In this episode we’re diving into the practical and emotional aspects of managing money with Jen Smith, personal finance expert and co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast. I share my personal struggles and transformations when it comes to budgeting and impulse spending, and we explore how you can move from feeling guilty about your finances to empowered by them.
You’ll learn how to do a 90-day spending inventory, understand the importance of aligning your spending with your values, and even discover the benefits of a 30-day no-spend challenge. If you’re ready for a fresh, guilt-free approach to money that you can actually stick with, this episode is for you.
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Hi, I’m Monica packer. And you’re listening to about progress where we are about progress made practical.
When we initially got married. I saw myself as a saver. It was a big part of my identity. Thanks to being raised in a very frugal family. But this was an identity that was not only challenged after we had kids, but shifted in a pretty negative way. One that impacted my relationship with money for years. Why. Because in my role as the primary caretaker of our children. I had to take on the position as the spender. And that spending was constantly in my face. From the exhaustive ways we were budgeting to the never ending decisions I had to make about how to spend our money down to what diapers to buy in which sports to put our kids in. Somewhere along the way.
I also developed the bad habit of online shopping. It was almost a weird form of self sabotage where I fed this hated identity as a spender. Via embarrassing cycles of buying things on cell and then returning them or trying to sell them online. When in actuality, I was just a very stressed out mom who needed more outlets. If any of this is resonating with you. Then today’s interview with Jen Smith is going to help you make a lot of needed shifts. From the way you view money to how you budget or choose not to, to how your habits can help lessen impulse spending. Ultimately Jen’s goal is not just to help women save money. But to gain the skill of spending money.
Well, Jenn Smith as a personal finance expert and co-host of the frugal friends podcast. She and her husband paid off $78,000 of debt in two years. While battling unemployment and buying a house. Jen has since become a sought after writer of several books and a speaker helping people live for today while being able to save for tomorrow. Jen and her cohost, Jill Sirianni are about to release their new book.
Buy what you love without going broke. When she’s not writing or podcasting. Jen is training for a half marathon at Disney world. She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with her husband and two sons. That interview is coming up after a quick break for our sponsors.
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Jen Smith, welcome to about progress.
Jen Smith: Thank you so much for having me Monica
Monica Packer: It is a pleasure. I am so eager to have this conversation with you, and so you’ve talked a lot about frugality, which. I think is awesome, but you do it in a way that I think is different and it’s so, positive. It’s so value driven that I can’t wait to dig in, but let’s start with the elephant in the room and budgets. So if you’re in this world, you know, it’s a big world that really talks about budgeting.
Why don’t you believe in budgets and how do you see money differently than most people in your field?
Jen Smith: Yeah, so I I will start out with saying my husband and I paid off 78, 000 of debt in two years
and Yeah, it was wild, and I don’t always recommend that strategy for everyone, but you’ll kind of get a feel for why through my story. But, uh, while we were doing that, I, I kept a budget. Before that season, I would try to make budgets.
I would make the perfect budget that was perfectly aligned with my income and what I quote unquote should be buying, um, and I would even budget in a little fun stuff because that’s what you’re supposed to do. And I would make these perfect budgets and would not be able to stick to them. And I didn’t know why and then I did it over and over and eventually built up a lot of, of guilt and shame around budgeting because nobody was budgeting for me.
I was making my budget and I didn’t need to know how to budget because I was doing what the people online were saying. I just couldn’t. Quote unquote stick to it, and I thought it was something wrong with me, but I’m just a spender and I’m not meant to Live this life of quote unquote financial freedom like these people online are talking about so fast forward I meet my future husband and he says I want to pay off my student loans And whatever you want to do is great.
We’re getting married, so ideally we would do this together. But he wasn’t going to push me into, to doing this thing. And I was like, cool, uh, peace. I want to live my life. I want to, I don’t want to live under a rock for the next couple years. Because I already had taken on this identity. Like, I’m a, I’m a spender.
Like yes, I buy the generic
Monica Packer: Hmm.
Jen Smith: at the grocery store. But outside of that, like, that’s about all I can do. And after some gentle encouragement and, and really some gentle challenging of what I want for myself in the future, what I want for us as a family, for us as a couple, I did eventually get on board and we paid off a lot of debt in a very short amount of time.
And a budget was a tool we used to stay on track together, uh, to keep this really audacious goal, um, at the forefront. And then after we paid off our debt, had what I call like a debt payoff hangover. Like, I didn’t know what to do. I had just gotten used to budgeting. I had just gotten used to not buying anything.
