Here’s the problem with most frugality advice: it makes you feel like a monk who’s taken a vow of joylessness.
Joe Saul-Sehy and Neighbor Doug gather the roundtable crew—Paula Pant (Afford Anything), Jesse Cramer (Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors), and Andy Hill (Marriage, Kids, and Money)—to prove that frugality isn’t about deprivation. It’s about designing a life that feels good and costs less.
The conversation gets real fast: what’s the difference between thoughtful frugality and soul-crushing penny-pinching? How do you cut spending without cutting joy? And why do some people thrive on frugal challenges while others just end up resentful and burnt out?
The crew shares their own tactics, from “shopping your fridge” (a shockingly high-ROI habit most people ignore) to the power of frugal sprints instead of permanent deprivation mode. They break down how to align your spending with your actual values instead of society’s expectations, why raising income often beats shaving another $3 off your grocery bill, and how to turn frugality into something your kids actually want to participate in (no guilt trips required).
You’ll also hear about the expenses each of them refuses to cut no matter how frugal they get, because smart money management isn’t about eliminating everything; it’s about keeping what matters and ditching what doesn’t.
Plus: stories about mystery freezer leftovers, subscription fees that sneak in like cat burglars, and Doug’s perspective on… well, whatever Doug decides matters that day.
What You’ll Walk Away With:
- The difference between frugality that improves your life and penny-pinching that just makes you miserable
- Why “shopping your fridge” might be the highest-return grocery habit you’ll ever adopt
- How to design spending around your actual values instead of just cutting blindly
- The power of “frugal sprints”—short-term challenges that work without long-term burnout
- How to involve your kids in frugal habits without making them feel deprived
- Why focusing on raising income often matters more than obsessing over tiny budget cuts
- Which expenses the pros refuse to cut—and why knowing your “worth it” list matters
This Episode Is For You If:
- You want to save money but refuse to live like you’re broke when you’re not
- Traditional frugality advice makes you feel guilty about things that actually bring you joy
- You’re trying to cut spending but can’t figure out where to start without feeling deprived
- You want to model smart money habits for your kids without making them fear spending
- You’re tired of finance advice that assumes everyone should want the same lifestyle
Before You Hit Play, Think About This:
What’s the one expense you refuse to cut, no matter how frugal you get? And what does that tell you about what actually matters to you? Drop your answer in the comments—we want to know what’s on everyone’s “worth it” list.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic:
The Lengths Americans Are Willing to Go to Make Every Penny Count (Wall Street Journal)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Frugality comeback
- Inflation pressure
- Cutting household cleaners
- Buying half cows
- Bulk meat storage
- Freezer space limits
- Hidden carrying costs
- Costco comparisons
- Buying in bulk
- Food waste concerns
- Just-in-time thinking
- Depreciating groceries
- Overconsumption risk
- Gasoline comparison
- Candy overspending
- Gardening cost math
- Homegrown vegetables
- Not truly frugal
- Grocery store alternatives
- Aldi savings
- Over-optimizing frugality
- Shop what’s home
- Freezer clean-out
- No-buy periods
- Using existing inventory
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Andy Hill
Another thanks to Andy Hill for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Andy on his show, Marriage, Kids, and Money at Marriage Kids and Money: Personal Finance for Families – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Pre-order his upcoming book, to be released on January 21, 2026:
10 Financial Steps to Put Your Family First and Escape the Corporate Grind.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest, on Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- In millions of heads of cattle, how low was the inventory of cattle in the USA earlier this year?
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re out to help you either become the hit of the big social event of the year OR just survive it, and welcome Mr. Supercommunicator himself…bestselling author Charles Duhigg.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Morgan Housel: Why You Spend Money (And How to Do It Better) SB1769.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Doug: He got me invested in some kind of root company and so then I got a call from him saying, we don’t have to worry about money no more. And I said, that’s good. [00:00:11] Jesse: One less thing. [00:00:18] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:32] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighborhood. I can remember that frugality thing. Yeah. According to the people who determine what’s hot, unlike those George. So your dad insisted on wearing all summer. It’s making a comeback. We’re talking spending less and living more with our round table group of money friends. But that’s not all. [00:00:52] Doug: Of course, we’re also gonna fire up the stove and cook up another batch of my amazing tri. For our year long competition and now here comes a guy who’s ready to help us cook up some frugal living tips. It’s Joe Salt Sea High. [00:01:11] Joe: Hey there stackers, and happy Friday at Happy December to you. Man, it’s getting cold, but you know what? [00:01:18] Joe: We’re bringing the warm, well, not even the warm, the super hot tip for you today because we’re talking frugality. And for that we’ve got a fantastic round table group of contributors. But first, Doug, how you do [00:01:32] Doug: it, man, I don’t, it just, the hair’s not combing like it used to, Joe. There’s just, it’s not you combining both of them. [00:01:37] Joe: Combining both of them, yeah. [00:01:39] Doug: Yeah, that’s [00:01:39] Joe: good. [00:01:40] Doug: Bit better like [00:01:40] Joe: combining my beard. I was gonna say you’re showing off ’cause you have two of them left to comb. Mine is all done. Doug and I have three hairs between us on the top of our heads. However, we do have three great contributors, so let’s meet them. [00:01:55] Joe: Let’s start off with a woman who is far above Manhattan. This lovely first Friday in December. Paula Pant is here. How are you? [00:02:05] Paula: I am fantastic and uh. On the, the topic of hair mine is, uh, it’s pulled back in a bun right now, but I think this is a record in terms of how long I’ve been able to get it. I kinda, I hit like a growth plateau and then with the right nutrition dialed in and some supplements, I was able to push past the plateau. [00:02:27] Paula: To [00:02:27] Doug: To do what? To get hair. Are we still talking about hair? [00:02:30] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:30] Doug: Growth [00:02:31] Paula: hair. Yes. [00:02:33] Doug: Growth [00:02:34] Joe: pills. So are you saying your hair does not grow? Is that what you’re trying to say? [00:02:38] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m saying it, it kind of, it reaches a certain length and then it stops. But then I, I like changed my nutrition, I changed my diet, and then it started growing again. [00:02:47] Paula: Wait [00:02:48] Joe: a minute, wait a minute. This is crazy talk. Are you saying that with better nutrition and better diet, your body actually operates better? Is that what you’re trying to tell us? That’s [00:02:56] Paula: exactly it. That’s exactly it. It [00:02:58] Joe: grow. [00:02:58] Paula: Yeah. [00:02:58] Joe: What kinda madcap science is that? That is crazy. We’re gonna meet the Madcap scientist on this podcast on Fridays. [00:03:07] Joe: He’s the man behind personal finance for long-term investors. Jesse Kramer’s here. How are you man? [00:03:13] Jesse: Hey, I, I walked away and I came back and you guys were talking about growth pills, is that correct? [00:03:17] Joe: Nope, exactly right. Not doing it exactly right. Well. [00:03:22] Jesse: I mean, I’m here to talk about madcap science and growth pills. [00:03:24] Jesse: I mean, yeah, I’m ready for this episode. No, it’s early and uh, but do you, what’s up? [00:03:29] Joe: Do you, Jesse have some frugality pills? ’cause we are talking frugality today, like imagine if we could just take a pill and all of a sudden we’re like, no, I’m not gonna buy that now. That’d be cool. [00:03:39] Jesse: Right, right, right, right. [00:03:39] Jesse: So like you’re talking like. Not the official pharmaceutical growth pills, but like the cheap DIY you can, you know, follow your own online recipe growth pills. I’m in for it. I’m in for it. That’s [00:03:50] Joe: right. It’s good stuff. And the guy who has the, I don’t know, how do you segue off of Jesse’s growth pills thing? [00:03:57] Joe: I got no idea. A guy who has an [00:03:59] Doug: obnoxious amount of hair. [00:04:01] Joe: