YTread Logo
YTread Logo

Living Frugal with the Frugalwoods | How to save 75% of your take home pay

Jun 08, 2021
choose fi episode 12 epic

frugal

ity with

frugal

forests how to save 75% of

your

take

home

pay without breaking a sweat what you're listening to choose fi radio the plan for financial independence livius if you're looking to discover the secrets of financial independence and early retirement you are in the right place stay tuned join a community of like-minded people who are often taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence choose fi

your

home

for online finance and advocacy welcome to the choose the radio podcast defy today we are in the studio Brad here with me today and yesterday we had our first one, I can't believe it and we have Liz from Probad Wood Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
living frugal with the frugalwoods how to save 75 of your take home pay
I didn't know she was a Prospect, the absolute first guest. We've been looking at this for a while, so we're really excited to have you today. Really quick, let me talk a little bit about what the goal is that we're going to talk about today. Liz specifically about luxurious frugality or epic frugality, depending on how you want to look at it and the idea behind what we're doing is in this world that we live in, you know, we think the way to achieve financial independence is to have four silos. pseudo different, one of them is to use minimalism or frugality to achieve your goals and then have real estate or create passive businesses.
living frugal with the frugalwoods how to save 75 of your take home pay

More Interesting Facts About,

living frugal with the frugalwoods how to save 75 of your take home pay...

One of those, if you have a really good job or a high-paying job, do you really focus on the tax efficiency component? and then lastly, investing, but today we're focusing on minimalism and frugality and honestly, you know some people are just frugal for frugality's sake, but we think that everyone, everyone, everyone, middle class Americans, everyone would benefit from just thinking about minimalism and frugality and figuring out how you can incorporate just a few tricks into your life because once you have the baseline of your cost of

living

under control, it keeps you a lot of flexibility with what you can do and Liz has been creating amazing content about quiet frugal forests and she just launched a frugal goober Mont Challenge that had over 10,000 subscribers signed up, so she's becoming an absolute influencer in this space.
living frugal with the frugalwoods how to save 75 of your take home pay
It has incredible content. It's two years worth of content and today we're going to dive into just a few of those articles you're really going to get some great practical advice that you can use as you pursue financial independence so Liz, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, it's a pleasure, thanks for having me. So we decided to do it. First of all, when we were looking at some of your stuff from 2014, we started with one of your articles and you were talking about how to save up to 65 percent of your

take

-home pay or is that your way of yes and I think it's even higher than that's now like that, that's right, yeah, that's our conclusion and it really peaked at around 82 percent, which and the level of the hobby you know modeled around 70 72 percent, okay?
living frugal with the frugalwoods how to save 75 of your take home pay
We decided to just relax a little bit, we really did and that's actually an element of frugality that is sustainable in the long term. Great, you know, I think the funny thing about that is that when you get the average, you know, middle class Americans come in and talk. to her financial advisor, the financial advisor usually tries to convince them to save four percent, and you know, if you save 10 percent, that's considered difficult to me haha, let's not do anything crazy, so Liz was aware . a real conscious decision to go back to the mid seventies you know I guess that's a question and being what specific things you do you know to change that yeah so my husband and I decided in March of 2014 it was a conversation very specific that we wanted to look for something different in life we ​​had been

