I have a treat for you today. I’m passing the mic to my friends, Jen, and Jill from the Frugal Friends Podcast. Now, Jen and Jill have been recording for a long time. They have over 400 episodes and 6 million downloads. Frugal friends are about changing the way the world thinks about frugality. Jen uses her background in financial journalism to seek topics that help people overcome impulse spending and reach their financial goals.

And Jill is a licensed clinical social worker who enjoys exploring the connections between our money behaviors. And our mental health together, they’re helping people become better stewards of their money, time, space, and natural resources. I’m a huge fan of Jen and Jill and the practical approach that they must spending, saving, and living according to our personal values.

And that is what I’m passing the mic to them to talk about today, how we can live a values-based life with regards to our financial decisions. These last few years for a lot of people have felt tough financially, there’s been a lot of inflation, the economy isn’t the best we’ve ever seen, lots of unexpected costs and seasons of life transitioning out of the pandemic that, brought things that we didn’t expect into our lives and our circumstances, if you feel like you want a little bit of an adjustment in the way that you’re spending so that you can feel you’re spending your resources on the things that matter most to you, you’re going to love this episode.

And even if you feel like your finances are all tuned up and feeling pretty good, it’s always nice to hear another perspective and hear some stories about the way that people are living and making decisions that work well for them in case there’s some nuggets that can help you feel a little bit better in your life.

All that said, I’m excited to pass the mic to Jen and Jill. Let’s get into it.

 How are you doing today?

Jen: Hey, Miranda. Good to be here. We’re doing great.

Miranda: So good to hear it. I have loved following along with your work and really, I think that our ideas around values and intentional living and less is more align fully.

So, I think my audience is going to really appreciate the message that you’re bringing today, which is around the idea of using your core values to guide your priorities in terms of spending and avoiding impulse purchases and staying on track with having Those things that matter most to you be the signposts for how you accumulate.

Can you tell me more about where this idea of using your values as a guide for budgeting and spending came from for both of you?

Jen: Yeah. So, for me personally, Jen my husband and I paid off 78, 000 of debt in two years and we weren’t making big incomes. We were making around between 80 and 90 a year. 

Miranda: Between the two of you?

Jen: Between the two of us. Yeah. It was big portion to debt payoff. It was, yeah. It was a lot towards debt. Granted, it was also when you could still live in a one-bedroom apartment for 750 a month. But a lot of our money went towards debt, and we took this scorched earth approach for two years while we were paying off debt, and we spent on very little. And as someone who loves to spend money, I was miserable. And I don’t regret paying off our debt. It was a burden that was lifted that’s allowed us to do a lot of things now. But I always after I, went through the debt payoff hangover and was able to heal from those two years.

Like I, I realized I, I was already writing personal finance, but I wanted to share, like I wanted to find a way where people who weren’t making big incomes, who didn’t have dreams of retiring in their 30s or 40s, right? But we’re just trying to live a life that they loved. How could we learn how to spend money and still reach our financial?

And so that came down to if you can’t afford everything, it’s not, and you still don’t want it to be deprivation. then why don’t we just prioritize what matters most? And those are your highest values. And those tend to be the things money can’t buy. So how do we turn all of that into a way to, to spend money and still like live life well?

Miranda: Yeah, that’s so interesting. You hit on so many different things that I’m like, okay, first scorched earth process and how that didn’t work for you because so let’s start there. You tell me a little bit more about that and then I want to I want to talk about this idea of spending on what matters most and how you get there.

Jen: Yeah. So, there’s this extreme when people think about spending money. It’s either you’re good at spending money by spending nothing, or if you spend money or live paycheck to paycheck, you are bad at spending money. And those are the two extremes. You’re either a spender or a quote unquote saver.

And that’s what I thought, and I was a spender and I thought, okay, now that I’m paying off debt, I must be a quote unquote saver. And that means I can’t spend money on anything. And that was unhealthy because my natural desire to, to do things like hang out with friends often required money.

And I would go do it because I valued relationships so much and then feel guilt and shame for not being able to stick to this budget that I had made. Myself right and so that was like the scorched earth approach was out of a lot of like guilt for trying to be this person that I am not, but what personal finance advice traditionally tells you to be?