He does obnoxious amount of hair and an obnoxious amount of good looks. Mr. Andy Hill Wow is here with us for marriage, kids and Bunny. How are you brother? [00:04:10] Andy: I’m great. As my 13-year-old daughter would say, you’re really glazing me right now, Joe. Thank you. [00:04:15] Andy: I appreciate that. That’s 13-year-old talk for like, that’s a real [00:04:18] Doug: thing. I know, I hear that all the time. You know, you what I’m talking about, [00:04:20] Andy: Doug. You know what I’m talking about. I [00:04:22] Doug: do. Absolutely. [00:04:23] Joe: Well, wait a minute. I understand that it may or may not be a real thing, but can anybody, what does it mean, Andy? [00:04:29] Joe: Well, what does it, is that good? Is that bad? [00:04:30] Andy: It is. It means you’re like building me up. So thank you. You Oh, well, you’re glazing me. [00:04:35] Joe: We don’t need to build you up because you’re amazing and we love marriage, kids and money. And I heard a little bird told me that you may in January have a new book coming out. [00:04:45] Joe: Say It ain’t so. [00:04:46] Andy: It is so my friend and it is, uh, own Your Time and I’m very excited about it. For the YouTubers who are watching right here behind me, I’ve got a nice little visual of it here. And, uh, before the show, I told the guys that I put it up with like some chewing gum and some duct tape. So if it falls down. [00:05:01] Andy: During the live recording, I think we could all laugh. Uh, that would be good for my, my ego. [00:05:06] Joe: See, and Paula, Andy says, science PDA too. None of us like science except you. Sounds [00:05:11] Doug: like he’s trying to manufacture a viral moment. Oh [00:05:13] Andy: man. You know what? It’s, it’s all about the views, Doug. You know, what are you gonna do? [00:05:17] Andy: Right? You gotta get the, where you can views [00:05:19] Doug: and the [00:05:19] Andy: glazing. [00:05:20] Joe: Did you see that Stacking Benjamins episode where Andy Hill had that thing dropped behind him? It was amazing. It was incredible. Blood was gushing everywhere. [00:05:28] Andy: Yeah, [00:05:28] Joe: it was great. But very seriously, Andy. Uh, I know you worked very hard to go from being somebody where a corporation own your time to you owning your own time. [00:05:38] Andy: Absolutely, yeah. And you know, it happened for a good 15 years. I had a corporate employee life. It was good to me during that time until it wasn’t good to me. You know, it got to that point where I said, oh, I am married now. I’d like to spend some more time with her. Oh, we’ve got kids now. I haven’t seen them in a while. [00:05:53] Andy: So I’d like to spend some more time with them. What are their names again? Exactly. Exactly. And it was those times where I’d be like on the show floor at a truck conference or a car conference somewhere in Las Vegas, and it’d be my daughter’s seventh birthday, and I’d be sitting there under these fluorescent lights, you know, on a FaceTime call being like. [00:06:12] Andy: What am I doing? Why? Why am I, I feel like I’ve jacked up my priorities here. Of course, I’m trying to take care of my family, but can I move in the direction of owning more of my time with these financial moves that I’m making so that I can be a more present parent? Or at least I wanna say that I am a family guy, right? [00:06:29] Andy: I keep saying I’m a family guy, but am I really prioritizing my time in that fashion? So I wanted to put together this book to kinda talk through that story that I went through from feeling time broke. To feeling time wealthy and a lot of families that I interviewed over the 10 years I’ve had my podcast are in the story as well, and I’m excited to share it. [00:06:49] Joe: I am so excited. We’re gonna spend a whole 30 or 40 minutes with you in January diving into this so you can mentor our stackers on how to better own their time. It’s a great January topic, so I can’t wait for. What, what I love about having you here, and the reason I really like having you here today, Andy, is a big piece of this transition, I gotta believe. [00:07:08] Joe: When you decided it was time for you to start working for yourself, like frugality wasn’t a maybe. Like you had to be frugal, I would think. [00:07:15] Andy: Absolutely. Yeah. And then a big part of that preparation was me. Obviously saving up enough money to make that leap from corporate to solopreneur to say, okay, even if I completely messed this up, I’ve got some money set aside and then I’m gonna do it in January of 2020. [00:07:31] Andy: ’cause nothing bad will happen in, in, in 2020, so I could possibly go wrong. I’ve got the money set aside. What’s gonna go wrong? Boom. Yeah. Talk about frugality moment, March, 2020. My contracts that I had set up for my business all went away. I had, I had to live on my savings for a little while, and then of course I had that moment of. [00:07:51] Andy: Oh my god. Did you just make the worst mistake for your family man? But then, you know, you use your frugality muscles, they all come back and say, well, do I need all of these tools and, and things that I thought that I needed, oh, I can really get by, by doing a lot less with these types of things. So as a solopreneur, definitely used frugality and that muscle. [00:08:12] Andy: To help me survive that year, and then five years later, I’m still standing. So that’s great. [00:08:16] Joe: I know. I love how that story has such a happy ending, even though the pit in your stomach like, oh God, oh no. What the hell did I just do? That was a scary [00:08:22] Andy: moment. [00:08:23] Joe: Well, I can’t wait to dive into frugality with you, Paula and Jesse. [00:08:28] Joe: And by the way, for people that aren’t here on YouTube. Paula’s in the middle of like some movie cubby video or something. Paula, what the hell’s going on behind you while we’re recording? [00:08:38] Paula: I meant to transition to a table that would just have a blank wall behind me before we started recording, but then I got caught up in work and I looked at the clock and it was 5 0 3 and I was like, ah, I, I need, I need to jump on now. [00:08:50] Paula: And so I didn’t have time to move tables. Paul is in a train station. Yeah, so yeah, this is the gym in my building actually. That’s where I am right now. That’s, [00:09:01] Joe: she’ll be like, I worked out for a whole hour. Worked out my, my jaw muscles. Yeah. Well, Paula is talking frugality. She is in the gym doing this No studio for her and Andy’s gonna help us. [00:09:12] Joe: Jesse’s gonna help us. We’re gonna talk frugality today, guys. So buckle up. But before we get started, we gotta a couple sponsors to help us keep on keeping on so you don’t have to pay for any of this. Round table goodness on this Friday. So we’re gonna hear from them. And then Andy, Paula and Jesse are gonna dive into helping you live a more frugal existence. [00:09:40] Joe: All right. The inspiration for today’s piece comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. It is a piece about how frugality is, is making a comeback. I didn’t know Paula, that frugality was ever dead, but apparently frugality is kinda like, um. Fashion trends where all of a sudden people are like, oh yeah, I remember that. [00:09:59] Joe: Mm-hmm. [00:09:59] Paula: Well, I, I think it goes through cycles. It goes through waves, and prior to the pandemic, we had this bull run, and I think towards the end of it, 20. 18, 20 19. We had been in a good market for a while. People were feeling confident. And then, uh, boom. Of course 2020 everything changed. And then, and then big wild inflation hit. [00:10:18] Paula: So all of the factors were there to make frugality awesome again. [00:10:23] Joe: Make frugality awesome again. She went there. Is that [00:10:26] Paula: the next hat? Uh, [00:10:33] Paula: yeah. It doesn’t quite, I dunno. [00:10:35] Joe: Let’s figure out a way. Jesse, I think Paul has gotten somewhere. I mean, this isn’t back, just because people are thinking frugal is cool. I think it’s, we’re finally all feeling inflation. [00:10:44] Jesse: Yeah, I think it’s make frugality extremely rad. Uh, MFR is the acronym. It’s a big MFR. [00:10:51] Jesse: That’s a big MR on your hat. Um, sorry, Joe, I, I missed your transition. I was just sitting on that joke and I, I wasn’t even, I don’t even know what you said [00:11:00] Joe: to have any idea. I just had to keep rolling. I said, I do think it, as you know, you’re looking at economics all the time. Mm-hmm. I mean, looking at the numbers, this has gotta be, like Paula suggested may be about, uh, not just being a fad, but about the fact that, uh, inflation seems to be pretty high right now. [00:11:18] Jesse: Yeah. I mean, and, and even if you, okay. I think if you actually look at year over year inflation, maybe we are back down in that three 4% range. That’s like more normal, but. Just in case anyone’s confused out there, the nine or 10% inflation from two years ago, like that’s still baked into the prices. Prices haven’t gone down. [00:11:37] Jesse: It’s just that they’re not going up as quickly as they were before. And yeah, so I think