living

pretty frugally we lived in Boston we bought a house a couple of years before and we were planning to turn it into a rental house which is now a rental and what we realized is that we wanted to lead a radically different lifestyle and to achieve this we needed to have more money and then we began to implement what we call extreme professional gallery and in our first month we eliminated absolutely everything we could and that was my refusal.
The challenge of the month that you mentioned earlier takes you through, so it's certainly three years to put it together as a challenge, but now it's a challenge. You can do it through me and trace the steps Natan could have taken. To get to that 80% savings rate, I think that's really cool and one of the things I thought about when you said you know one of the things I was hoping for is for you to tell me that you live in this. little do you know or at least that's what you knew that you lived in this city or super cheap place where it's time for you to live in shopping but in math, so all the excuses that probably immediately come to someone's mind, you know, oh, I love it a really expensive city.
Can't? I can not do this. I live in Boston. Yes, the two main excuses I hear are: "I live in need", "I have children", and to that I say: "Well, I don't live in one anymore." expensive city, but I have lived in New York City, Washington DC and Boston, and I have a son and it is entirely possible to accept the reality, no matter where you live now, your degree of savings will be different and will depend largely on how much you are earning and what your long-term goals are, but it's completely possible to be frugal at any point on the spectrum and it's one of the most interesting things I think I've read that she wrote: not only is it possible to be frugal in the city, but you could argue that it's actually easier on some levels, because there are a lot of things that happen, you know, on any given day in a city rather than in a random rural area, although now I live in a random strange place I mean, alive. we live in FEMA it doesn't work and there are so many things happening here that we have to consciously stay home to be able to do household chores because there are so many things happening that I say there are people who are committed. in your community anywhere and you can find free entertainment and free things to do anywhere.
I am absolutely convinced that New York City or rural Vermont, where I am now nice, it was not my intention to put rural America under the Berryman, we sign up America, we vote. you know there's a lot of that, I heard it, okay, so why don't we talk a little bit about what's the difference between someone who has a negative 2% savings rate and what's the difference between someone who has a 75% savings? savings rate, I mean, how are you creating so much space between your actual cost of living and what your expenses are? of life and I know it sounds a little vague, but stay with me for a minute when you've decided where you want to be in 10 years, in 20 years and in 30 years, it suddenly becomes very easy to align your finances and realize how How much will you need to save to facilitate that lifestyle?
I think most of us probably don't sit down at 22 and think, "Oh, you know, what I really want to do is work hard at a series of jobs that I only care a little about until I'm 65 and then I retire." We don't consciously sit down and plan our lives that way, so when I encourage people to do that, before you even look at your spending, think about what you want, where do you want? Do you want to have kids? Do you want to travel? Where do you want to live? Plan that ideal situation and then start looking at your finances.
I love that essentially what you're saying is designing your life and I think that's it. That's essential, I think what you're essentially gaining when you do that is a choice of value, essentially you're deciding, you know, I can have it all now, I can have the golf club membership now, I can, you know, spend all this money, now I have the good two good cars with the car payments now or I can sacrifice the next five or ten years and I will buy freedom for the next 10 or 20 years, so it is a valuable choice and you know the caveat that I would have to do with what you What I said is that it is not necessarily a sacrifice, it is more a reorientation of how you're spending and it's an emphasis on delayed gratification so I didn't set out to say you know I want to be super miserable and never spend money.
No, you know, I started out saying I want to move to a big farm in rural Vermont and I want to rent my house in the city and I want to quit my day job and have kids and you know and have all these other things and So for me it was not a question of sacrifice, you know, when frugality is achieving your goals, it is not at all about what you are giving up, but entirely about what you are gay and what I would also say is that there are different stages of frugality, you know, the first month that my husband did this it was a little bit painful because we would go out to eat or go out for coffee, we would go out for drinks, we know all the fun things to do in a city and I thought.
This is not easy, but what we realized over the next few months is that as Ferg ality becomes a chosen lifestyle, it becomes joyful and that sounds absurd, I know, but when you have unlocked the magic of be content and happy that you are creating simple things in life, you are preparing yourself for success again and again, because when you can be happy with the same enthusiasm that you expect on a normal Tuesday, you are a much happier person than if you were just waiting looking forward to that Friday night treat I'm going out so it's really a total restructuring of where you find joy in life and what creates a meaningful life for you and I think for most of us, if you ask us, you know what it's the most important thing in your life we're probably not going to say material possessions we're not going to say our car or our shoes we're going to say oh, it's my family it's when we spend time together and then what do you know?
What you need to do is put those things at the forefront, put time together with your family at the forefront and let everything else fade away, that's amazing and I think you know you're obviously speaking to a friendly audience here, at least with Brad and Myself on that Brad relates 100% and I'm in that place where I'm NOT naturally frugal. I am a spender. I am only if you have two people in the family. I am the spender. My wife is the most frugal by nature, but. because I have used this term before I am averse to the list, I understand the calculations and I understand the power of it, what originally seemed like a sacrifice to me by not having that golf membership, how quickly it becomes normal and no longer It feels like a sacrifice and the freedom I get from not making some of those big purchasing decisions I would have made in the past is incredible.
I would never change it and so I understand exactly how I can see how you take one step and then you take another step and then you take another step and you look back and wonder how you could have made all those really stupid decisions in the past because you are extraordinarily happy with the place where you are at that moment. moment absolutely and I also encourage people that you know, don't beat yourself up, you did what you did in the past, just move on, you know there's no courage to be worried about. I know people who in some ways add up and some in total. oh, I could have saved all this money here.
I'm like, well, yeah, but it doesn't matter, so just go ahead, you know, and just act out that feeling, and so, when my husband and I start on this very specific day, you know. in March 2014 we never looked back, we never said well let's wait until next week because you know this weekend we have plans, we can't really change our plans for that night and you know we just started right away so start now, do not look. Come back and get on the path to strategically and decisively pursue your dreams. You know, I hear some people say, "Well, I quit my job." This is great.
