114: Why Budgeting Doesn’t Work (and what to do instead) with Jill Sirianni
I have an honest confession to make. I am a terrible budgeter, but I’m a world-class financial goldfish. In this episode, I’ll explain my “financial goldfish” status and budgeting for our neurodiverse brains. I’m joined by Jill Sirianni, host of the Frugal Friends Podcast. If you’re like me, and budgeting just doesn’t work for you, you’ll learn a lot from our conversation. Join us!
Show Highlights:
Characteristics of a financial goldfish
Budgets–the diet of the financial landscape (and they don’t work any more than diets do for most people)
Top reasons we fall victim to impulse buying
The myth of “Wants vs. Needs”
The downfalls of typical antiquated budgeting
Creativity in meeting needs without spending
Jill’s 90-day transaction inventory
Helpful online tools
A moral problem vs. a systemic problem
KC’s helpful hack to be more thoughtful before spending impulsively (like late-night DoorDash)
Jill’s tips for creating a pause before spending: keep a list and buy second-hand
Understanding the marketing behind sales
Making choices about your behavior today that may not align with spending habits held up as the “standard”
Understanding values-based spending
In finances, one size does NOT fit all.
Resources and Links:
Connect with Jill Sirianni and Frugal Friends: Frugal Friends Podcast and Buy What You Love Without Going Broke book by Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni (pre-order now!)
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
Music.
KC Davis 0:05
Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle care, the podcast where we talk about anything, everything, mental health, your well being, and try to talk about, you know, ways to take care of ourselves that actually work and work for our brains. I'm your host, Casey Davis, and I'm here with Jill Sirianni, who is the host of the podcast frugal friends, and we're going to talk about budgeting for our brains. Specifically because I am historically a very bad budgeter. I always used to, my husband's a big budgeter. I used to tell him, like, he's like, What do you mean you have a budget? And I was like, Well, I'm like, a financial goldfish. Like, I just have a general sense of, like, how much I have, and I just, like, try to only spend that, but then, like, if the tank gets bigger, well then like, my sense of what I can spend gets bigger. And anyways, the joke is, is that, like, I don't know if you know this, but a goldfish never stops growing, and it will grow to the tank you give it exactly, and I always become massive. I was like, I am a financial goldfish.
Jill Sirianni 1:03
I love that. I think most of us are like that. And really, there's nothing wrong with how you're describing your approach. Yeah,
KC Davis 1:12
I always tell him was like, I mean, I've never, like, put us in debt. And he's like, Yeah, but, but we could have so much more money if you just, like, stayed a small goldfish in a big pond. I'm like, Well, I'm sorry,
Jill Sirianni 1:22
it's not how goldfish
KC Davis 1:24
work. Yeah, that's not how goldfish work. But listen, I feel like this is one of those areas where, which is funny, because it's like cleaning where, like, there's so much advice out there that doesn't work for people who are neurodivergent. Do you have a take on that? Like, why that is?
Jill Sirianni 1:41
I think what you're describing here is the issue with managing personal finances, kind of across the board. I think most people would say budgets don't work for me. Budgets are kind of the diet of the financial landscape, and they feel so restrictive to so many of us, and so many of us have been taught it's been ingrained in us, whether overtly or covertly, that spending is bad, and if you're going to do a budget, then it's how can you spend as little as possible? And I think one of the things that we're trying to reframe, both in our podcast and in the book that we just wrote is being able to describe managing money as what works for you, being good stewards of the resources that you have, and not so restrictive with it, but recognizing that spending is a skill. We all spend money. We spend money every single day, and dispelling this myth of there are spenders and they're savers. No, we all spend money, and we can, just like any skill, learn to get better at spending that money, make sure that it is aligned with our values, with the way that we want to be spending and in a way that's going to be beneficial for our whole personhood. I've always
KC Davis 2:59
thought it was interesting how, like a lot of the big financial like advice givers, they make it seem like the issue. I mean, God, you nailed it on the head when you said that budgeting is the dieting of the financial world, because it is so similar. A lot of the big financial like advice out there acts as though it's a mainly, like, a character issue and a willpower issue, when really, like, it's a behavior and, like, we have a lot of science on like, what changes behaviors, but like, when I'm sitting like, yeah, if I'm sitting down, like, making a spreadsheet, yeah, sure, my morals and my like will to do differently in my values, like, come into play, but like, those are not the things like making the decision at 10 o'clock at night when I've had a bad day and I'm really hungry and I want to Door Dash food for the like, fifth time that week. You know what I mean? Like, it's those moments that I personally struggle with where it's like, okay, I have these long term goals, but I also have these, like, short term needs, but is it a need? And is it a want? And am I like, over moralizing what needs and wants are and and I just, you know, those are, like, the make or break moments. For me, it's not even like the big organizational things. It's like those moment to moment, like, I want a Starbucks drink. What do I do