Miranda: Yeah. I think of a popular finance program person out there whose tagline is something like if you live like no one else, then you can live like no one else. And I remember years ago reading this and thinking okay, then why don’t I just love the way I want to live now? Because it sounds like it’s the same, deprive yourself now so that you have this great life later.

And I’m like, but both is my life. Like my life is now, and my life is in five years when the debt is paid off. Didn’t make sense to me. I’m not, I wouldn’t necessarily classify myself as a spender necessarily, but I guess I’ve never thought deeply about that, so I’m going to put a pin in that.

I don’t know, but I absolutely value moment to moment experiences, and I feel like I want to live my life today,

Jen: and I think, we can reclaim that saying because you can still reject the consumerist culture that we are living in. You can still reject the buying yourself out of problems, buying products to love yourself more, all of that.

You can still live like no one else in that regards and live like no one else later because of that. But you can also live truth to yourself now.

Miranda: Yeah. Maybe that’s what resonates more with me is this idea of just discovering who you are and what you love and living true to that. And if our whole life is in comparison to what we’re seeing out there in the world, in terms of marketing, in terms of Instagram, even like neighbor to neighbor, keeping up the Joneses, we’re never going to feel that great because we’ll probably always be a little bit out of alignment.

When we learn to investigate what, we really want and what feels good to us and what feels like it benefits our families and communities in the way that really lights us up. That’s when you’re really living like yourself, like that trueness to self, which I think is what you were talking about when you got to the second part of your, intro story where you had to heal from this like guilt, shame, deprivation, payoff, and then realize, okay, we don’t have to do it that way.

We can live. frugal balanced life. Without it looking like all the way one or all the way, the other, all the way spending or all the way saving.

Jill: Yes. We like to call that the radical middle, finding the tension between the two extremes and living out of what makes sense for us. Jill here, my background is in mental health and for me coming to this place of identifying values so that we can learn to spend on just that, what we value has to do with.

Understanding self. I think we can make our best, most informed decisions when we have deeper understandings of who we are, what makes us tick. And this is part of that where we’re seeing spending decisions, maybe impulse buys, doing things that might not actually be life giving to us, but for some reason we’re doing it.

We’re buying the things that are being sold to us on Instagram, but none of it is really meeting a deeper need or meeting our values, I think. If we can discover what that is and meet the need in intentional, informed ways, then that’s the best possible thing that we can do for our money and our whole personhood.

And of course, there’s all sorts of benefits to just understanding ourselves more, but I think it does need to start there in identifying what are my deeper needs here? What are my values? And how am I currently trying to meet them? Is it working? Is it not? What can I shift? And how does that intersect with my money decisions?

Miranda: Yeah, absolutely. And I know for a lot of my listeners, I talk about this idea of getting to know yourself, that self-awareness that then yields opportunities, around every turn. And. It always begins with this, I think people ask okay, I understand that I need to learn more about myself, know what my values are, but where do I do that?

What would you, how would you recommend particularly in this realm of spending and money that can be so fraught with external ideas and expectations and implications, particularly about self and about identity. How would you recommend people begin unearthing some of their personal values? And even maybe personal belief systems that they currently hold, whether they want to, around money, and then begin these kinds of slow shifts into a more values-based spending.

Jill: Yeah, to get super granular and tangible with it, we recommend doing a 90-day transaction inventory. So, this would mean gathering all your money spending behaviors, transactions that you might find on a credit card statement, a bank statement, really anything that you’ve spent money on in the last 90 days, gathering all that up, whether you’re printing it out, you’re putting it all into one spreadsheet, you’re just writing it down.

Doesn’t matter. But the point is getting a good snapshot of where your money has gone in the last three months. We say that timeframe because month to month is going to shift. Three months can give a good picture of what are some typical habits. What are some of the random expenses that might pop up?

And then going through each one of those expenses and beginning to identify what were the circumstances surrounding this? What was happening for me in my environment? How was I feeling if I can even remember that far back? We can also be looking for patterns. When is it that I tend to buy the coffees?

When is it that I tend to go shopping? How much do I typically spend when I do that? These types of things can start to help us understand what do we do? Where are we spending a lot of our discretionary income, but also quote unquote fixed expenses because those we can also be looking at too when we want to explore what types of big changes, we could make in our finances for whatever.

goal that we might have. But one of the key things that we like to describe when doing this 90-day transaction inventory is being as curious as possible with ourselves. And that curiosity, we like to say, we want to eliminate as much guilt and shame around the spending transactions as possible. One of the ways that we can do that is by using the question Avoiding the why question.