I wonder what your plan is. You already know what your plan is next. I'm not someone who throws caution to the wind, but I am someone who takes that decisive strategic action and is very deliberate in the decisions you make with your spending and also with your career. Liz. I am very interested. March 2014, you know, essentially. You're describing it as ripping off a band-aid, you're changing your life wholesale, you talked to us about it that month, you know, I never asked you this before we met in person, but I'm endlessly curious. Like what happened in that first, you know, one to three months, so the first thing I have to share is that my husband and I have always been pretty frugal.
You know, we were able to buy a house in Cambridge, which is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country when we were 27 years old, that gives an indication that we had been saving furiously for that down payment since we were 23 years old, so we always We had been frugal, but not at the level we needed to be able to get financially because we have both always worked for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations, so our salaries are good, very good, but you know, not at the level of a investment banker or something, so in that first month we really started looking.
Our expenses in a comprehensive way and as strange as it may seem, we had never sat down and looked at how much we spent each month,which now seems ridiculous to me that we never thought about doing that, but a lot of people thought not to. When you spend money, it's fun, it goes in, it goes out, you know, so what I encourage people to do after you've made it. Goal setting decision and have that appropriate little conversation with your partner if you have a partner, treasurer, expenses know it in a very real way, not just like oh, I think I spend X because if you estimate you will always underestimate, I still underestimate every month.
I posted my expenses on the boss and he always surprises me and I'm like, oh how can that be? What I have is like um, you know you spent this money, how do you plan this? It's pretty dumb, yeah, he's like, um, it's right here. like that's impossible, I couldn't let you know and that's how I think we have a tendency to underestimate ourselves, we always think we spend less where we think we're taller, so you know, I give myself that extra half inch every time. We also stripped away these assumptions and just used a spending tracker, so use personal capital, that's what I like, or use mint, use a spreadsheet, I don't really care what you use and see exactly how much is spending and then after that it makes you categorize our expenses, so what is fixed and mandatory and then what is discretionary and what I call fixed mandatory are things that can't be easily changed, so things like your mortgage or your rent, if you have student loan payments, those are things that can.
It can't be changed easily, everything else, groceries, that's discretionary, so anything where you have flexibility on the dollar amount of groceries included, that's where the word fades out, so we start with those discretionary spending and we look at them one by one and figure out what we can totally do. eliminate, in other words, what do you not need for your survival? We didn't need restaurants, we didn't need bars, we didn't need coffee shops for our survival, so everyone left immediately, this is a good time to evaluate all your subscriptions, so anything. that comes to you repeatedly for what you're paying for like a gym membership or a wine of the month club today yeah, nothing, I'm sure they do.
I know that sounds pretty good to me, but you have to get rid of it. anything that you can easily remove, just take it away, you don't even think about it, just take it away and then we did a very intense job with our groceries and with other necessary financing, like transportation. I realized that you know that In fact, we recently did one that we called, quote, the best Costco meal plan and we tried to get a couple to eat for, you know, about $300 a month and I realized when I was researching your site you had something. similar and it seems like we've come to the same place from different geographic locations and personal situations but I'd be interested to hear a little bit about how you approach shopping for sure so that was a big one for us we love food and my husband loves to cook thank you God, if I was terrible at that, it's really bad, so she's our chef and he's great;
He loves good ingredients, so we were buying all kinds of nice fancies, salmon and arugula. and cool stuff, but I was also buying a lot of packaged stuff because Trader Joe's was honestly tasty packaged stuff, better if you imagine getting it right because I can't go in there anymore because I'm like, oh yeah, I made these pumpkins covered my face, my wife, everything it's unsweetened dried mango, it's like the only place you can get it, it's actually very crazy reasonably priced, which is the common theme of Trader Joe's, wow this is surprisingly affordable, the cheese section I mean.
I'm out like 50 bucks in the cheese aisle alone. I can't, this is before we even get to the wine, so I already had this, so part of this is where you're buying. I'm having a hard time because I thought I was being frugal because I wasn't going to have Whole Foods to blame, so I saw the discount grocery store, which didn't tempt me. It is a regional Market Basket chain. If you're in the Northeast, you should shop there, but there are other discount chains throughout the country. country and throughout the world, all these are one. I think it is little in Great Britain.
I've heard from readers, but you know, there are chains that are known for offering discounted foods, so go there or Costco is good too and then focus on bulk raw products. ingredients, so anything that comes in a package, anything that is pre-made and pre-cut, is going to be more expensive, so we make our own bread, we make our own hummus, we make our own pasta sauce, all of this is made from scratch and cooked from scratch. It has a number of benefits, it tastes better, first of all, it really does, it's bad for you because you control the ingredients and don't add the immense amounts of sugar found in packaged foods and it's much cheaper per serving and You also have the advantage of never running out of food, which is nice when you live where I live and it can snow and not be able to leave your property.
Forget that's not relevant for a lot of people, that's for us, so having a pantry with bulk raw ingredients, flour, onions, olive oil, things like that, you can create a meal at any time from the foods you have. handy, you have ten bullet points written about how we save 65 for now, I guess 75% and annually maybe we could just go over some of those. Did you have that? Oh gosh, you know, I just posted it there because that was several years ago and a lot has happened since then, so there's a good chance I've forgotten what I wrote, so how can I be okay with what we see if you agree? agree with what our lives should agree with you?
I agree with Liz, okay, uh, number one, we don't have any debt other than our mortgage, it's true what I would do. I mean about that, you know you have a couple of comments on that so that's bad, but not all debt is bad and I think it's important to be aware of that when you're trying to grow your wealth if you have a nice low mortgage. . interest rate I think the mortgage on that house at the time was like three point seven percent and, you know, if you have a nice low interest rate, having a mortgage is totally fine and you guys can feel free to not be agree with me because you already know.