Uh, doing the debt payoff that fast was not fun. It was actually quite miserable. Uh, and so I just didn’t know. There was no like guide in how to transition from that. So I just transitioned that into investing for retirement, you know, like boatloads, 401ks, Roth IRAs, all that until I got laid off.
Monica Packer: Oh.
Jen Smith: then I got laid off seven weeks before I was due with my first baby. And yeah, so I literally couldn’t do that anymore.
And I had to, I had to kind of come to terms with this, like, what, how, how do you do money if you’re not going all in one way or the other? If I’m not a spender, but I also can’t be a saver, how do I, how do I do money?
And I had to develop this idea that spending money is not an identity. It’s not who I am. Uh, it’s a skill. It’s something that we do. Um, and so that was a long way to say that, Budgeting for me still has those connotations of extreme living. Identifying as a spender or identifying as a saver. So the beautiful thing about the English language, about any language, is that usually there’s more than one word.
to describe something. And so very often we will use budgets and spending plans synonymously. But we decided very, like, early on, we didn’t want to focus on budgeting, because budgeting isn’t a solution. It’s a tool, uh, for goals. We instead wanted to learn, how do we find this radical middle between Spending and saving and really remove it from the identities we’ve placed on ourselves.
And so I, I’ve spent so much time in that world that I don’t really, and I, and I don’t have a financial goal that I’m aggressively trying to achieve. So for me, I know my spending. I know. What I value and I don’t that like very specifically, but I do already know pretty much like where I’m spending and where I’m saving.
Uh, so I personally don’t keep a line by line spending plan. It’s a great tool for a lot of people, especially starting out, but that’s kind of my story with budgets.
Monica Packer: So what’s the difference between the spending plan and a budget? Is there one or is it, you know, just words?
Jen Smith: So it’s mostly words, but for us, when we talk about a spending plan, it’s a values aligned spending plan. So a lot of the time budgets can be. Very long and very specific,
like you’re having a coffee budget, and like a grocery budget for food, and then also a grocery budget for non food, and they can get so in the weeds, and it does more harm than good.
For us, we’ve, realize that values based spending is kind of that radical middle. Like it’s the skill of spending that anyone can learn. And so instead of treating this like budgets are kind of a solution for how much, how much am I overspending? How much can I save? While a spending plan, we believe is more of a solution for What am I, am I buying?
Am I buying things that are aligned with my values or am I buying things that maybe I’m being influenced to buy or that I believe, that I should be buying , but maybe it’s just like, Being influenced or socially conditioned or, you know, even bandwagon peer pressured sort of thing.
And so it’s taking that person first approach of, of really figuring out what you value. And then creating your budget to have those few categories. And then there’s more freedom. And how do I optimize every dollar of my family category?
Yes, I can spend on it without guilt. Um, but when I’m focusing on the what instead of the, how much it makes adhering to this plan much more enjoyable and freeing.
Monica Packer: I’m already loving this so much. And just the way you shared about that, you know, long almost spreadsheet, I think most of us imagine a spreadsheet of a budget with just the most minute of categories in there. That’s why budgeting became such a stressful anxiety producing thing for me because I was someone who I believed myself to be extremely frugal. Until I was budgeting and then I felt like I adopted this identity as a spender, even though I really wasn’t, but mostly because I am in the position of being the main spender in our family, as I’m the primary caretaker of our kids, you know, so
that’s, that’s helping me understand that better and how I can shift back to person first, in terms of how I’m viewing money and values based spending. Now, I have a lot more questions to ask on that about the practicality of that, but first let’s put a pin in that. And can we talk about habits? Because
Jen Smith: Mm-Hmm.
Monica Packer: I was so impressed by your pitch about how habits create impulse response. Spending and how habits are a big part of the ways we spend our money. And it was like a light bulb moment for me. So can we talk about that first? Like how are habits an essential player in the ways that we spend and how to have a loops, uh, have a hand in that, especially when it comes to impulse spending. Cause this is, you know, just backing up really quick. That’s probably what is making people feel like. They have this bad relationship with money and they’ve taken on this identity because of these, these things.
So that’s why I want to talk about that.
Jen Smith: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So I think first saying that impulse spending isn’t actually the enemy here. Impulse spending is just unplanned spending and you can’t plan. Every single transaction, every single month, you’re going to have some unplanned purchases. The thing we want is we want those as much of that, those unplanned purchases to be aligned with your values.