Jill Sirianni 4:19
with that? Oh, Casey, everything that you're saying, there's so much congruence here. And I think just a lot of your messaging that I've been hearing from you, morally neutral care tasks is something that I hear from you a lot. And we like to describe debts, neutrality, spendings, neutrality that, yes, we are accustomed to, and we hear the voices of people assigning character issues to what we do with our money, and it's completely ignoring the fact that we've got History Society marketing tactics that are tapping into behavioral economics that are getting us to spend impulsively. They're tapping. Into what is known of the human psyche to be able to gain more money and make us feel as though we don't have what we need. And in order to belong, I have to spend money, and there is nothing wrong with us for then buying that thing or making that impulse decision. But that doesn't mean that we have to stay in that place. It doesn't mean we have to set up camp there and remain victim to some of these tactics that are happening unbeknownst to us, and then we're stuck wondering, why did I just buy that at 12am on Amazon? It
KC Davis 5:38
strikes me that we're like, bringing a water pistol to a gunfight when it comes to like, behavioral science, like people who want you to buy things are heavily invested, and like the science behind what makes you want things and make impulsive decisions, and, you know, makes you think you're going to be happier if you have this thing and all of that right? And like, on our side, there's not a lot of people giving us, like, helpful tips for the actual moment, besides, like, I guess, grip your, you know, white knuckle it like, just don't,
Jill Sirianni 6:08
right, just don't spend. Just stop spending, just budget. Just stick to your budget. Just don't impulse by and if that were realistic, then we will all would have figured it out by now, we like to talk about the top five reasons that we impulse buy. That's a question that a lot of our listeners are coming to us with, and when we're looking at spending as a skill and becoming better spenders, this is something that's really important to understand. It's not an exhaustive list, but it can be helpful to find ourselves. What am I most prone to here? So a lot of times it'll either be habit spending, whether it's time of day or location, it has just become a habit for us, and we are not even necessarily thinking about it or planning intentionally. It's just when I'm at the store, that's when I get a caffeinated beverage for myself. It could also be that we are shopping as an activity. It's just what we grew up doing on the weekend, and it's what we do for fun. It's how we were trained to enjoy ourselves in our leisure time. And so we just go out and shop as an activity, and we spend money we weren't necessarily planning on other times it could be stress, shopping or shopping because of any type of emotion that we're experiencing, whether we're happy or sad or celebratory. There's a lot of things that can play into what propels us to spend and it absolutely can be connected to our emotions. There's also social influence. So this is all of the social media, but it's also the people within our communities who they have XYZ it looks good in their kitchen, their lives look like they're functioning so well. And maybe if I bought that thing, my life would go smoothly too. And so I'm gonna get that or we follow people on Instagram who make things just look so beautiful. And we think if I buy that thing, I'll be cool, I'll belong, I'll have all the things just like they do. And the final one that we see really regularly is the thrill of the hunt. Just I like to dig. I want to find the deal. I like finding those red or yellow tags and getting that clearance, and I feel smart and powerful and engaged when I can get the thing, I can dig for it and find it so again, not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the top five ways that we end up impulse spending, and I think one of the first steps is identifying which one might I fall under until before we can then identify what could be next steps so I can be kinder to myself, kinder to my finances, and really make more beneficial Decisions, decisions I can feel really confident and proud of.
KC Davis 8:53
I feel like I can identify with a lot of those in the same target trip, right? Like, you know, you go to, like, there's a target right by my kids school. So, like, often I'll drop her off, and then you pass by this target, and you're like, you know what? Like, it would be fun to just stop and go in there, like, I don't really need anything, but I'm gonna go and then you go in and it's like, okay, there's like, a coffee shop in there. So you're like, Well, I'm gonna get myself a beverage as I walk around. And then maybe you see a few things you like, maybe you realize, like, oh, I need razors and some toilet paper, whatever. But, like, I also am, like, obsessed with the Joanna Gaines, like, set up and do it
Jill Sirianni 9:32
so well. They make it all look so beautiful. It's not how my house looks, but looks great there.