There are a lot of different opinions on this, but my view is that you will see a better return on your money if you invest it, if you put all your money in your house, it's a relatively illiquid asset and you're basically putting all your eggs in one. single basket and while you might be mortgage free if you have no other assets, it really limits the growth potential of your money if you have tons and tons and billions and billions of dollars you probably don't do this, you're hearing that, you know, then pay it off, pay off your mortgage, that's fine, but if you're looking to use it and leverage it, you know you have a limited amount of cash, which I think most people fall into that category.
Think carefully before putting all your money into a mortgage with a low interest rate. I think that's fantastic advice. Oh, you guys are not going to agree with me. Darkness, it's done, you're ready. Yes, you know most of us. Going through that thought process and relying especially on low mortgage rates and it's hard because, you know, for people like me, we can't really afford to pay both of our mortgages properly, so every once in a while I get like, oh maybe . We just do that and it feels so good. I definitely struggle with that, other than paying our mortgage, you know, it's a similar boat for me, it's very satisfying psychologically, but like you just said, the math just doesn't work out.
Don't you know I always go back to saying, oh man, I'd love to pay that, but you know, it's the sheer amount of just investing that money and presumably getting a higher return, you know, compounded over many years and also the opportunity costs? I mean, if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your house, you know, quote, the capital is there, you know, and I think people say, oh, it's not costing me anything to live here, but hey, you have three hundred One thousand dollars. it's tied to being investable and that's often the opportunity cost point that's often left out, yes absolutely and if you know that and I think it's a good hedge against inflation as well, it's just a good look. from a diversified portfolio, I think as long as you have a low interest rate, you know if you bought in the last few years, I don't know how old you should be, and a fixed interest rate, I think that's a very good point as well.
Yes, number two, we spend a lot here. little about entertainment, that's very true. You know, we really spend about zero dollars on entertainment because I find time and time again that there's so much free entertainment that it's ridiculous, you know, at the most basic level we have a Roku and so on. We can watch television for free. We don't watch much TV either, but we have free TV when we need it. We listen to the radio broadcast through the web. It's free. We listen to Pandora to listen to music. It's also free, you know, the rest of the traditional entertainment sector.
I also find the Internet to be an endless source of entertainment. You know, anything you want to research or read is there for free, so we have the Internet, so it's an expense that I. I guess you could think of it as an entertainment expense and then in terms of traditional ways of going out and going out for entertainment, we didn't eat out, for a while, we didn't eat out at all, we never went to restaurants now, I would say probably eat out. once a month, it was something we added back in because it's fun, we enjoy it, so you know, once a month feels good and it's a pretty negligible impact on the overall budget, um, we don't put on movies, no I don't think We haven't been to a movie theater in about 10 years.
I have no desire to go to an a cappella movie theater, not fit on my own couch, and I like to eat my own food, drink my own wine, hug my dog, you know? Just for me, the value proposition of a big screen isn't very attractive, we don't pay for concerts or shows or anything like that, we find a lot of free entertainment to participate in and we've also created a lot of really frugal habits and hobbies. So we love to walk, one of the reasons we moved here to the woods because we walk every day and we can walk right outside our door, we snowshoe, we can really enjoy the outdoors to the fullest which is fantastic free entertainment and we get together a lot with friends and we have potlucks and we hang out and the kids play and it's free and it's wonderful and then, you know, having a kid, there's tons of free kids' activities even here in the middle . out of nowhere, so we go to free library playgroups, we go to song classes, class 1 classes, we pick one and a half.
I know how to sing for free and free them and then I organize a lot of playgroups in our house so you really know that I really don't feel the need to seek her out for expensive classes at this stage so the interesting thing is that you know you said you spent very little entertainment, but that's not the same, it's not having any entertainment, in fact, it almost sounds like you have. It's the challenge of discovering countless ways to create or have entertainment for free and what I loved is that you know, bring your social group and bring your neighbors and include them in these frugal, free, healthy activities that we all do together I think which is very, very cool, you know, what I find is that when you start inviting friends over to your house instead of going to a restaurant, they get excited, not that this is great, we don't have to get a babysitter. you don't have to make a reservation, you don't know, it becomes a lot easier and I think you can build deeper relationships with people when you have them in your house and you really share your lives together, that's great.
Ok, so number three, we had our breakfast, lunch, coffee and mineral water and I think if I remember from your blog, there's your latest current life hack, that's fair, it's a pretty good life house, actually asked Landsman before the shows, "What's our best?" life has you comp How is it obviously okay? So this is a great example of luxurious fur gala. We love mineral water and so my husband figured out a way to hack our service train system so that we have mineral water, you know, extremely, extremely cheap and yes, we. So when we were both working in an office, neither of us were in the office anymore, but we brought all of our food to work every day.
It was such an easy habit that you like knowing that you buy coffee or work and then, mid-morning, you're there. like, oh, I need a bagel and then you buy lunch and then in the afternoon you're like, oh, let's have more coffee. I think I spend like twenty and thirty dollars a day on food and when I challenge people to think it's like, you? I really want to pay forwork every day, yes, how boring, how long, so just take your own food, people you know, and when I was pregnant and starving all the time, I went to work with light.
I mean, it was like a duffel bag of food and people were staring. I'm surprised I ate it all. I was excited because it was good so it's been really possible at any stage and my husband cycled to work every day and took all his food with him. him, so I heard both excuses: I'm pregnant or I'm on a bike, you can bring your own food, you use Costco and amazon.com for household items, yes, and I'm so bad that we don't have a sack here, we have BJ's, which is a corollary from Costco and it works almost as well but if you have the choice go for Costco they really have the best deals and Amazon and then we also have a couple other stores that I use.
So the tea there is just to compare prices and figure out where the cheapest options are, so I do the price comparison because it's a little arduous, you have to look at the price per ounce of the shampoo and all that. once you find out where it's cheapest and then go on autopilot and buy it there every time after that ok we don't have a car payment that's right yeah we've never had a car payment so in the At the time I wrote that post, I had a 19 year old minivan with something like that and 240,000 miles or so that runs fine.