And so, so much of the spending that we do is really out of habit and we don’t even realize it. And one, even in the same category, I use coffee a lot because that’s an easy one to use. Two coffee purchases made for different reasons. One can be values aligned and one can be not. It’s not the coffee that’s the problem.
It’s, the reasoning, the root of why we’re buying it. So if one coffee is allowing me to catch up with a friend from out of town, like really quick visit, uh, that’s aligned with my values. One is drive through Starbucks or hopping into Target to do some browsing, right? Same purchase, two different reasons.
And so we really encourage people before you ever make a budget or a spending plan, that should not be the first thing you do. The first thing to do is actually do an inventory of your transactions from around the last 90 days. That should give you a really holistic picture of, of what you’re used to doing, and it can really reveal some very obvious patterns.
If you line up your transactions from the last 90 days, have them in the spreadsheet, alphabetize them so you can see those groups of, spending, see what’s the most maybe problematic either by repetition or by amount. And then you can look at them and see, okay, what was the trigger for this?
So instead of just getting rid of all these pleasurable expenses across the board, just because they’re quote Uh, we’re looking at the root cause of why they were made. So that’s when we look at the habit loop. So these cues, where was I coming from? Where was I going? What time of day do I make this, repetitive transaction?
Who am I with? So we’re just looking for patterns in our spending and we’re trying to do it without judgment. So I think we are our worst critics, uh, and it’s hard for us to look at our, past spending without having judgment. So we want to look at it with as much neutrality as possible and really just say, okay, what was happening?
And. Um, what was the catalyst for these habitual purchases? So you can identify those and then make the decision to do something different in the future. You can plan ahead. So if I’m always getting coffee on the way to see my mother in law and I’m seeing her every week. What is a quote unquote coping mechanism that I can do because for better or for worse, that’s kind of, habits can become coping mechanisms.
So how can I choose a healthier one or a less expensive one, um, that gets me the same result and, uh, and I can go on about my life having that plan in place and not having to, to worry about these habitual purchases.
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It’s that time of year, our podcast anniversary and a golden one at that November 8th marks, eight years of about progress, which is honestly a milestone. I wasn’t sure we would meet for big chunks of this year, but we are. And I hope to mark many more anniversaries to come. I always like to celebrate the podcast with all of you seeing as we are a community, not a fan club. To do so I will be doing an eight year favorite things giveaway from mid October through mid November. I am giving away eight of my very favorite things in two thing, bundles with one grand prize winner, getting all eight at the end. A $300 value. Including things like my favorite tea, kettle water, Templar drink, mix-ins glowy makeup and more. How do you qualify?
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So leave your review now and watch for a month of giveaways starting mid October, you can see all the items I’m giving away and the same details on how to enter@aboutprogress.com slash eight years. That’s the number eight. If you’re hearing this later, still leave a review. As I do a monthly drawing anyway, and it greatly impacts our podcasts ability to keep going. Thank you so much for eight years.
Monica Packer: This is really, aligned with how I talk about bad habits in general, which impulse spending is definitely a One of those, right? But how, when we actually own what the cues are, we better understand what’s going on there. It not only gives us information that we can take action on, it relieves the guilt.
It removes the whole identity piece that you already brought up of us being like, I’m just bad or I’m irresponsible or I don’t think through things. And instead it’s like, no, I was very anxious. And that thing helped me try to meet that anxiety better, or I had FOMO or this, this influencer. I don’t say that in a bad way, but this influencer is someone I typically, Ooh, wow.
A lot of my purchases come from whatever they shared in their stories. So knowing that could help me do something different with it, which is huge. Love how you teach that. So let’s move into some more practical advice. You already talked about doing an inventory of the last 90 days and the transactions there and.
Figuring out the patterns. What are some other practical ways women can earn some of the skill that you talked about? How, what’s the skill? Uh, how can they earn the skill of spending their money in ways that are aligned?
Jen Smith: Yeah. So once you know your values, and we say, Um, most Americans have the same four
Monica Packer: Mm hmm. Mm
Jen Smith: um, and this is based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and a Pew Research study that asks, what brings the most meaning to your life? And they just happen to all start with the letter F, so we call them the four Fs.
They’re family, friends, faith, and fulfilling work.
Um, and so once you know that, then you can start to. Align your future purchases with that, but that doesn’t take away what you’ve experienced in the past. We have dopamine receptors in our brain
that are programmed to enjoy shopping, but not just the act of shopping.