for a lot of average Americans, their budgets are stretched. And I also think that something goes on in the financial media space that we all participated in our own ways. And there are these kind of like trending narratives at any given time. [00:11:55] Jesse: And yeah, for a long time now, one of the trending narratives that I’ve seen has been, you know, stocks are up and bull market this, and it’s great to be in ai and so maybe the frugality narrative hasn’t been as loud, but I, I still think there are a lot of people out there for whom. Life is expensive, and having a a solid monthly budget is really important. [00:12:14] Jesse: And implementing some sort of frugal principles into your life has a lot of benefits. So I don’t necessarily see it as a, um, a reason to be worried that this narrative is coming back up in the, in the Wall Street Journal. I just, I, I do think it’s interesting though. I, I found it to be a really interesting article. [00:12:29] Joe: Yeah, me too. We’re gonna dive into it in just a second, but I think, Andy, just to kind of put the stakes here, you know, you’re a guy that wanted to own your own time, so you had to be frugal. But for people that are content doing what they’re doing, we, we’ve all seen the numbers. It looks like healthcare costs. [00:12:44] Joe: Mm-hmm. In 2026 for all of us probably going through the roof. It’s a time when I think we have to learn to be frugal. [00:12:51] Andy: Absolutely. And, and I think it all comes back to your values too. If you start to look at your money a little bit deeper and you say, okay, is this a time for me to be frugal? And if you wanna translate that into like, Hey, I, I, I wanna spend according to my values, just looking at your numbers and just saying, okay. [00:13:08] Andy: What am I spending on that I don’t actually care about? I can work on decreasing that like crazy. And then obviously the stuff that is just the daily grind of like buying the groceries, you know, paying for the gas. That’s, that’s a little harder to fight. But the lifestyle stuff we can continue to look at and see what we really need. [00:13:26] Andy: Especially if we’re, if our income didn’t go up that 9%, uh, Jesse and the 3% of the 4% over the past few years, because that’s the reality we’re all dealing with. [00:13:35] Joe: Can I stick with you for a second, Andy? Because this piece from the Wall Street Journal, and I’ll link to it in the show notes, but nobody that’s listening to us or hanging out with us on YouTube has to see this or, or know about it. [00:13:46] Joe: We’ll go through some of these frugal tips they have. One of the early ones, Andy, is diluting their household products like cutting their cleaners in half and then going half water, half cleaner. Is that frugal or is that a bridge too far? [00:14:03] Andy: Everybody’s situation’s different. So that might be effective for somebody in a very low income situation, but I would venture to say the amount of time spent on something like that might be better used on maybe increasing income. [00:14:19] Andy: You know, if I spent four hours a week diluting my. Soap or some of the things that are in the article we’ll talk about. Maybe I could have spent four hours figuring out a way to just to make a little bit more money in my life. And that can be as simple as I’ve found, at least just looking around your house and finding some things that you don’t use anymore that maybe have a little bit of value. [00:14:41] Andy: You could sell ’em on Facebook marketplace. You know, get a little money back into your life, maybe analyzing your budget, looking at some subscriptions that you’re not even using anymore. Getting rid of those. Just finding simple ways that you could use those hours that either. Decrease the amount of your spending that you don’t care about or find ways to like make a little bit more money in your life. [00:14:58] Andy: Because I feel like those things where we’re spending ample amount of hours on ways to save a few bucks feels like that there, there, if you just keep going in that direction, that could get to a hard grinding halt of, uh, sadness and depression and spending that time just kind of figuring out a way to increase your income could probably be better spent. [00:15:19] Joe: Yeah, Paula, it’s funny because B Wayne hanging out with us said still can’t afford steak In the piece, they talked about a family buying half a cow, like buying bulk meat to beat grocery inflation. This seemed, I don’t know, is that a good tip? [00:15:33] Paula: Well, in order to do that, you need to have enough square footage to be able to store it. [00:15:38] Paula: You know, you need a, I asked the woman in Manhattan the question. Uh, no. I mean, so it’s trade-offs. How much are you paying for the extra space, even if it’s in your garage or your basement, that is still square footage that you’re paying for. And there are still underlying property taxes that you’re paying for. [00:15:56] Paula: And I think this often, whenever you read the frugality advice about shop at Costco and buy in bulk and stock up, I’m like, you know. You need space for that. You can substantially reduce your living space, but because stores will keep things for you for free if you just don’t buy the thing, right? Like the, the store’s job is to hold onto that inventory until you’re ready to use it. [00:16:18] Paula: Like that’s kind of what they do. [00:16:20] Doug: Yeah. I like where Paula was going with that. I, when I read that, Joe, I thought the same thing. I mean, you need not a small chest freezer in your basement and chest freezers are actually pretty. Inexpensive on the whole, as appliances go, you can get one relatively inexpensively, but I like your point, Paula, about inventory and who’s stocking that inventory. [00:16:40] Doug: Because look, we eat steak. I like steak a lot, and there’s no question, I look at the numbers on the little sticker that’s on the package of meat and think. Holy cow. How did we get here? Costco Cow. You know, everybody knows I love Costco and I’m gonna for four New York strips, I’m gonna spend like 80 bucks or something like that. [00:16:56] Doug: And you think is that, is like that $20 stick worth it to me? But in the article, I think it talked about that that person spent about $2,500 for a side of beef. If I buy New York strips, two packages of four, twice a month, I haven’t spent 2,500 bucks yet for the year. I didn’t have the holding costs, I didn’t have my money tied up in that inventory sitting in the chest freezer. [00:17:21] Doug: I had to go out and buy. And by the way, stakes are only good for about 12 months if you like vacuum, seal ’em and put ’em in your freezer. So suddenly that cost savings and this, I think, is just analogous to a lot of frugality that we think about in our lives. Sometimes the cost savings have a lot of hidden costs that you don’t think about. [00:17:41] Joe: Is this where Jesse, we take some, I think we can look at companies in the way that companies look at things. I know that the companies back in the eighties all of a sudden switch from stocking up on things to this idea of just in time inventory. I was gonna ship it as close to the, the timeframe of when it would fly off the shelf. [00:18:02] Joe: So the shelves are as empty as they should possibly be is true frugality, maybe thinking like a just in time inventory company. [00:18:10] Jesse: Um, wait, is, is frugality thinking like a just in time inventory company? I almost. I’m not sure. I almost think the, the opposite, or if I’m following the analogy where actually [00:18:20] Joe: stocking, stocking up would be more frugal. [00:18:23] Joe: I, I guess ’cause I guess I just think [00:18:25] Jesse: of like, when I think of frugal habits, I, I do think of like the one that Doug just referred to, whether we would call, you know, is it, is it Stacking beef? Are we staking Benjamin’s? I’m not sure, but whatever Doug was just referring to. Oh [00:18:37] Doug: my. That’s how it’s done, folks. [00:18:38] Doug: That’s how it’s done. [00:18:40] Jesse: Okay. Okay. But seriously, s going back to staking Benjamin’s. Jesse’s [00:18:43] Joe: on fire today, Andy. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. It’s spent [00:18:45] Jesse: 17 months of practice over here. People say, I go to Costco and I buy eight months worth of dish soap all at once because it’s frugal and it saves me money. [00:18:55] Jesse: And in that way, I think of at least the frugal habit is like finding those ways to buy in bulk or finding those ways to make things last, whereas more of that just in time approach is like, I’m only gonna buy something when I need it because any extra cash I have, I want it to be more productive than simply sitting in my pantry. [00:19:14] Jesse: Right. If it, the bananas that I bought last week, there’s no interest on those bananas. In fact. Right. You could make the argument getting really nerdy here, that through things like food waste, like once we spend money on food, actually it, it’s like a, a, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s a value. That’s a, it’s like a car. [00:19:31] Jesse: It’s a a what kind of asset? Depreciating. [00:19:33] Andy: Depreciating asset. Thank you. Especially avocados and bananas. Exactly. Avocados, [00:19:38] Jesse: very big. Depreciating. So I’m getting nerdy here, but. It’s interesting to think about what you had just said there, Joe, but, uh, in general, frugal habits. Probably you, you have a lot of depreciating inventory in your house. [00:19:51] Joe: Yeah. Which makes me think that that’s not particularly frugal. Like if I’m pre spending all this money today for stuff I’m not gonna use for six months, like how, how frugal is that? And then the caring cost that Paula and Doug are talking about. Maybe that’s a, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a, that’s a mistake. [00:20:08] Jesse: Mini counter argument. This is a mini soapbox. And then I’ll, I’ll hand it back over to you guys. One time I was thinking about gasoline. And I feel like gasoline is the product that you never, ever, ever buy more of than you actually need. I can’t find a reason for someone to stock up on more gas than they truly need. [00:20:25] Jesse: Whereas there are some, the stake story is the perfect example where it’s like, wait a second, did that guy just buy way more steak than he ever needed? And therefore he ends up consuming more steak than he otherwise would’ve, and he ends up kind of shooting himself in the foot. ’cause it’s not that frugal after all. [00:20:41] Jesse: There’s no way he would’ve eaten that much steak or spent that much steak on. And so he just. He spent more money than he ever would’ve if he just approached steak from a normal point of view. And I think there are some products in our lives that lean more towards the gasoline that just like there’s no reason to ever overuse them and therefore having an inventory of that product could make sense. [00:21:00] Jesse: Whereas there are other products, candy might be one or chips for me, right? Mm-hmm. I self, I will admit, like crackers, candy, chips, they do not last in my house. And if I were to be like, oh, great, three for one Reese’s Pieces after Halloween, I’m just gonna get a year’s worth and put ’em in the, in the par. [00:21:15] Jesse: Like what a terrible move. Both frugally and, and [00:21:18] Joe: diet wise. We had a 25% off the day after Halloween when I walked into Albertsons, down by my house, 25% off Jesse Kit Kats, and I, oh, it was everything I could do to not buy ’em all I was gonna buy. Are you [00:21:31] Jesse: more like a, a left Kit Kat or a right Kit Kat kind of guy? [00:21:36] Doug: What [00:21:37] Jesse: do you like the left Kit Kat or the right one? Better? [00:21:39] Doug: I think you’re talking about Twix. If you’re confused, you’re right. Your Andy Delic. That’s confused. I’m [00:21:45] Joe: like, what are you talking about right or left? What if I like one of the two in the middle? I don’t know, Andy. They bring, they bring up, bring up a good story. [00:21:55] Joe: I’m just watching Paula making that argument. Andy, when it comes to food waste, Jesse mentioned food waste. I gotta think that that’s a big piece of frugality, especially when you don’t know when the next paycheck’s coming. [00:22:08] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like the just in time purchasing. You know, I think a lot of the conversation around in this article was, you know, bulk buying or trying to have your own garden or things like that. [00:22:20] Andy: And I’m like the garden thing, at least maybe you would get some personal satisfaction from. But I think if you look into the detail of how much you’re gonna spend and how much you’re gonna like put together and make sure that the deer in your neighborhood don’t eat all of it and you got the right fertilizer. [00:22:33] Andy: I don’t know how frugal that ends up being. That’s why they invented these things called grocery stores, and they’re right down, you know, most neighborhoods they’re. Fairly close to your, where you live, and hopefully you can go there and, and buy those things. And so having it all into your one place. I, I’ve done this too in my life where I’m like, you know what? [00:22:49] Andy: I need a gym in my house. You know that I’m here all the time. I think that would be very efficient and frugal because I’m here and then I try to do too many things here, and then I run outta space and then I’m like, you know what? There’s a gym. Down the street that I can just go to and it’s like and [00:23:04] Joe: podcast from and have people walking behind you the whole time podcast from there right now. [00:23:07] Joe: Exactly. And [00:23:08] Andy: you can make new friends, Paula, you know, there’s people walking right by you right now. So I don’t, I think we, sometimes we try to over-optimize things a little bit and it ends up being to our detriment. I guess. That’s my point. [00:23:17] Paula: You know, there are two blogs that this reminds me of. So one is JD Roth actually did the math. [00:23:22] Paula: I believe it was jd. I, I might be misremembering who it was, but I, I’m 90% certain. It was JD who actually did the math on trying to grow his own vegetables and like meticulously documented every single expense and came to the conclusion that it’s not worth it. Yeah, [00:23:38] Doug: they’re [00:23:39] Paula: like $9 tomatoes. Yeah. When you’re done. [00:23:41] Paula: Yeah, exactly. But he, he has like the spreadsheets and the data and like extremely detailed documentation of this experiment. [00:23:49] Joe: I think, uh, Chris Mamula did the same thing. Oh yeah. Uh, when he was on the show, he was talking about, we brought up gardening and he was like, oh God, no, that’s, that is not, he said, it’s really fun. [00:23:59] Joe: Chris said, it’s really fun. And it’s great. And they taste better, by the way, when you grow your own vegetables. Yeah. They taste so much better. He goes but nowhere near frugal. [00:24:07] Paula: Right. And then the other thing, do you remember the blog, the Simple Dollar by Trent Ham? Sure. And much of what is the one that Greg McFarland used to make fun of? [00:24:15] Paula: Nonstop. Exactly. Because so much of what was in this article reminded me of what was in, uh, that blog, you know, where Trent Ham would talk about. Unscrewing his oven light in order to save on the electricity that in the bulb of the oven light, he would bisect his dryer sheets so that that way he gets twice the value out of every dryer sheet. [00:24:37] Paula: I mean, it is renting seat [00:24:38] Joe: or a borrowing CDs from the library and ripping them and downloading them so you didn’t have to have a streaming service. I totally did that. [00:24:45] Doug: I absolutely did that in the early days when you could have like recordable CDs, a hundred percent did that. [00:24:51] Joe: Yeah, well you were taping pennies to the thing and getting the, the 10 CDs for one penny deal too, Doug. [00:24:57] Joe: Oh, I did that too. Yeah. Yeah. You changing your name 18 times. Those of us [00:25:00] Doug: have a certain age. Oh [00:25:02] Joe: yeah. Right. It, it wasn’t Andy Hill, it was Andy Hill, Andrew Hill, you know it Dash Andy B [00:25:06] Andy: mg. I think it was, uh, that was the one I took advantage of for a while. [00:25:10] Joe: Yeah. Columbia House. [00:25:11] Doug: Oh, yeah. [00:25:12] Andy: Yeah. [00:25:12] Joe: Had all of them. [00:25:13] Joe: Is there any way, because I have this on my list, is there any way we make gardening to table? Like do, do we make that offset food cost or, or not really? We all in agreement that that’s. A lot of fun and good, but not necessarily frugal [00:25:25] Andy: unless you own a restaurant where you could chart $65 per plate, then gardening to table [00:25:30] Joe: is probably working out for you. [00:25:31] Joe: There go. We got a new one of those restaurants in Texarkana. There you go. Just looks really good. We spent a lot of time taking the tips that were in this piece and talking about why it wouldn’t work. So let’s kinda reframe this just briefly. What’s a good frugal tip that you have, Andy? [00:25:47] Andy: Well, as we started that, I really think that we do have quite a bit of waste. [00:25:52] Andy: You know, depending on when we’re in the situation in our lives, we’re looking at our money and saying, okay, what am I actually spending on? The first thing that I find that a lot of people have is just like. Stuff they’re spending money on that they don’t even use anymore. Whether that be we’re in the era of subscriptions, you know, that’s like an easy, easy one to pull out of the tree just to say, okay, how many of these streaming services that you have that you’re not currently watching a show on, can you save 10 bucks, 20 bucks a month? [00:26:18] Andy: And how does that add up over the year? That’s like an. Easy, frugal, kinda look at my budget and make sure I’m not wasting money. I feel like that’s a good use of your time. If you spent one hour doing that, the return on your investment versus diluting your soap could be a lot higher. That’s just an easy, quick tip that I’ve found personally, and I’ll throw a lot of people I’ve spoken