Now we have 2 2010 cars, we have a Subaru Outback and a Prius, which we bought for cash and you know, by chance, we had them and we bought them. a month apart, two months after we bought our new house here in Vermont, so having cash on hand is a wonderful benefit of frugality because you never know exactly when your 20-year-old minivan is going to die and you're going to need it. several new cars and let's relate that. You know one of the reasons potentially beyond the flexibility to do it is because you're not spending every dollar you brought in on other stupid things that you made a valuable decision to lower the cost of your food lower the cost of your entertainment and all these other little tricks that you implement to lower the cost of your mineral water and because you're not spending money and all that stuff, now you have this cash on hand that when you need to buy a new house, buy new cars, you can just go out and pay that cash, you don't have to sign up for the inevitable car payment and that's exactly powerful and you know what I would say to that too is like Needing a car is not an emergency, you know, unless you live in a very urban and you can get by on public transportation, which by the way is what my husband and I did for many years, so we worked on our lists for maybe the first six. years of our marriage because we lived in the midst of this ease, it would have been expensive and difficult to have a car, so you know that was another conscious choice on our part, but finding a car, you know, it's not an emergency and I don't need a car either. new and people say you know I need security and I need all-wheel drive because I live in the country.
I need those things too, but I can get them on a 2010 model just as well as a 2010 model. a 2017 model, so I really encourage people to look at used cars. You know, when you see the price difference between a new car and a used car that's even just a couple years old, it's incredible. You know that cars depreciate a lot the moment they wear out. This is actually something that I really hope people recognize is that a new car. I don't think you all disagree with me. I think it is one of the worst financial decisions.
Don't immobilize your financial future and it is something that is happening. value, it's like driving down the highway throwing $100 bills out the window, there's just no need for that, yeah I completely agree with you Liz again, yeah I mean we went up shopping I guess when my oldest daughter was on the way, we bought a Toyota Highlander. I guess we decided in our infinite wisdom that we needed an SUV, but instead of paying $30,000 for a new one, we walked to Carmack's right down the street and God, I think it had 27,000 miles on it, so they sent it essentially new anyway, TRUE? with 15,000 so literally half the price another sucker will pay the depreciation and we've had it for ten years and it's still ready to go.
I mean, we'll have it as you know, it will literally be Anna's. In all likelihood, the first car we definitely got for his birth and you know, we'll give it to him one day and Brad and I are planning on having another podcast for the future talking about the real cost of owning a car, but still a license plate bullet right now, you know, I think, and maybe you accept that sweet spot if you want to buy a new car that's used, it's probably about five years old. I think that's when the depreciation starts to go down mm hmm hmm all true, um, almost number nine, and I've skipped a few because we kind of cover a process, but almost everything we buy is used, that's one hundred percent right, the used market, I mean, follows exactly what we were saying about used cars. it depreciates immediately it will no longer sell new they are much less expensive and luckily for us in the internet age we can use craigslist we can use the email listserv if you are a parent join your local parent group because people give away their stuff for babies Like you wouldn't believe my daughter's daycare, so every piece of her furniture and all of her clothes were free.
I only took used things. I found gifts. I found some things on the side of the road that I want because baby things are everything. infinitely washable so I found this to be a great swing. I was nine months pregnant. I was going to put something in my car. My 20 year old minivan was totally dented. There's someone listening right now who just said he took something off the side. from there I'm not hearing anything this is enough this is too much it's too much ok she's a frugal weirdo after all I'm me and that but the thing is if you walk into my house you'll never know and you can browse the photos in the blog because I clean everything I look at it sometimes I repaint it there is a lot of joy in this so besides being cheap or free it is a lot of fun because you never know what you are going to find like me I got a free coffee table and I love it.
My unit is my daughter's play table and how much more fun it is to talk about it as a story when someone says, "Oh, that's beautiful, where did you get so good?" she asked, let me tell you all about this, oh yes my friends are like me, yes we know you found out all the time that there is no fun anymore since I can't even enjoy it. No, yeah, so I lost my you know, my final conversation. for starters, now they're doing it, uh, they're telling you where they are, but you know, I think when we buy something and when we pay full price for it, we have very high expectations about it, right?
It has to be perfect to be perfect. collapsed, it has to look absolutely right and when it starts to fall short because inevitably, you know, we get frustrated with it, we're like my butt on this couch is abstaining from wine, you know, whereas with my couch, which has endured many baby and dog situations I don't care because it was cheap for me to begin with if it falls apart it's just no big deal people Helen can sit on the couch no she doesn't seem like she's allowed to but she does. fear of furniture rating furniture I see guys jumping on it, but you know, it's just this idea that we're a lot happier with the things we don't pay for and we're also a lot happier with the things we build. or create ourselves and it's actually not just me saying this, there was a study done called the IKEA effect that looks at the happiness we get from making things ourselves when people put together their IKEA furniture, even if they don't go out. correctly and it's a little wobbly, they are much happier with the result than if they bought pre-made furniture number 10 without impulse purchases, yes, so before you buy something I encourage you to wait 72 hours, so write it down on a list when you do for the first time.
Sit down and then force yourself to wait those 72 hours before you buy it, and as you do, you will invariably discover that you don't buy it because many times the things that we think we need in the moment, that need dissipates over time. We know that we experience this kind of dopamine rush when we feel like we should have something and then if we take it as a character and buy it, we continue to feel that kind of rush of consumption, but then we need another hit of dopamine a couple of days later, for example. what to buy something else and so we get into this kind of consumer carousel in which little by little we increase our expectations and by waiting 72 hours you are interrupting this cycle, you are leaving some space between making the decision that you want it and then buy. it's a it's a time out you're really giving yourself a chance to breathe and reflect and what I find I do it that's how I deal with it in my own life I write it down in a Google doc I really and truly do it I'm actually looking at it right now.