What we enjoy even more is the anticipation. of the act. Uh, there was a study done that tested, uh, the dopamine receptors of rats and they got a treat and they used bells to kind of signal, um, signal that treat. And they tested the dopamine release and they found that the anticipation of the treat provided 10 times more dopamine release than the actual consuming of it.
So like in our heads, We have more dopamine released in the anticipation of something like shopping,
uh, that we have to deal with. That’s something like physiological we have to deal with. So we say that trying a no spend challenge for 30 days is a really good way to start to reset some of that dopamine that is released in anticipation of an act of shopping.
Uh, and it can also help you. figure out what are the things I’m doing that are meeting my values? What are maybe some of the things that they’re, they’re meeting my values, but only 50%. I could get creative in how I meet this and not spend money. And then just what you don’t remember, like, What doesn’t serve you at all?
What’s a habit? And so while we’re in the act of kind of trying to reset some of these dopamine releases, we can also get a better picture of what, what are the things I’m spending on that I actually value. And we looked at Dr. Ann Lemke’s work from Dopamine Nation, how she uses the quote unquote dopamine fast.
You can’t really fast from dopamine.
Monica Packer: Yeah.
Jen Smith: found that, um, her, her patients really after four weeks of, you know, fasting from whatever their addiction was, like not drug or alcohol, but like other addictions, really did see a difference in how the anticipation and the act, really changed in their, in their, how much dopamine it released.
And a lot of these people choose to go back to You know what these desires were before, because they’re not inherently bad shopping, not inherently bad. We all shop. We all spend, we will all go back to shopping. But if we can take that pause for one month to kind of separate ourselves from the automatic I spend to solve a problem, you know, solution, it can be really helpful in moving forward and creating better spending habits.
Monica Packer: see the wisdom in that so much. And I have to ask you, because I know this is something that in many ways, instigated your passion for this whole topic, right. Your own no spending challenge. Um, how do you find people are able to do that without that all or nothing mentality? Like I think it’s possible, um, but how can they do it with more of that curiosity?
Yeah. Absolutely. And less judgment and more about like, this is the way it will be for all time kind of thing. Cause I think that’s why people fail these kinds of challenges because they’re
like, this is the right way to do this thing. And it’s, and it becomes an all or nothing thing. So I was just
curious about your own experience there.
Jen Smith: Which has been, yeah, I am a recovering all or nothing girl
through and through. And I will tell you, after writing a book about no spend challenges, after including no spend challenges in my current book, after practicing them for maybe seven years, I still have never done a quote unquote, perfect No spend challenge.
Monica Packer: Oh, I’d
Jen Smith: Because if you can do it perfectly, it’s not a challenge. Then you’re just not spending money to, to not spend money. You’re like
Monica Packer: then they go on a bender
Jen Smith: money for a year and writes a book about it. You know, like I, it’s, it’s just like not for me. I like the things I buy when I spend money.
So going into it knowing I, I will not do this perfectly and I’m not supposed to do this perfectly. It’s actually the, you know, I say quote unquote a lot, but quote unquote failures that teach me about my spending and my values. And those are the things that I want to look for so that I can then plan ahead.
So when I’m proposed with the same challenge or choice next time, I make a better choice. So that’s what I say, like going into it. You’re not supposed to do it perfectly because. It wouldn’t be called a challenge if you could just do it perfectly right off the bat.
Monica Packer: That’s so helpful to hear as, as I feel like the tone too, like I can, I can hear just like the feeling, like the way you’re approaching it is one of, you know, curiosity, like, let me find out more information instead of it being like fear and it
has to be this way. So that’s beautifully modeled.
Thank you for sharing that. What other tips do you have for them?
Jen Smith: So, uh, the book is broken up into three parts. The first is finding what you value and defining values. The second is saying no to a lot of these, impulse spending, habitual spendings, stuff that’s not aligned. The third part is Don’t go it’s called don’t go broke. That’s you know, and that’s kind of our sustainability piece And I feel like this is the one that it’s a section everyone wants to skip it’s really the section that that makes or breaks the entire first two thirds of the book Because the truth is you’re not going to be able to do values based spending perfectly.
We do not live in a vacuum
We live it in Different cities with different people doing different things all the time. Our lives change constantly. Even if you could create a perfect environment to practice it in a couple months or a couple years. There’s going to be change and you’re going to have to navigate, reorient, reprioritize values in each season.