Why did I do this? Why did I spend on that? It tends to put us on the defense when we’re looking at this because this can be a little daunting. What am I going to find? But really approaching it as an observer with a curious lens from this posture of I want to know more about myself because I think it can help inform my decisions.

What is it about this store that I like so much? What is it about these purchases that is meeting a need that can start to help us understand what our needs and our values are, and then lead to the next step of Are their other ways that I could meet this need? Is this really meeting it fully? Can I get creative here?

So, a couple of steps happen, but beginning by looking with a curious lens is where we would say to start.

Miranda: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, like I’m glad you mentioned, it can feel overwhelming to start with, what is happening with my money. I think a lot of times when people are in the place in their lives where they might need a financial shift for one reason or another, that they’re not really spending in alignment with their values or even with there You know, a budget in a way that’s setting themselves up for success.

It feels scary because they know something’s wrong. I know Dave and I laugh sometimes when we’re like, what’s happening right now with our money? That, if we’ve let it get away from us a little bit, we both look at each other. I don’t even want to know that’s when you know that you probably should, go take a little look see what’s happening.

Why are you afraid of it? Why are you nervous? If you know that you don’t want to know, then. That probably means that there’s some easy shifts that can happen when you dive into it. And again, I love this idea of no guilt, no shame. We all go through different seasons for whatever reason and all of it’s okay.

It’s all good. And I really am I grew up in a very debt shaming household. And I have had to unlearn the idea that debt is bad, just like chronically bad all the time. And I’m bad if I’m in debt for any reason. And that’s something as an adult now in my forties that I’m like, no, it’s okay.

We can decide to spend ahead of time. We can, and I think of it like this now, like sometimes. We want to pay now for something that we are going to pay for the next year or two And that’s a choice that we’re making in alignment And that can be okay You know if you understand the full picture and I think that just being able to get in there and get open with what’s actually happening and leave some of the Preconceived ideas about what’s supposed to be happening aside definitely allows us a little more self-awareness.

And then at that point, once you get in there and you look at your spending habits and you get to know yourself a little bit better, I’d love if you could both give a couple examples of what is a value that you know that you have? And then some examples of what not spending and spending look like that aligned with that value, just to give people some practical.

What this looks like in, in practice in a daily life.

Jen: Yeah. So, we find that most people, every, like 99 percent of people are going to start out with a few core values and we call them the four Fs. It’s family, friends, fulfilling work, and faith. And so, these are the ones that come up time and time again.

And the problem with these things is that they don’t have a price tag on them. They’re not going to show up in your 90-day transaction inventory overtly, and that’s why we look through the inventory with curiosity, because we really want to find the transactions that are, they’re meeting those needs because it’s going to require some thinking to see which ones are meeting those needs or not.

For most people in some combination to some extent like at least three of the four of those are going to be in their highest value so for me Relationships are such a core Like they’re so core to who I am I could never be a digital nomad because having deep roots and community is something that is So highly valuable to me, so I didn’t know that about myself though before I started paying off debt.

So, I spent a lot of money going out with people happy hours, restaurants, coffees even like trips. So and then when I couldn’t, if I Deemed a trip to be too expensive and I couldn’t go like I would just feel so miserable like I would feel Extremely sad versus giving up like saying no to other things like so there was something I didn’t know about myself But I experienced all these things when I started paying off debt and we were on that scorched earth approach Of course, we cut out all this spending that got me to My actual core value.

And the problem with that is when you cut out the spending and you’re only looking at the how much. You miss the why, you miss the what, that was behind that purchase. And so that’s why it’s so hard to stick to these made-up budgets. Cause they only look at the how much and not the what or the why.

And we try not to say why very often, but it’s right during the 90-day transaction. So, I found this when I was cutting it out and cutting things out for a short period, like 30 days can be very healthy so that you can identify some of these things, but I did it for much longer than 30 days and that’s why I felt miserable, right?