to. [00:26:40] Joe: We did that too, Andy, Cheryl and I, just having a weekly meeting and walking through our banking app and now Monarch money, just looking and going, oh, do we really need that? Did we need, did we use that? Did we have fun with that? Like, no. Yeah. Great tip. Jesse, how about for you? What’s your favorite frugal tip? [00:26:57] Jesse: One that we, I mean, I suppose I’d done it a couple times before, but then we picked it up, especially when we were getting ready to have our baby. And then we’ve kind of continued on since then is making intentionally big meals with the intent to then freeze like half of it for some future date. So especially with like, I don’t know, some big like pasta and sauce meal or like chili is another really good example where you can, you can make in bulk in some sort of like big pot or something like that, and then just free some. [00:27:24] Jesse: I guess if you focus especially on cheaper recipes, Chili’s, one that comes to mind like, okay, that, that in itself is frugal, but then you’re just, you’re frugal with your time, right? Andy owning your time. You’re doing the same cooking anyway. You just, you know, with a bigger portion and then you just end up eating more from home cooked meals, which is, you know, almost always gonna be cheaper than, than dining out. [00:27:45] Joe: Taking that tip of batching your food. Cheryl and I just downloaded an app, which uh, and there’s several of these I found out, which when you put something in your refrigerator, you, you then just very quickly just boom, put down what it is in the fridge. It takes far less time than I thought it would take and now I have like a, this inventory of what I have and then I find now that I’m using up that inventory before I go and buy new stuff, which is super helpful. [00:28:10] Joe: Paula, you got the last one before we go to our amazing. Trivia contest. [00:28:15] Paula: Well, actually, piggybacking off of what you said, what I was going to say is shop what you already have. Oh, shop your fridge. Shop your closets shop. Like if you, so many of us have all of these things piled up over time. Um, whether it’s, you know, bags of protein powder or old clothes that are in the back of our closet that we forgot that we owned, or old shoes shopping. [00:28:39] Paula: Those hidden things that exist in the corners of your closets or your pantry. And the way to actually adhere to that is take, I dunno, a week or two weeks or a month, you know, take a particular period of time and commit to not buying anything. Because so much of the time we forget about those things because we keep replenishing. [00:29:02] Paula: But if you have some temporary buy nothing. Periods of time, then it forces you to interface with those things that you’ve buried and forgotten about. [00:29:12] Joe: Paula, we don’t have a big freezer. We have a normal sized free, actually a little bit small freezer, but Cheryl and I decided to do this challenge where we weren’t gonna buy. [00:29:21] Joe: Anything new until the freezer was empty and I thought it would take a week. It took us a over a month, it took us maybe six weeks. Like there was so much buried stuff hidden in that freezer and not the most fun eating that that six weeks, but it became quite a game, you know, just going, oh, okay. Let’s see if we can get this done. [00:29:43] Doug: Were you Googling recipes for freezer burn shrimp, Joe, at the end of it. [00:29:49] Joe: It’s still got it. Uh, I remember we had some cauliflower pizza, uh, cauliflower crust pizza that was freezer burned on the top, but it’s still, it still packed a punch. Did the, did the. Yeah. All right guys, at the halfway point of every show and no exception, today, we take a pause from the scintillating discussion for our year long trivia competition. [00:30:11] Joe: This thing is a barn burner right to the end. We got only three weeks left, guys, three weeks left of this competition and. We dunno who’s gonna win. Doug, what’s our score with three weeks to go? [00:30:24] Doug: Well, right now it’s gotten a lot closer than I think anybody anticipated, largely because Paula had some substitutes sitting in for her throughout the, throughout the fall, the later summer months and the fall, which has made things much closer. [00:30:38] Doug: Paula has 10 and a half points. OG is at 12 points, and Jesse has. What could be construed as a solid lead at 13 and a half points, but with three weeks to go, it’s up for grabs. Anybody can take this thing. [00:30:54] Joe: It’s gonna be tight. Andy, you’re playing on behalf of og. That means you’ve got a real mission today, man. [00:30:59] Joe: The good news is you get to go second. Jesse’s gotta go first. The other good news, wait a minute. What was Paula’s score? Does she have a shot still? [00:31:05] Doug: Paul is a 10 and a half and so it’s gonna be pretty, she could tie, she could tie, she could tie How do the half [00:31:11] Andy: points work? What is, what is with the half points? [00:31:13] Andy: Long story. [00:31:14] Doug: Yeah, that was an ugly moment in trivia history. [00:31:20] Joe: Long, long, long story Andy. It was not, not our finest moment. I guess I’ll learn this next one. Andy will be our finest moment. And that’s Doug doing today’s trivia. Doug, you ready? [00:31:32] Doug: Sure am Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. All this talk about frugality has me thinking about beef prices. [00:31:40] Doug: If you’ve been to a grocery store lately, you’ll know that prices are skyrocketing. I love this idea of buying half a cow though, which prompted me to look up this trivia question as of January 1st of this year, the USDA National Agricultural Statistic Service. Reported that herds are at their lowest inventory in the US since 1951. [00:32:01] Doug: So here you guys are pros. I probably don’t have to instruct you on this, but just follow me here. When I say low, you guys say how low is it? Ready? Head of cattle count are so low. [00:32:14] Andy: Hello? Is [00:32:17] Doug: it, is it funny? You should ask? That is my trivia question. In millions of heads of cattle. How low was the inventory of cattle in the USA earlier this year? [00:32:31] Doug: I’ll be back right after I find out how they raised just half a cow to sell it later. I mean, how, how would half a cow even work? Which half [00:32:39] Joe: it could be very tough. That’s a tough science experiment there, Doug. Yeah, tougher is the parents of half a cow. Let’s, uh, begin, Jesse, with you head of Kettle in the United States as of January of this year? [00:32:57] Jesse: Yeah, no, no idea. This is one of those ones where I think it’s less than the heads of humans, but is it 1 million? Is it 10 million? Is it a hundred million? Say [00:33:08] Joe: you’re answering in millions. [00:33:10] Jesse: Oh, un understood. Okay. Understood. I’m gonna say that there’s, uh, 20% the number of cows that there are people, 350 million people. [00:33:20] Jesse: I’m gonna say 70. 70 is my answer. [00:33:23] Joe: 70 million, [00:33:25] Jesse: correct. 70 million. [00:33:27] Joe: All right. Andy, what are you [00:33:29] Andy: thinking about that? I think people eat a lot of beef in our country, so I’m gonna go a little higher. I’m gonna say like 120 million. [00:33:38] Joe: 120 million [00:33:41] Paula: and Paula, so I agree that people eat a lot of beef, but I think a lot of it is imported. [00:33:48] Paula: Oh, from Argentina? Yes, from Argentina and other places. Japan. Kobe beef. Wagyu beef. There’s all kinds. So, uh, does it have to be a hold number or can it be a decimal point? [00:34:03] Joe: There can be a decimal point. [00:34:04] Paula: Alright, then I’m gonna take the under and go with 69.99. 9 9 9. [00:34:10] Joe: What the hell, Paula? 69.9. I’ll just go 69.9. [00:34:14] Joe: I think we can stop there. All right. Paul is locked in at 69.9 million. Jesse’s got 70 million. Eighty’s got the upside at 120 million. Who’s gonna win? We’ll find out in just a moment. [00:34:30] Joe: Jesse, you kicked this off by saying it was 70 million. How you feeling now that, uh, Paula capped you at the kneecaps? [00:34:39] Jesse: Um, I mean, I was feeling better until PFO doodle laughed at me in the chat. [00:34:47] Joe: P [00:34:47] Jesse: doodle, I mean, I, I’ve still got no clue. I’ve got no clue. [00:34:51] Joe: PO doodles like 70. How cute. Andy 120 million. Everybody else thought it was much lower. You feeling good? [00:34:58] Andy: No. I feel like even more of a, of a joke for PO doodle. You know, what whatcha you gonna do? [00:35:03] Joe: I don’t know. I think it could be something there. [00:35:05] Joe: We do, we don’t, you, you just put [00:35:06] Andy: it out there. You gotta make a guess, right? We, we eat a lot of beef. We do. Paula, [00:35:12] Paula: I, I think it’s pf op doodle, like personal finance, Oodle operations. Doodle Personal Finance Operations. Doodle. Interesting. I like it. Or maybe operator. [00:35:24] Joe: I, I, I didn’t mean, how do you feel about pf Oodle name? [00:35:28] Joe: How do you feel about your, your guess here? About my guess [00:35:30] Paula: about us, 69.9 repeating, you know, I, I’m actually feeling pretty good about it. I don’t, I don’t wanna jinx myself, but. I feel good. [00:35:42] Joe: 89 feeling goods in a row. Can’t be wrong. Doug, what’s the, is, is, is Paula gonna gonna win this thing? [00:35:50] Doug: Well, I’m not gonna tell you that right away, but I will say, Hey there stackers. [00:35:53] Doug: I’m beef lover and guy who’s the Ferdinand of this podcast. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug Cattle herds are the lowest they’ve been since 1951, which is why I thought we’d ask just how low is low? How many head of cattle in millions? Is the size of the USA herd? Well, I’ll tell you this, it’s 33.3 million fewer than what Andy guessed. [00:36:17] Doug: It’s 16.8 million more than what Paul guessed, and just 16.7 million more than what Jesse guessed, because the correct answer is unbelievable. 86.7 million, making Jesse our winner. And he’s, uh, he’s, he’s more or [00:36:31] Joe: less locked it up, Joe. Well, that takes him to 14 and a half, means OGs gotta win the last two in a row. [00:36:37] Joe: To tie it up. Yep. [00:36:38] Andy: That’s [00:36:38] Joe: impressive, Jesse. But no, that would give him 15 and he would, he would win. [00:36:44] Doug: OGs at 12 right now. Oh, OG At 12 Oodle. It’s a Big Mac after that. Well, oh, that’s it. [00:36:49] Jesse: We [00:36:49] Doug: got a 12 [00:36:50] Jesse: ounce flank steak going to pf Oodle straight from me to you. I’ll, I’ll buy you an Omaha steak Oodle. You can have a big glass of milk with it. [00:37:02] Joe: Jesse’s like LOL. This pf Oodle. Uh, that’s funny. Nice job, Jesse. Congratulations. [00:37:09] Jesse: Thank you. Thank you. [00:37:10] Joe: Jesse’s only, uh, had to cheat. Like how many times Doug four to win this [00:37:14] Doug: thing he did. He flat out brazenly, cheated four times. [00:37:18] Paula: I’m so thrilled that a member of the coalition to defeat og, it looks as though he will emerge victorious. [00:37:25] Joe: Paula, let’s just focus on you for a second. All you had to do was ignore your gut one time and say 70.1 1 1, 1 1, 1 1. That’s all you had to do. [00:37:37] Paula: It’s so statistically improbable how my gut can be wrong 100% of the time. [00:37:46] Joe: No. What’s even more worrisome is that you trust your gut a hundred percent of the time. [00:37:52] Joe: At some point you just go, oh, if my gut says this, I would just do the opposite. That’s what George Costanza did. It worked for him. Yeah. There’s more cows in Idaho than people pf Oodle says. Alright, let’s dive into the second half of this conversation because you know, we talked about our best frugality tips, but Andy, let’s talk about, really, let’s get a little bit strategic about our frugality. [00:38:17] Joe: Is it grow the gap? Meaning the gap between expenses or income, or is it ruthless expenses first and then try to grow income after we’ve figured out how to live a frugal lifestyle. Like given those two scenarios, do you try to earn more and lock in your spending first, or do you try to get really frugal first and then grow your income? [00:38:40] Andy: I do think conscious spending is easier. In the beginning what Then coming up with some new side hustle or a new business idea or things like that. And that can be done pretty quickly, I would say, in an afternoon if you’re really looking at your expenses and saying, where is it going now? Some of the bigger decisions on the frugality note, like. [00:39:02] Andy: Is my house too big? You know, those are some big questions that you’d have to work. And that’s not an afternoon, you know, that’s like, Hey, I planned for a family of four and we had one kid, but we’ve got a 3000 square foot house and we don’t really need all the space that, those are big decisions. But those can be the biggest changes when it comes to growing that gap. [00:39:21] Andy: Like your housing, you know, do we have too much car? Are we spending too much? And if we go back to the groceries thing, like groceries can be a big part of the expenses. Like one switch that. My wife and I made whatever, five, seven years ago, they built an Aldi near where we lived. We switched to that and man, it is not that much different at all from where we’re going to Kroger and we’re saving so much more money just for those everyday expenses. [00:39:44] Andy: You know, those top three things, housing, transportation, food. If you can hit those, those make a big difference. But yeah, on the long term, finding ways to grow the gap for your income, it has to be a part of the conversation when it comes to this frugality conversation. And the best place to earn money, in my opinion, is the place you’re already making money. [00:40:02] Andy: So if you’re making money at your employer, figure out a way that th those folks can eventually pay you a little bit more for what you’re doing, whether that’s overtime or commissions, or bonuses, or, you know, figuring out a way to prove your worth there so you can get progressive raises. And if that’s not possible there, then yeah, maybe figure out a way you can earn a little bit more money with the side hustle, something you’re passionate about, and eventually move towards that and long term where you’re. [00:40:28] Andy: Being able to not only make more money, but also own more of your time down the road. [00:40:32] Joe: Yeah. When we were neighbors, you would extol the virtues of Aldi, maybe I would say once a week with me and I’d go, whatever. Sounds great, sounds fantastic. And then we got one after I moved here to Texarkana and I went in for the first time. [00:40:46] Joe: Even after you told me the whole two years you were lived right down the street from me. Mm-hmm. I finally went into one. I’m a moron. I am such a moron. I should have hit up Aldi. [00:40:58] Andy: Some of those grocery stores are super pricey and like if you just go in there for your everyday stuff, you know, like the, you know, it doesn’t always have to be the fancy food that you want to get or whatever, but most of your staples you can get there and it’s a lot less, and this is not an Aldi commercial or anything, but whatever the equivalent of that is in your neighborhood, there’s one of those like find that place that you can get most of your stuff for a lot less. [00:41:17] Joe: Paula, do you start off with earn more or save more? [00:41:21] Paula: Well, to your original question about Grow the Gap, [00:41:24] Joe: yeah, [00:41:25] Paula: I start with Grow the Gap, but I don’t think that that’s incompatible with what Andy just said. Andy, what you just described is growing the GA because there are two ways to grow the gap. You either spend less or you earn more, or you do a combination of the two. [00:41:40] Paula: If you spend an afternoon just picking the low hanging fruit, boom, right? You focused on growing the gap and you have massively grown the gap in one afternoon, and then you can focus on growing the gap through the earn more side of the equation. But I think if you start with the framework of how do I grow the gap? [00:41:58] Paula: Like what is the delta between income and expense, and how do I make that delta as wide as possible? If you start with that framework and then ask yourself, what is the next step to do from that point forward? That’s the mindset. [00:42:12] Joe: You’ll find some low hanging fruit fairly quickly. [00:42:14] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. [00:42:14] Joe: Like you ask yourself that question. [00:42:16] Joe: Everybody who’s listening to us thinks of something immediately that is like, oh, there’s that thing. That’s a two second move that would save me some money. I. Jesse, you’re nodding your head. [00:42:26] Jesse: Yeah, I think the best thing about the low hanging fruit is that it’s on sale at Alti, so you’ll pick it up right there. [00:42:34] Joe: Oh my God, Doug, what is up with Jesse today? I dont know why I’m [00:42:37] Doug: even here today. What do you need me for? [00:42:40] Jesse: Oh man, I can’t believe none of you. Pounced on that. You know, like a good deal at Aldi, you gotta pounce on ’em. Oh my [00:42:45] Joe: gosh. Aldi, if you wanna sponsor this podcast, you can see how good we are at just tying it in. [00:42:49] Joe: I think their prices are too low to [00:42:51] Andy: spend money on advertising, probably. [00:42:53] Joe: Bummer. [00:42:53] Jesse: They rely on us, Andy. They rely on us. Right, right. No, I, I really like tackling this question and I think that lowering the expenses, focusing on the expenses side is definitely the best use of your time in the short run. [00:43:08] Jesse: Like, you know, if someone said. I need to fix my personal, my budget today or tomorrow. It’s like, okay, you, you gotta look at your expenses and you gotta figure out what you can trim out of it. But that trimming, and this goes back to what Andy was saying earlier about like when you’re diluting your dish soap, like there’s almost so much diluting you can do and, and then you’re done. [00:43:29] Jesse: Similarly, there’s just only so much you can cut out of your budget and then you’re done. So spend a weekend to