So I think the next like tangible tip would be to curate your environment in the ability that you have. So we talk a lot about simplifying. As humans, we have this, uh, complexity bias that really pushes us to add more to solve problems,
uh, when taking away is usually faster course of action. So simplifying, leaning into relationships, because people are around us, we can’t live without them.
in isolation. Uh, so instead of fighting relationships with family and friends that might get you to like spend, we lean into healthier relationships, which are either maybe other relationships or the same relationships. in it, in a new light, in a new way. So, and then practicing gratitude. And we say gratitude is contentment without complacency.
That we are continually looking to grow. Um, we’re not staying complacent, but we are looking, we’re taking time to look at the things around us, our accomplishments, and all of that, and actually choosing. To celebrate before we just move on to the next achievement or move on to the next goal or task. And so when we are practically curating our environment, that’s when you can practice values based spending, even when it’s really nuanced and, and difficult.
Monica Packer: Which is so fascinating to lean into because this isn’t really something I’ve really heard when talking about spending money,
but it seems so vital to this, to the success and being able to shift your skills with spending money, but also shift the way that you, uh, prioritize yourself and see yourself and prioritize the things that matter most to you, I go back to the whole identity piece because. I love that you started with a negative view of who you were in connection with how you spent your money, you being a spender. And I was curious. If you could add to that a little bit and share what shifts when women shift the way they view money and they spend their money, what shifts in a deeper way and how can maybe even shifting the identity piece help change the way they approach money? Like maybe it’s a
chicken and egg kind of question, right?
Jen Smith: Yeah. So I think like, I think especially for women, like nobody teaches you how to spend money. It’s either it’s you get money and you spend it. Nobody really teaches us how to spend it. Like well, it’s either you’re bad at money, you spend everything, or you’re good at money, you spend nothing.
Spending is the enemy.
Monica Packer: Cause they talk more about, they teach how to save. Not
how to spend.
Jen Smith: we all spend. Spending is good. And I think it comes from. The, the way we look at food and diets and health, like, we are, children of diet culture through and through. And so for so long, that’s, that’s really openly talked about more so than money.
So we’ve just adopted this idea of if you’re skinny, you’re healthy. If you’re not, you’re not. You’re unhealthy and it’s this very like all or nothing type of thing and so we’ve just taken what we learned with diet culture and we have just Use that knowledge to influence how we spend because both are consumption, you know, you consume food and you consume products, services, all that.
So it’s just, it’s a very similar place. Um, and so we’ve just taken the unhealthy things we’ve learned about diet culture and applied them to spending. And so many things about health and diet culture We’ve had to take them on as identities, from such a young age. And so that’s why it’s so easy for us to take on these, myths about money as identities.
Like, I’m a woman, I don’t invest, I don’t like negotiate or climb the corporate ladder, uh, all of these things that we have accepted. And so I kind of had to, in my own personal dealings, trying to come out of diet culture and try to create a healthier relationship with food has really helped me create a healthier relationship with spending.
And just like, intuitive eating has, has come up, or maybe just aligning your diet by tracking like micronutrients and macronutrients. I’ve tried to kind of adopt some of these healthier shifts from diet culture and shift them to how I view consumption as it is spending money.
So that has really helped me. Realign the identity piece. Um, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s helpful for everyone, but that was a huge, um, connection that I could make to try and start viewing spending as a skill, just like eating is a skill. And you don’t know how to eat if all this food’s just put in front of you and you, maybe what tastes best, um, but you don’t know, like, what’s best for you if nobody tells you.
Monica Packer: Yeah. Especially when there are so many all or nothing, messaging out there about consumption of food. I can so easily see how that translates to our own relationship with how we consume. Also spend money. That was very helpful. I have my last question for you? And it’s still more of like a tangible question.
So what does this look like for you? And I’m asking more personally, if you are living a life that it’s more about values and that translates to how you spend your money, you have a more of a spending plan than a budget. Now, now I know you said you don’t do that in a traditional way, but what does it look like then to still for you?
Like practically, like, do you have systems in place where you have categories of. Things you value and that things are saving towards and ways are tracking things or not like what’s that
look like for you? Not that it’s the right way, but I’m just curious.
Jen Smith: Yeah, it’s fun. Like, Jill and I have different ways that we do this, Jill, my co host. And so for me, it’s kind of setting up safeguards and barriers. So I will make sure that, All of our bills are paid first when we get paid. , we pay off, credit cards in full every month. We’re paying all of our bills.