I had this list. It was all there right now. I really want to buy my daughter a toy kitchen so she can stand up and play. How many hours have you been on that list? many hours a week this is what I know: I will get a free one or a cheap one. I can't tell you how many times this happens to me. If you wait and bide your time, you will find a kind of analogue of approval. for almost anything you're looking for, so after it stays there for 72 hours or while it's there, you'll know during that period of time what questions you're asking yourself to try to determine whether you should keep it that way or not. ready or not, so the first thing is to figure out if you have something that will work as a substitute, so I wanted a play table for my daughter and I discovered that she had this side table that is very low to the ground and it was just a decorative side table that she could use since I was perfect.
I already have it and this is after having researched these tables online, you would think I would have noticed this side table, but we don't always realize the things we have. can it be reused in a different way, then the other thing is if it's something short term, something for a short period of time, like a specific tool for a job, if you can borrow it from someone and if you still feel like you need it, investigate whether you can find it used or not, I just want to chime in here and say that I have really been positively impacted by this because I read about the 72 hour waiting period on your part and I think you mentioned it during the overly frugal period. month too and, you know, very specifically, I got an email where I'm like on Tim Cyrus' email list and he sent me about this card game that, you know, he really liked and I thought it would be awesome for my family. play so you know I got on Amazon, you know, nine dollars, so you know, a minuscule amount of money, but I actually had fun, what would you like?
I'm haha, I literally said I could see those bumpers taking over the world, so you know, I went in, you know, to talk to my wife and learn and I said, you know, we just got, it was right after Christmas, essentially, so we just got to get, you know, some new games, I guess a handful of games to play with our kids and we're. Do we really need this other game even though we've heard it's fantastic? I have excellent reviews. It's nine dollars, it's a big deal, but we said no, you know we're going to put it aside, we're going to put it on a wish list and you know it's. probably once a month and I haven't bought it and I didn't need it and you know maybe one day we will buy it, but you know it's going to be a conscious decision rather than that impulse purchase that you talked so much about. thanks for all that, and I think I'm also glad you brought up a great point: he told me nine dollars, so I think our assumption and my assumptions certainly used to be that it's nine dollars, just buy it. which is the problem, but the problem is that when we adapt that mentality, that happens over and over again, you know, and over the course of a week or a month you're spending hundreds of dollars, so it's fun to do it on top of that. until you put it on your lips, wait so many hours, start writing down the amounts and then add up everything you didn't buy during the hurdle, there's a month or a year or even a day and then if you want to get really fancy there's a calculator compound interest online that you can do and you can put that amount into dollars and see how much you would get if you instead invested that amount every year in the stock market and it's usually a surprisingly huge number.
I love that number 12 we make. all our grooming at home yes that's very true so I cut my husband's hair he kept my hair we wash our dog ourselves we do anything you would otherwise pay someone to do to do it, but we only do it at home and this is a level of both. in sourcing, which is a key element of frugality, but also accepting imperfection, lifeIt's not perfect, things will never be perfect, so my opinion is that it would be better not to spend money on it and accept the imperfection instead of spending a lot of money. and getting angry about the imperfection is worth it percent there my wife cuts my hair currently I'm terrified to touch her hair but it's out of tutorial I have a tutorial on the blog I also got verified and my husband was more terrified but it worked and was completely fine and you suddenly realize that this is no big deal and besides I don't care much about my hair, well what I love about my wife cutting mine now, the first time she did it, she did it kindly . scalp a little bit on the side that happened, but once you get there, once that gets out of the way, now I have this person who every month is getting a little bit closer to what my goal was and if you're paying to have it done, you inevitably go to someone who has never cut your hair before and you are trying to start from scratch, and what I found after three, four, five, six, eight or ten haircuts.
I just love my haircut. I never liked it more when I came out, so it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Oh, I'm sacrificing quality. My wife does an amazing job and she started by scalping me, but you. I know here we are a year later and it was the best decision and now it's 20 30 40 dollars a month that year. You know you don't have to worry anymore. It also saves you time.fan of this root when you get things you save time you don't have to call and make an appointment you drive to the salon or buy a blonde you wait there they cut your hair you pay your 20 dollars you don't have to do I mean, it takes me like 13 minutes to cut my husband's hair, we time it and it takes him even less to cut mine, so it's a long time, Susan.
I tend to think that time is a more valuable resource than even money. Yes, totally. Alright with that, listen, you know that gets to the hustle that people are always talking about. Right people wear this as a badge of honor. Oh, I'm so busy. You know people are running like crazy. They can not? You know we see. with our daughters at school, I mean, half the parents in the class literally don't respond to the simple instructions that come from the computer every day, you know that, but I mean what's going on in their brains and I just Question like how people go through a normal day.
You know, being so exhausted seems like such a crazy existence to me and you know a lot of that comes down to not setting priorities for myself. And yes, I mean this. being constantly busy is so detrimental, you know, psychologically it is, and I and I tend to think that frugality, you know, how far I've come with my frugality, the reality of life is a lot less about money these days. days and I have that part. below is much more about how can I simplify my life, how can I eliminate unnecessary busyness, unnecessary tasks and just focus on what I want to do in a day, you know, and do it to the fullest, and that's something that the tea of Skin Gala will do what it allows you to do is really simplify and streamline and let go of a lot of these unnecessary pressures.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more and you touch on that earlier when you talk about happiness and just being in that store with your life and You know, I think unfortunately a lot of people either just make a list of the day to day, you know, without knowing what the makes you happy or not even contemplating it, I guess, but that and you know, it sounds like you and mr. frugal woods has been very intentional in your life, you certainly know that since March 2014 and I can imagine creating that, but you know, I guess if you don't mind, I'd love to turn around for a second and talk about the house.