But it was that short, it was that cut that made me realize. What I didn’t miss the restaurants or the coffee or whatever. I missed my people. I missed my friends And that’s when I was able to get creative and how I met that deeper need that core value in inviting people over for a bottle of wine, you know that still cost money but was much less expensive than brunch Or a potluck or a picnic or any of these things finding a free activity And that’s when stuff with the debt payoff, it started to be less of like dread and more of just, this is inconvenient is when it, when I made that shift in my spending in reaching my core values, not just thinking about the how much am I spending.

Miranda: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that it’s so interesting to know okay, I want to be with people, and I want to also do it within this, Reasonable amount of money. So now here’s a chance to get creative. What can I do? that Allows me to be with my people invite people over be out on the town, and it just takes a little bit more Creativity, but you wouldn’t even know that you needed that unless you were there Realized the mismatch between it’s not that I love going out to expensive brunches every week.

It’s that I love being with my friends and being able to sit around a table and hang out. You can do that at the park. You can do that on a walk. You can, like you said, invite them over to your own house. So, such a great way to dig into the why or the what is happening here?

What is the need that I’m meeting with these get togethers that. That isn’t, that really doesn’t have much to do with the money.

Jen: Yeah. And it, it took creating that space, and I remember this is what we talked about with you when you came on our show, is like creating that space for creativity in meeting these needs.

Right.

Jill: Yeah. And then you can feel so much better about your spending then. Not just so we can save and hoard money away, but so that we can free up those dollars where it really counts. So that we can purchase the things that are truly helping us meet a need for me Along the lines of the four f’s of similarly to gen its community, but I’ll choose Fulfilling work for my example It has been so important to me to find work That I can set my hands to that feels life giving and fulfilling.

And of course, for all of us, and sometimes we can find that in our careers. Sometimes we can find that in our volunteerism or just recreationally outside of our work. But thankfully I’ve been able to find that in my work. But again, coming from the social work background, I’ve never made that. That much money, but I haven’t wanted to have to grind or do something that I don’t love or doesn’t feel fulfilling to me.

And so, I have many times opted for the path of, I want to be salary flexible so that I can engage in this work that’s so meaningful to me. But it’s going to mean that. All these other values that I have need to be met more creatively. And so right now I would say I’m in a season of that of really wanting to lean into the work that I’m currently doing, but it’s not beyond six figures.

It’s not this massive amount of money. And so, I’ve had to make decisions in these other areas that aren’t. aren’t as important to me that I don’t need to spend on that. So, for example, my husband and I, we only have one vehicle. We both work from home, so we don’t need to. We can very well live off one vehicle and a couple of scooters, which, by the way, is just very fun.

We do live in a city. We have some scooters, too. Yeah. So, we’re able to get around to the places that we need on those scooters. We don’t go out to eat as often as we used to, but I’ve discovered that I really love cooking in my own kitchen and trying new recipes and hosting people in my home. And so, I’ve not deprived myself during it, but I have been able to identify where’s most important for my money to go to and where can I still meet my needs, but still not have to spend a ton of money on that.

Miranda: Yeah, I love that idea. I just recently saw a great I think it was a, I don’t know. I get all these different apps now confused because they all feed onto it. I’m like, I watched TikTok on Instagram. I see Twitter on Instagram, like everything’s probably from Instagram, but I think it was a thread that someone posted that said, or no, maybe it was LinkedIn.

Someone said, someone wise from the internet said that It’s better to make 80, 000 a year working 40 hours a week at a job than be self-employed and make 80, 000 a year make working 80 hours a week. It was basically, it was it’s not the pedestal of the world to be self-employed and kill yourself in entrepreneurism.

It’s okay to have a job and make money and have regular work life balance and stuff like that, which I think hit. Deeply both because I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time and because I value time freedom so much And I thought gosh, it’s so true that sometimes this just speaks to this idea of like sometimes you want to do work not just that has the highest dollar salary, but that you enjoy and that also offers the lifestyle that you appreciate and isn’t the quote unquote golden handcuffs and We do Give so much attention to high paying jobs, really prestigious, powerful jobs.

And a lot of times those come with a lot of, relational and timing baggage that you must navigate. Is that it’s not the best lifestyle for everyone. We forget that. And so, I love this idea of allowing yourself to say what. So, for the question. So, I wanted to start off by asking you, what type of job do I want?