We are, every year we’re making sure we call, um, things like insurance, phone, internet, all that to make sure we’re getting, you know, The best deal because we would pay for those things anyway, but we want to make sure we pay less , and then it’s knowing what I Want to get more of and pursuing that first So i’m looking at my family and my friendships And my work and my faith practice and i’m first looking okay How can I fill my cup in all of these areas first?
without spending money. So making sure we’re looking at free events or trips to the park, we’re getting things scheduled in, those most important things get scheduled in first. And then around those, when things pop up, Um, that maybe cost money, then we’re fitting those in as time allows, but the hope is that we’re filling our cup up, planning in advance, so that we can meet the needs without spending money.
And so if a really cool thing arises that I want to spend money on, I can spend on it without guilt. Cause it’s just extra, but I’m not falling prey to like things that come up, unexpectedly or last minute, like, you know, kind of these must act now sort of things. Cause I know like I’m already getting what I truly want.
So another thing is like, I don’t, I don’t shop sales. Like I’m not a a sale hunter cause sales are marketing. And I save so much more money by just saying no altogether than I do by just getting something I might use and might make my life helpful because it’s on sale. If it’s something I already know that I use.
I’ve, I definitely pursue it on sale, but, so I don’t use shopping as an activity because I know I’m getting everything I want in other ways. So that’s really, I think it’s a time, spending time, um, priority for me that helps me not spend my money.
Monica Packer: Got it.
So do you track too? Like, do you keep track of where your spending is going? Or is that, you know, as simple as just double checking the bank account, making sure things are going where they need to be, um, not like category based.
Jen Smith: Yeah. So I actually have a widget. I do pay for a budgeting app called Monarch and they have a widget that has all of my transactions auto populated. It’s very hard nowadays to find an automatic transaction inventory app that you don’t have to pay for. Mint was one of the last ones,
um, RIP. So I pay for Monarch and I really like that they have a widget that I can just check to make sure that.
All the transactions on my statement are transactions I actually made and they are for the amount I approved them for. So I do keep track of that. I want to make sure nobody’s gotten a hold of my card information, and that I haven’t been overcharged for something. Maybe a subscription raised their price and I was unaware.
I want to catch that very quickly. Um, so yes, I track that. It’s on my phone and when I scroll over, it’s just there. So I, I track it daily. It says it take me extra time. I don’t have to look it up. And I think that’s a really important piece is that I don’t have to pursue tracking it.
It’s just there on my phone as a widget. So that is removing that barrier helps me like keep on top of it and then creating other barriers like, Just finding other places to walk and hang out that are not Target or that are not the farmer’s market But are just as fun That’s another barrier that I set up.
Monica Packer: Yeah. And I like that. I like your whole safeguard and barrier idea of having those in place still. So, you know, you wrote a book, obviously, uh, buy what you want without going broke. And I think when someone reads that title, they’re just gonna be like, buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend. And, but yes, like there is reason here. There are safeguards. There are ways to monitor and keep tabs of things, but it’s done in a different way. And I think the primary way that it’s different is just the feeling. And I know that seems really dumb that I’d like distilling your work down to a different feeling. But I think that matters, that it feels different the way you’re navigating it. And it also feels more doable in ways that I really appreciate. So can you tell us a little bit more about your book? Like, why should someone check that out?
Jen Smith: Yeah, so We’ve done over 400 episodes of frugal friends and what started as a way to help people save money and spend less and We’ve always been more of a like best friend energy. I’m just, you know, maybe 10 steps ahead of you and I’m going to share what I’ve learned. So, what started as helping people, save money and spend less, as we evolved, the podcast kind of evolved with us to where we wanted to find this radical middle. between spending and saving, because nobody,
nobody was really navigating the nuance of the middle. It was very radical to kind of say your, your place could be different than everyone else’s.
We’re all at different places in the middle. So we wanted to, to write a book That was less of a personal finance book and more of a guide on how to learn the skill of spending money because nobody really taught us that we’ve just adopted all these ideas on from other things, uh, related to consumption to how we consume with our money.
And so. We really wanted to take away a lot of the shame and guilt that, that we as women experience with our consumption. Cause yeah, we’re the primary consumers of Of the world, marketers market to us
because we are the primary consumers, yet we feel so much shame about consuming.
And so how can we normalize spending, also not go broke?