We're ready to talk about Vermont for a second and, I guess first in March of 2014, since it seems like you know that the pivotal moment that they made was the ownership decision, so yeah, what we realize is that during the last number of For years we went out of the city every weekend to hike and drove incredible distances to get to mountains where we could hike and have a wonderful time. You know our best experiences or in the mountains just spending time together hiking. nature doesn't buy anything, it doesn't consume any media and then we come home and go back to work on my behalf, we're like, oh, that's not how we want our time structure to work out, so we start thinking about: What's wrong?
If we have how? a weekend place, you know, a weekend cabin that we could go to and that progressed to being okay, what if maybe we tried to back out when we got there early like when we were younger, maybe when we had 50 years or something and then we move to the mountains? and this evolved into this conversation of why don't we do it now, you know what's really stopping us from doing it, okay and the answer is money and so how do we get to the position where we can live life What do we want for the future?
Next, you know, 40 50 years or the coast, waiting until we're 50 or 60 years old to continue this and how long do you think the timeline would be at that point. You know, March 2014, so we plotted it out as probably September 2017. and what happened is we found our dream property in November 2015, which coincidentally is also the month our daughter was born, so which, thank you, we had been looking at places for about three years at that point, because we had started looking before our extreme frugality kind of conversation and then we knew this was the property for us, there are a lot of factors that go into the body of rural property, you know, it's not just the house, it's the land, it's the quality of the forest, it's the septic tank, it's the well. where you are in the state what your road is like what your driveways are like you know there are an infinite amount of factors compared to buying an urban and suburban home so all of those factors aligned on this property and we thought that We have to do this, we have Nino's distance from that one, so again, thanks for forgetting.
You know it wasn't a hardship for us to rush the timeline and make the decision to buy it then and move in full time in May. It's coming up on a year right now, right? I guess it's an Octoman tournament and now the way you describe the search for the house says that actually, if I remember correctly, that's similar to what you did with your house and Cambridge, right? I guess you know how to search for years and go to open house after open house, it sounds like an information asymmetry, like you have more information than the market at that moment, just because yeah, sorry, I'll let you go, no , that's absolutely it. and that's really the position that ideally you know you want to be in and when you're doing anything, buying a house, buying a car with the Internet, you can educate yourself and know absolutely what a good deal is and when you found it and what. we bought our house in Cambridge, it was a single family home and we bought it for the lowest price per square foot that season and it wasn't a tear down at all, it was completely move in ready, why it looked terrible, but You know, we were able to look more beyond those things and recognize the value based on the square footage, the price per square foot, so you really know the market for whatever you're getting into and you know what you're trying to achieve.
So with our Cambridge channel we were trying to achieve something that we could one day rent and with our house here in Vermont we were trying to achieve a long-term family home that we would live in for many years, so having those goals in mind they made it quite easy for us to attack when we saw these places, you know, so in Cambridge Town we made an offer. I think the day after we saw it or the day itself, I mean, it was immediate and then with this weather. In Vermont, we also submitted an offer shortly after seeing it because we knew it, and so I think years and years of research does two things: it gives you all the information you need to strategically and decisively pursue what you want, but it also gives you something what to do, occupy your brain and occupy your time while you work towards the goal, you know it's very difficult, I think having these long term goals that are years, if not decades, away, but when you do the research to achieve that goal , I'm actively thinking about it every day and I love that while we were living in the city, I loved looking at properties and reading about them, learning about septic systems because I felt like I was being active, hmmm, that's powerful, I definitely found that.
This is the case for me when I'm not really ready to execute something, whether from a monetary perspective or otherwise, you can spend that time learning about it, learn more and learning is free, or at least it can be, and when you spend it. "Your time does something that's free, you don't have time just to spend money and then you're essentially reaching your goal faster, so I've definitely learned to realize that's true in my own life in a lot of ways, the threat and you". You're reminding yourself every day what you want long term, okay, so I'm going to pivot here.
I mean, God, you know, and this is a little ironic, but you know you don't spend anything. money, you may have to be very bored. I know it's just that our culture has really designed this paradigm that to be entertained and happy you need to spend a lot of money and you know, take your kids to Disneyland and do all these things. and there's room for that in our lives, you know, my husband and I travel, we do more conventional entertainment things from time to time, but we're really fighting this concept that you need to spend money to be happy. um, it sounds very obvious and kind of flat when I say it like that, of course you don't need to spend money to be happy, but think about it, think very carefully about where your money goes and what you're spending it on. freight service, one of the best tactics here is frugal substitution, so for anything you like to do that's really expensive, see if you can find a frugal alternative.
I've been amazed at how many things we can now do for Freight. I used to spend money so I used to pay for yoga classes every week and it was like eight 18 bucks a class and I was thinking three or four classes a week, oh this is good, it's yoga. I'm very healthy, but we listed our budget, my husband was like three thousand dollars a year, yeah, and yoga, he's like, I mean, I'm glad you're doing yoga, but honestly, I went to my studio and I thought it might help. as a volunteer at the reception. and take out the trash and mop the floor and take three classes, so I was very happy to do that and there was a big added benefit there.
I made a lot of friends doing that because I suddenly got really involved in a community of yoga studios, so that was one of my first lessons, you know, don't assume that you have to pay or pay full price for everything. One of the things you do, you do a great job of mixing very, very deep articles with short articles that you know little about. and what I loved about this, are you bored, what we're talking about is just some of these points that you made, you know we don't worry about keeping up or competing for material goods, we just don't, my husband. and I never fight about money we just don't have fights because we're on the same page and we don't worry about it we don't worry we know we have enough because we live way below our means I mean that's powerful for some people who don't See, you know, they don't have that worldview and then underneath that, you're basically saying you know, I'm not jealous of people who spend everything they earn you.