That or not job. If you know a lot of my listeners are stay at home moms who could go back to work, but they choose to stay home and some of them have children and some don’t, but they’re doing meaningful work in their homes and their communities with their friends and families and relationships and are opting out of whatever the paycheck might be because that feels more aligned for them.

So, I think that such a good emphasis on just letting work and earning money have its place in our life, but not be. The meaning of our lives.

Jen: Yeah, we felt that was a huge gap in personal finance advice that the advice is always earn more. But even if that is the solution, it may not be the immediate solution.

And so, what can we do in the meantime, when earning more is something that will come later or may not come at all? Or the right choice may be to earn less. And this is really where we found our place and who we’ve written our book for is when maybe you’re in a place where right now you need to focus on your spending.

And maybe it’s not even like how much you’re spending, maybe it’s just what you’re spending on. Maybe you’re spending okay, but you’re hoarding money. Because of that like feel of wanting safety and you don’t have permission. You haven’t given yourself permission to spend it on things you value.

Or maybe it’s the, on the other end is that You’re spending paycheck to paycheck, and we just need to figure out what can be cut out. And that is a very immediate change you can make to your personal finances. It’s not the only thing. Income and investing are super important parts of the holy trinity of personal finance, but not enough emphasis is really given on the spending part.

Miranda: Yeah. So interesting. So, tell my listeners more about your upcoming book available now for pre order and about your podcast, which I know you’ve been doing for years and is such a great weekly free resource for people as well.

Jen: Yeah, so our book is called Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, and it is truly a guide to help you identify what you love spending on and your core values and those tangible things that you love spending on.

How to say no to the things that you don’t value which is a big part of it, how to build those boundaries know the reasons why our culture is so obsessed with consumption, and then also how to make the Lifestyle Changes Sustainable, and it is available for pre order wherever you pre order books.

Miranda: Yay! I’ll make sure there’s a link in the show notes for the pre order. I love to pre order and support emerging authors, so I’m excited to get my hands on a copy. Yay!

Jill: Oh, we’re so excited about it, too. And yeah, we’ve, we’re two times a week Frugal Friends Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

Miranda: Great.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights and ideas today. I love this idea of diving into the most recent season of our spending just to learn more about ourselves, with non-judgment and with gentle tenderness, our own experience, and then using that information to just make whatever little, tiny tweaks or maybe even just to celebrate look how great we’re doing.

We love the way that we’re living. We appreciate how we’re spending our money. I was talking to a client who I coach recently, and she said something about how my family travels so much. And I said, you know why? Because it’s the only thing that we really care about. So, we, like my kids don’t wear designer clothes.

We’re shopping a lot of things secondhand if we’re buying anything at all. But you bet that every free dollar that we have is going either to my garden or to an upcoming vacation. Because. We’ve learned over years of now paying attention to our, consumption and desires, what we really, where we get the bang for our buck.

And for us, that is, all those little experiences that we can have as a family. So, I wish that for everyone to be able to dive in and learn what they love and then put their money Where their heart is. And I appreciate the way that you’ve shared that message with us today.

Jen: Yes.

Thank you so much. It takes time, but the time is so worth it to figure those things out. It’s so worth it.

Jill: Oh, there’s so much freedom in it.

Miranda: Yeah. And I must just give an extra shout out for your podcast as well because you’re so pragmatic. I love a concrete piece of advice or like invitation or an example and being able to listen to.

The way that you’re sharing examples of like real tangible things that people can, maybe that exact idea isn’t what the one they’re going to use, but it’s clear enough that they’re like, oh, I know how to translate this into my own life. I feel like that’s rare in the world of finance and talking about money.

And so, I appreciate that so much and would emphasize to all my listeners to go listen to frugal friend’s podcast, enjoy Jen and Jill and pre order their book.

Jen: Yay, Miranda. Oh, Miranda. It’s an honor to hear that from you. We love your story so much. So, thank you.

Jill: Privileged to be here.

Miranda: Jen and Jill, thank you so much for being part of Practically Happy today. I loved passing the mic to you and learning from your wisdom and inspiration. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of your new book. The link to pre order The Frugal Friend’s book is in the show notes now, and make sure that you tune into their podcast wherever you like listening.

I’ll be back with another Pass the Mic episode next week. I hope you have a good one. Bye.