And so it became this love letter to our listeners, but also just the book I wish I had When I was trying to make those perfect budgets, and I just couldn’t stick to them,
and I thought it was me, I thought I was the problem, but really it was just the way that I was told to think about budgeting, and spending, and finance.
I was writing my parts and Jill was writing her parts for, for the versions of us so many years ago. That struggled and needed that best friend to, to just confide in about all the consumption. I think it’s going to be helpful for more than just spending money, but also how you spend your time, um, and spend all of your resources, uh, Tangible and intangible, our natural resources, our mental energy resources, our, you know, schedule time resources.
And, uh, I hope that money is just the thing that gets people to buy the book and they can adopt the ideology for so much more than money.
Monica Packer: sold. I mean, I already told you, I pre ordered the book, so we will make sure we link
to it and I have to tell people like, genuinely, this is the book I need right now. I feel like I’ve come so far. And I still have a ways to go, and this is going to help me get across that finish line. Uh, Jen, this has been fantastic.
I will make sure to direct them to both the book and to the Frugal Friends podcast. Let’s end with the final question, and it’s what is one thing the listeners can do to take action on what they learned today?
Jen Smith: So I think the first thing would be that 90 day transaction inventory. I know that’s a, that’s a big one, but let’s just, if, if you’re serious about it, dive in, go big, uh, and, and look at those with nonjudgmental eyes and just see how can I, how can I progress not why have I done this, but how can I plan and, and progress.
in the future. Um, I’d say that’s, that’s the best tangible place to start.
Monica Packer: Fantastic advice. And I don’t know if they could hear, but I like took a deep breath while you said that. Cause I was like, that’s how you have to do it. Like, yes, I’m going to do that, but with a different place, like from a different place of,
Jen Smith: Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Monica Packer: I do this in
so many areas of my life.
. It’s now time to do it with this. So Jen, I appreciate you and your time and your work so much. Thanks for being here.
Jen Smith: Thank you so much for having me.
Monica Packer: That was fabulous.
I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants you need to grow. I’ll now share this. I will now share the progress pointers. These are the notes I took. So you don’t have to, and those are my newsletter. Get them in a graphic form each week. You can sign up at about progress.com/newsletter. Number one. Traditional budgeting involves a money first focus.
Whereas a spending plan is a person first. This means you let your values guide where your money goes and in ways that are both freeing and more doable. Number two. Before you make a spending plan, do an inventory of where your money goes for 90 days. This will help you identify patterns and how you spend your money both by category and by amount.
And what habits are leading to impulse spending. Number three. Additionally, get clarity on your values and how you can use your money to bolster them in your day to day life and spending. Finally learn to deal with your stressors and new ways and plan ahead to avoid the habit loops that create impulsive spending. Number four. If you feel that you really struggled with some bad spending habits consider doing a 30 day, no spend challenge to gain some curiosity about what is really at play, including resetting your dopamine receptors with shopping. And number five. You are not going to be values-based. And number five, you are not going to do values based spending perfectly when failure happens, simplify. Lean into relationships and practice gratitude. Nobody teaches us how to spend money.
Well, but it’s a skill we can learn with time. Your do something challenged for this week is to do that 90 day transaction industry. Is to do that 90 day transaction inventory with curiosity being the whole goal. I love that Jen talked about how it is not about being perfect.
She and Jill. Jen and Jill are the amazing cohost of the frugal friends podcast. It’s not your mama’s financial expert driven podcast. I think you’re going to really enjoy it. And I am soon going to be a guest on their show as well. And we are going to make the connection between perfectionism and how we spend our money.
And it was a very meaty conversation. So you can look for that and make sure you subscribe to their show. In addition to checking out their new book.
And again, that new book is buy what you love without going broke. This show is listener supported. Members of the supporters club get access to exclusive benefits involving more time and content with me. My favorite benefit is the private premium always ad free podcast, more personal, where we lean into the personal side of personal development. Brad.
And I just added a new series that as peers, once a month, it’s called the marriage movie club. It’s where we feel and talk movies together. We are about to review signs and I have been love hating this movie. Like I did before, so you can check it all out, including what levels of benefits. You can check it all out. So you can check out becoming a supporter@aboutprogress.com slash support. You can always support the show for free. Keep listening, make sure you subscribed and have followed the show.
Share the show with a friend. Anything you can do that way helps the podcast tremendously. Thank you so much for listening now, go and do something with what you learned today.
