does because it's hit.

But because you bake it in the old coffee can, it puts lines in it because of the from the can, you know what I'm talking about, So it comes out as this sort of giant bullet shape with these lines that kind of graduate up as you go. And Man, my childhood, I remember that was that was one of the things I loved about visiting my grandparents is brown bread. I think everybody else hated it, but I loved it. It was the way you're describing it, I can totally

see how this beer which flavor profile. It's totally got those notes in it. So yeah, I need to try brown bread, and I think it would pare perfectly with this man Well, on the other side of my family, I feel like this beer also has like a touch of soy sauce. So I'm bringing in both sides of my family, ringing in the Midwestern Americans with the Korean. But yeah, it's sort of has this darker flavor to it that you that you do find in soy sauce. I don't know how else to describe it. But if

you pick one of these up, but you'll taste it too. Yeah, you know what, And I would suggest sticking to one because if you drink three, you definitely will fall into a hibernation and you don't want to do that. But yeah, this was hibernation nail by great divide. Big thanks to our friends over there for sending this one our way. It was a real pleasure to drink it on the show with you today, my friend. Most definitely all right,

that's gonna be it for this episode. For everyone out there listening, we'd love it if you would stick with our podcast throughout this year because we've got tons of money saving advice that we want to throw your way in And you can check out our show notes for this specific episode on our website at how to money dot com. Yeah, and if you dig what you're hearing, make sure that you hit subscribe. That way, you don't

miss an episode every time they come out. We release one every Monday, every Wednesday, and while you're over in Apple Podcast if you haven't already, we would love if you were to leave us a review that helps others to find the show who need to learn how to handle their money better. Our buddy. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out, um M