I know it seems like you are struggling to find meaning through money and then for you, you know that money sustains your basic needs, food, shelter, clothing, but it is not a goal in itself, you are not accumulating money just to have money. You are doing it to free yourself from the vicious cycle of lifestyle inflation. I think that's really powerful, it's a completely different way of looking at money and you know, and now I'm talking to the audience here. When you look at this, think about the things we talked about, nothing we said is particularly crazy or outlandish, and while you may not do everything we talk about in this podcast, it will be helpful for you in the long run to see if you can adapt just some of these. things in your own life because once you start going down this rabbit hole, it starts to make sense and it empowers you, it opens up all these options that you may not have considered, so thank you so much Liz for sharing your time with us and moving forward. . some of these thoughts with us today oh, my pleasure, thanks for having me and finally what we're going to do.
I'm so excited for you, you'll be our first guest on the bench, oh dear, okay, pressures, yes. Wait for it and enter a world invaded by a greedy corporation and excessive government. Five questions highlight the secret of those people inthe train. Welcome to the seat of choice. Alright. Liz question number one. Favorite blog that is not yours. Oh oh, it's so. It's hard to choose this one. I really have to do just one makeup for you. Alright. I love fifteen hundred days to freedom and I also have a lot of calendars so they cover frugality and Katie covers minimalism.
It is beautifully done and written so well. our 1500 yes, yes, we will interview him later, well, there you go, Kate Flanders. I'm actually not familiar with her blog. Can you give us? Yes, I know you're giving us a two-line overview, but can you give us a little more security? Kate sure paid off a lot of debt and in the process really restructured her life and embraced minimalism and found ways to achieve a kind of lasting happiness and peace by not spending money or owning things, and her writing is just amazing and so articulate. and so thoughtful, it's so inspiring for me to read what she writes, it's all so wonderful and obviously high praise coming from you, who in my opinion is the best true writer out there in the personal finance sphere, so yeah, that's a no. see a fantastic oh hands down number two favorite article of all time so that would probably be my joy when at least it's enough post and what it talks about is that the rarity of something that occurs enhances your enjoyment the idea behind That is, the less you do something that is very indulgent, say having a really delicious meal at a restaurant, the more you will enjoy each experience.
If you ate that delicious meal every night of the week, your enjoyment would diminish, you would start to find fault with it. . If you get picky, you'd get picky, but when you do it once a month or once a year, it's an amazing, powerful experience. Yes, if you eat lobster every day, it starts to taste like soap, which it probably does. Number three, I think we've already covered that. this before and maybe you still agree that your favorite life hack is definitely the SodaStream hack and we have a blog post where my husband describes all his engineering, so do you have to be an engineer to do this or can your average guy just do this?
I'm here every day, a girl or a guy could do it. The instructions are pretty clear here, so it's okay, anyone can come up with a pretty good number for your biggest financial mistake. I think this was not recognizing our long-term goals at the beginning of our marriage. We saved decently, but we could have saved more and we just could. We have been more deliberate and focused. This was how many years they were married before the moment in March 2014 when they had that argument. Yes, we were married for six years at that point and that took a long time. getting to what we wanted to do with our lives we got married when we were 24 in 2008 and then this was 2014 so I think you know I'm grateful that we got married so young because if you had gotten married later we would be making that decision a lot later in life, but you know, I think at 24 we were too focused on what was in front of us and not thinking more broadly about the long term, so I wish we would have sat down at 24 and said "okay." .
Where do you want to be in 20 years? Yes, I wonder how different your life would be today if you had that discussion in 2008. Have you ever reflected on it? You know, I don't know. I'm not a fan of harping on the In the past, I hadn't really thought about it and I too were very different people than we were at the time, so I honestly think we probably would have had different responses. I guess this is somewhat related, but do you know what question number? Five, the advice you would give your younger self would be to not stress out and accept the stage of life I was in when I was younger.
I was really worried about being a quote-unquote adult and being quote-unquote successful, and I wasn't and I was thinking about what makes me happy, so I wish I could go back and just say, "Calm down and stop worrying so much." This is an ongoing struggle for me to truly find peace in the present moment and accept and love. Whatever stage of life I'm in is fine, awesome list, well that's fantastic. You know, thank you so much for coming on the show today and spending some time with us. It has been very fun. We really haven't even gotten over the slightest. fraction of the content that you have so you know definitely what you'd like to come back to us and do a couple more episodes at some point where we can delve into some of your other ideas.
I would love to, it would be great. Awesome, real quick, let us know how people can connect with you, how people can connect with Frugal Forests, if they want to check out some of the information that you have and get involved, and some of the really interesting ideas that you say you have, for sure, for that you can find them. we at frugal woods calm and you can sign up for our uber one month trial challenge which is free of course it's free because it's the FIR gallery site it's going to be amazing and I'll charge you for it I'll be waiting you can follow me on Twitter at frivilous you can find me on Facebook again at frugal woods you can find me on Instagram still through woods you can email me my lady at frugal would calm down so you know she's pretty much frugal woods across the board okay awesome , so it's a privilege for Liz, thank you Thank you so much for coming on the show.
This has been great. I loved this conversation. You would be an absolutely fantastic co-host for our audience for those of you who are interested in visiting lizard blogs and going to tried and tested forests. If you want to get some of the show notes for today's episode with some of the links we mentioned, you can go choose Fi dot-com / 0 1 2, that's choose fi calm / 0 1 2. I can't believe the amount of attention we receive. We've gotten our hands on travel hacking episodes that we did a couple of weeks ago, absolutely amazing. I don't think anything like this has been done before and you guys tell us how much you appreciated it so you know we really appreciate your feedback.
I'm glad you're enjoying it, it really is possible to travel the world for free and if you haven't heard of it yet, check it out. Thank you very much and see you next time as we continue down. the road less traveled the episode we will have next week. I'm so excited because we have a millionaire educator coming to the studio and this, if you know someone who's a teacher, you know someone who's a firefighter, a police officer, this is the episode you need to listen to because this is the one where we show you why. every one of those groups of people should be millionaires, every time you work too hard you do too well and we want to show you how to guarantee your financial future that's the episode to listen to, see you next time you're listening to choose the Fi radio podcast where We Help Middle Class Americans Build Wealth in a Light Package Exam

If you have any copyright issue, please Contact