cut, trim the fat outta your budget, and then after that, if you wanna continue growing the gap, I think you have to focus on the income side. And there’s no easy thing to do on the income side for most of us, other than get a new certification. [00:43:49] Jesse: Find your way to a promotion, potentially consider job hopping. I mean, all these things take time. If it was really easy to make more money, I think a lot of people would be making more money. It’s not really easy, so, so you have to take your time and, and find your path forward. [00:44:02] Joe: Jesse, at the beginning of the year, I flew out to Las Vegas and spoke with Alex Ramzi, and he can certainly make making more money sound super easy. [00:44:11] Jesse: I think he does like, because he does, all you gotta [00:44:12] Joe: do is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right? Mm-hmm. But every point that he made was what you talked about, which was get a certification. If you’re working in a retail environment and you like it, that’s great If, if it’s your lifestyle, that’s great, but you could probably go take some part-time class just for a few weeks, gain a certifications for something that you’d love to do, and almost two x your income overnight. [00:44:38] Jesse: Yeah, I think you can, and it’s very doable. Like there’s a difference maybe between like simple and easy. I, I truly think it is simple. I think there are a lot of simple paths to increasing your income. I’m not sure any of them are easy, like if you already feel like you’ve got kids at home, your, your day job is really busy. [00:44:56] Jesse: You’re just not sure where in the day you’re gonna find this time to go out and, and get this associate’s degree or this certification or whatever it may be. That’s where it becomes hard. It can be both simple and hard. I think that’s probably the way that most of these paths are. [00:45:09] Joe: Andy, when you brought up looking at the tough things, the home and the automobile, have you ever had to go through that and thought about, you know what, what if we get rid of a car and made the hard choice? [00:45:20] Andy: Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that we did in the neighborhood that we live in, and you know Joe, ’cause we, we were neighbors at one point. There’s an opportunity for you just to continue doing this lifestyle inflation, especially when it comes to family. You know, families around here, you know, so we have. [00:45:36] Andy: A house that fits for our family. But yeah, you know, there’s something in the back of my brain all the time, and I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just the society we’re in, or just the neighborhood that I’m in where I’m like, well, if I worked harder and I made more money, then I could upgrade this thing. [00:45:51] Andy: You know, give my kids a, a bigger room or, you know, I, I’ve always wanted a bigger office or, you know, I can have that gym here, you know? But unless you have those conversations, like Paula, if you had those conversations with yourself and just say. What is enough? What’s contentment for me? What is, what is my enough point? [00:46:08] Andy: Having those conversations with yourself and figuring out, no, this is just fine, and are there other solutions for those types of things that are out of this house that I can go do. That won’t require me to upgrade everything. So I think there’s a lot of like right sizing opportunities or downsizing opportunities. [00:46:25] Andy: Do I need a new car? No, you don’t need a new car. You can use a, a gently used car. Or can you, can you use this car for 10, 15 years? Does it look as cool as the new ones? No. But who cares? Like you’re, you’re more comfortable, you’re more content with your life. You’re not feeling strapped all the time. So those bigger ones, the housing, the, the transportation, the food. [00:46:45] Andy: Yeah, I mean, you joked about the Aldi thing, but there’s a lot of people that think going to Aldi’s, like for poor people or something like that. So they don’t wanna have that, uh, view of themselves. So a lot of it is like societal, like lifestyle inflation, all these sort of keeping up with the Joneses kind of ideas. [00:47:01] Andy: If you can kind of say, you know what. I’m in my forties now. I don’t really care what people think, which I’m trying to, I’m working on right now. Then you can have a lot of better opportunity to stick with the things that really matter to you, and those big three are a big part of the, the puzzle. There [00:47:15] Joe: are huge. [00:47:16] Joe: Paula, did you ever have to look at your housing, your automobile expenses? [00:47:21] Paula: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Those were the primary things that I targeted in order to save money, because housing in particular is such a major line item in almost everybody’s budget. I. For five years had zero out of pocket housing expenses and doing that by, by virtue of house hacking, doing that in my twenties, literally changed my life. [00:47:45] Paula: Like that’s, I, I’m not trying to be overly dramatic when I say that. That was what gave me money to invest while I was in my twenties, and that has had a compounding effect that has positively impacted my life so far. [00:47:58] Joe: You’re doing that right now, aren’t you just moving into the gym? [00:48:01] Paula: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [00:48:02] Paula: Think, think of all of the electricity that I’m saving by, by just podcasting outta here. [00:48:08] Doug: You got a great shower there. You got a snack bar. I mean, it solves a lot of problems. [00:48:15] Joe: I’m, I’m just looking at some of the comments. Melissa says, one of my employers offered, uh, house upgrades, car upgrades. I don’t know that I understand Melissa, what, what she’s talking about. [00:48:26] Joe: Melissa, are you talking about that you upgraded your car, you upgraded your, your house? Think because of the fact that you had a, I [00:48:32] Doug: think she’s trying to say that she witnessed her employer doing that. That they were constantly ah, upgrading their house or upgrading their car. The lifestyle creep car. The lifestyle creep. [00:48:39] Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. [00:48:41] Joe: I want to ask about this idea of, uh, frugal sprints versus permanent lifestyle design. Andy, do you guys practice any of these frugal sprints with your family where you do things like we talked about just before the break, the freezer challenge? [00:48:55] Andy: Yeah. My, my wife and I was gonna jump in on that. [00:48:57] Andy: My wife and I call it refrigerator challenge, where it’s like, okay, do we have a lot of these leftover containers or things like that that we’ve, maybe, we went to a restaurant and we took the takeaway from our kids not eating all the meal, and then we put it in there, and then we all of a sudden, look, man, our refrigerators full of stuff. [00:49:12] Andy: Why are we going out again? Or why are we going to the grocery store? Let’s do refrigerator challenge, let’s clean this thing out. And yeah, like you said, sometimes by the day six or seven, it’s like, okay, I don’t really want to eat like six packs of hummus again here, you know? But I guess I’ll make that my meal. [00:49:28] Andy: But yeah, I mean, it also feels cleansing. It feels like you have utilized the resources that you have within your house and you’re not wasting, because I feel bad when I waste things or I throw out food. In the garbage can. It feels like I am throwing money in the garbage can and that is not something that I like to do. [00:49:46] Andy: And luckily I have a wife that is, feels the same way, where it’s like, no, let’s, let’s use the stuff we have. And it just feels right, honestly. It just does. And the same point that Paula made up earlier where. If we look inside our house for the thing that we’re about to buy on Amazon and say, I wanna buy this thing, wait a second, do I have something like that in my house already that I haven’t used or I haven’t even taken outta the box? [00:50:10] Andy: Or, you know, I think if we can think, what do I have in my house first? And then maybe the second thought is like, what can I buy used instead of brand new? Then go to new me can have that sort of cascading effect. That could be helpful. We also, if [00:50:24] Joe: started thinking about Andy in, in my house, can I borrow it? [00:50:28] Andy: Yeah, there you go. Even better. And, and great opportunity for connection for a friend. You know, like we’re in this era of loneliness and isolation. Like go talk to your neighbor and say, can I borrow that thing? [00:50:37] Joe: Again, more crazy talk. Can I talk to somebody? [00:50:40] Andy: I have to [00:50:41] Joe: talk. No way. What, what, what, what are we talking about? [00:50:45] Joe: Frugal sprints. Jesse, in your house, you guys do [00:50:46] Jesse: any [00:50:47] Joe: of [00:50:47] Jesse: the [00:50:47] Joe: frugal sprints? [00:50:48] Jesse: To be honest with you, we, we, we haven’t, or at least some that I can really think of. It’s more of just like trying to monitor the budget on a monthly basis and, and when things get a little outta hand, just, just reigning it back in or having some conversations with each other before we choose to spend any sort of big dollar items. [00:51:03] Joe: But none of the No. Spend challenges? None of that? Not [00:51:05] Jesse: really. No. No. I will say the one thing I thought was really interesting ’cause it crossed my mind earlier and then I was really glad that Andy brought it back up. Is this interesting fact how, um, fr frugality almost has this like slight moral ethical bit to it too because of that feeling of being wasteful. [00:51:23] Jesse: You know, I think a lot of us who have frugal tendencies there is that, you know, okay, well here, here’s an example for you, Joe. Is there a sprint in my house other than me cleaning up other people’s plates? That is the frugal sprint in our house is that someone has left, has extra food on their plate. You can’t waste it, so Jesse’s going to eat it. [00:51:42] Jesse: So that’s the one version of a frugal sprint we’ve done. But um, but no, I just think it’s interesting ’cause we all know about this whole, you know, money’s more than numbers. It’s really about psychology and I think that moral, ethical element of frugality is really interesting. Uh, not that we have to chase down that, that path at all, but, uh, it’s worth bringing up. [00:52:00] Joe: I just noticed that Jesse changed his subtitle to Aldi associate. Oh, [00:52:04] Jesse: I did, I did. Purveyor of the low hanging fruit. [00:52:07] Joe: That is again, Aldi. If you got a few bucks, and I know Andy, to your point, maybe not, but maybe not Paula, uh, spending sprints or frugal sprints. Not spending sprints. You wrote a wild spending spree called Vegas when you live there. [00:52:22] Paula: Um, I mean, sometimes I do go on spending sprints. Yeah. But in terms of a frugal sprint, the, for me, the big thing is groceries because it’s so easy for the inventory to just go to be off, right? Like, you buy too many groceries one week and then suddenly you’ve, you’ve gotta eat the stuff or it’s gonna go bad, and you don’t have any more space in your fridge. [00:52:43] Paula: You’ve run outta space in the freezer. That’s the thing more than anything else that I’m, I’m trying to modulate because it’s so, you know, it doesn’t take a whole lot for. The inventory to just be off. Yeah. [00:52:55] Joe: Andy, uh, one more question for you. Have you involved your kids at all in any of your frugality exercises? [00:53:03] Andy: Yeah, I think what we try to do with the kids is have them practice intentionality with their spending to, they have figured out ways through conversations with my wife and I to earn money here at the house and then earn money outside of the house as well. And then with that, we have them. Work on utilizing it in specific ways. [00:53:24] Andy: So spending, saving, giving and investing, and then kind of breaking it down to those categories. And I, we even give my daughter a clothing allowance per. Month. And this helps her to see how much she has and then be intentional with her spending save up when she wants to buy bigger things. And it’s amazing how if you do this early enough, it actually works. [00:53:46] Andy: And she is so massively responsible. I’m so proud of her for all that she’s doing right now. And she’s just actually showing us the way, really, because I end up overspending sometimes and I’m like, dang, I need to be more like my daughter. And actually sticking within the budget. I think that uh, if you start those conversations early, they can really be helpful. [00:54:04] Joe: What a fantastic discussion. I love how this Wall Street Journal piece, you know, we took their suggestions and went, yeah, no, thank you. And I think we, I think we supersized them. I guess that’s another marketing thing, isn’t it? We bought more Scooby and frugal. I’m gonna supersize it. I dunno, what’s another term for that? [00:54:21] Joe: We made it better. Alright, let’s find out what each of you are doing. Uh, let’s start with our guest of honor. Andy, you’ve got a pre-sale, a presale goal I know for the book, and people can be first in line to get it. So book comes out, I believe is January 21st. I don’t have the date in front of me. [00:54:38] Andy: You got it right man. [00:54:39] Andy: You have a, you have, you have a stellar memory. Yes. January 21st. Own your Time comes out. You can pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And yes, we have a pre-order goal of. 500 by January 21st. And I think I have a goal thermometer right over there. I can’t show it on camera, but it’s, we’re at 151, so if anybody wants, wants to support me on the goal, that’d be great. [00:54:55] Andy: But the book is all about, it’s for families who want to own more of their time. They’re feeling pressed financially. They’re feeling pressed. Time-wise, they say, wow, does life really need to feel this way? And through our conversations today, I think we even discovered just with some intentionality and some focus on where your money’s going, and then growing that gap, as Paula has said, you can really start to realize that you can own more of your time progressively. [00:55:21] Andy: This isn’t an overnight thing, but over time you can really say, wow, I’ve gone from feeling time broke to time wealthy. And I, that’s what we’re trying to explore in the book. [00:55:30] Joe: What a great way to start your year too. I mean, it’s the end of January. It shows up in the mail, and now you’re on the attack beginning your 2026 on the right foot. [00:55:38] Joe: Paula, what’s going on this December at Afford Anything? [00:55:42] Paula: Well, it’s the first Friday of the month, and on the first Friday of every month I do a macroeconomic update. You know what’s happening in the wider economy and how is that affecting you and your wallet? That is what every First Friday episode is all about. [00:55:55] Paula: We talk about the jobs report inflation data. All the big macro factors, [00:56:00] Joe: and then you take the macro factor and then the inflation and [00:56:04] Paula: yeah. Get frugal. We, we, we take the macro and make it micro. Take the macro and then talk about how it impacts you and your family. That is at the Afford Anything podcast. [00:56:14] Joe: We’re finer podcast. Our found wherever Finer podcast are found like, like the personal finance for long-term investors podcast. Jesse, what’s on the calendar for you? This fine December. [00:56:26] Jesse: Next week, well actually, uh, just a couple days ago, an episode with Andy came out. It’s awesome. You should go tune in. [00:56:31] Jesse: And then, uh, next week one of our ask me, anything comes out, I tackle a question about the different lengths of mortgages, which now more than ever, apparently now there’s a 50 year mortgage on the table. And, uh, I also do a deep dive into HSA accounts deeper than I’ve ever gone before. Because here’s a pop quiz question for all you listeners. [00:56:49] Jesse: What happens to an HSA account, uh, when you die? Because it’s actually much worse than I assumed it would be. Ooh. And uh, anyway, so a couple cool deep dive. Ask me anything questions. [00:56:59] Joe: Dun dun dun. You gotta listen to find out. That’s the personal Finance for Long-Term Investors Podcast. We’re also our finer podcast. [00:57:07] Joe: Are found. Alright, big thanks to our YouTube friends for joining us. You guys rocked as usual, we appreciate you so much. We record these Monday afternoons most of the time, so if you show up on YouTube on Mondays, if you get the 2 0 1 newsletter, we’ll email you and tell you exactly when we’re recording every week. [00:57:24] Joe: That’s docu Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 to subscribe. It’s always free and it’s always really, really good stuff. Doug, you’ve got it from here, man. What should we. Take away from today’s episode. [00:57:38] Doug: Well, I guess I’m driving the bus. Here’s what we should have learned today. Joe. First, take some advice from Andy Hill. [00:57:44] Doug: The best place to find more money is where you are already employed. Uh, Hey Andy. Not for nothing, but is embezzlement spelled with twosies or, or just one? Nope, probably not. Uh, second, don’t I? That’s what I got outta what he said. Second, don’t forget, when Jesse told us about staking, Benjamin’s quoted the quote of the year right there. [00:58:05] Doug: Sometimes it’s better to have your extra cash in your bank account instead of in your pants. I think that’s a direct quote. What he said. Again. Nope, not, not did I get that one wrong, but the big lesson. Don’t ask Joe’s mom about raising half a cow. She’ll make jokes about raising half a man. Really, ma? I mean, he’s sitting right here. [00:58:27] Doug: So what if he can’t operate a chainsaw or change a fuel filter in an 83 El Camino like I can? He, he’s doing his best, ma. This show is the property of SB podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:58:59] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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