KC Davis 9:38
And I particularly always get sucked into, like, seasonal decor, which was fine the first day I the first year I lived in this house, because I didn't have very much decor. But what I find that I do is, like, I see it and it's so cute, and I get it, and then when I actually go to, like, get my decor out, I'm like, I already had this. That's embarrassing, or I had something that was so similar to this, like, it was silly of me to buy that, and it's all. Almost like there's this esthetic yearning. And I've even noticed this when I look at tick tock like, I'll see a tick tock of someone like, you know, making a stake over a campfire while they, like, look out their tent into, like, a rainy kind of like, and I'm like, wow, that feel like watching this feels peaceful, and I like that feeling of peace that I feel, and I want to go do that so that I can feel that peace again. But when I actually sit and think about like, what would I actually be feeling if I was sitting in a tent and it was muggy, it was raining, it's muggy, right? I'm cooking a steak, so the smoke is blowing in my face. I don't have, like, the seasonings that I would normally want for this steak. I'm gonna have to figure out, like, where, like, when I actually think about how I would be feeling if I was in that it's not peaceful. And I feel like I do the same thing with, like, shopping, right? You go in, you look around, and it's like, this setup is so esthetic. It's so beautiful. Like, look at this little coffee cup that's like a copper little coffee cup. And wouldn't I be so peaceful? And wouldn't I be so quaint? Wouldn't I be so cutesy, so demure, so mindful, if I was sipping coffee from my little copper coffee cup in the morning, right? And then I get it home, and it's like, worst case, it's like, oh, this bird, this scalds my fingers because it's copper. And then, like, best case, it's like, oh, now, like when it's sitting in between all of my mismatched mugs, like it's actually not bringing me. The thing that I felt when I was in the store,
Jill Sirianni 11:34
the one that gets me is the tiny carafe with the cup that can go over top of it. Have you seen these? Oh, I haven't bought one. Are you kidding? I'm like, it looks so adorable. Wouldn't that be so cutesy, so demure, so amazing
KC Davis 11:49
that people are gonna experience
Jill Sirianni 11:54
next to my bed. It's gonna be luxurious for me. And then I think in the middle of the night, I'm gonna be clanking glass around to drink your cup of water to dump it, right? Yeah, because it also requires that I had filled it up before I went to bed, like waking up my husband like it's just, it's not practical, but I love the idea of it, and I think you're really onto something here, and even you were describing the wants versus needs. And I think there's such a myth there, especially when it comes to this outdated approach to budgeting, it's well, separate your wants from your needs and only spend on what you need. And then it's like, well, how do I even define that? Because I need food, but what degree of food am I then allowed to spend on? Can the food be tasty? Can the food be organic? Can the food be cooked by somebody else, or does it have to be bland, cooked by me? I need to not like it, because it's all about deprivation. And I think one more like
KC Davis 12:54
the opposite, where in my head, anything I buy from the grocery store is fair game, because it's a grocery like I can buy, okay, I don't have to look at and, I mean, I'm blessed to not have to look at food prices when I go. I can just, you know, I can buy the brand that I want, but that doesn't, like, no Casey. You can't just, like, stop at the, like, summer decor aisle in heb and feel like that doesn't count because it's going towards the grocery budget. Like, doesn't work that way. One
Jill Sirianni 13:26
of the things that has been really helpful to guiding us in making some of these decisions, we love to talk about values based spending, aligning our spending behaviors with the things that we say are most important, but along those lines and kind of dispelling the myth of wants versus needs. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has been super helpful. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's that triangle of our various types of needs. And at the very bottom, you've got your physiological needs. That's your air, water, food, shelter. Then you've got your safety needs, of employment, health resources. Then comes love and belonging. Needs. This is where friendship, family, sense of connection comes in, followed by esteem, our own needs for confidence, respect, achievement, and then very tippy top is the self actualization, where we can find our meaning, our purpose, our creativity, our expression. And one of the downfalls of typical antiquated budgeting is it just wants to look at those bottom tier needs of what's the air, water, food, shelter, maybe resources and employment, and forgetting that we have all of these other needs that we can spend on. As long as eyes wide open, we feel like we're the ones who are making the decision, not being baited, manipulated into making those spending decisions, and so with some of these, and
KC Davis 14:47
you know, what's so wild about that is the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I now know he like, kind of nicked from a an indigenous cultures like view of talking about those things. But. It was never intended to mean you need these things and more than these things, right? Like it was intended to describe that people cannot focus on this level of need unless the level of need below it is already secure. So it's not like a ranking of which needs are more important, necessarily, in terms of like, human fulfillment, it's that like, people can't focus on their need for creativity if they can't pay their rent. Do you know what I mean like? That's that like, which I feel like, is better explanation for what you're talking about, and
Jill Sirianni 15:38
it does help to describe, yeah, how we kind of move through those but in reality, once we do have some of those basic needs met, we will spend on trying to achieve some of the higher levels, maybe before some of those needs have been met in its entirety. It's not as if, oh, we only move on to level three once we've fully achieved level one. That's not entirely true, and we see that kind of across the board, like, oh, we go spend on our cars sometimes before we fully have all of our electricity bills paid. Well, yeah,
KC Davis 16:13
it's not supposed to be prescriptive, like, you can't move on or whatever. I think it's more of a systemic observation. Like, yeah, people are not gonna have the bandwidth to, like, look for, you know, all these other things, if like, there are some basic things that systemically are not being provided for them. So how do we tackle that?
Jill Sirianni 16:33
I think part of it is permission to recognize that we are whole people with varying degrees of need, and it is okay to spend money to meet those needs, and it's also okay to get creative on meeting those needs without spending money that some of what you were describing, both of us are describing. And what's this draw to esthetic? Why is what is it about this glass carafe water thing, or the seasonal decor that's making me want to spend on it, and it could be helpful to identify Is there a deeper need that I am trying to meet here? Is it a need for creativity? Is it a need for peace and stability? Is it a need for belonging? I'm not going to know that that answer for every person, but I think it is important to start to create those pauses and be curious with ourselves about the spending decisions that we're making. What is it about the seasonal decor that's drawing me in, and how am I going to feel about that purchase afterwards, is it going to create a sense of confidence that is going to solve for the need that I'm identifying, or is there a deeper need here where I could hit that need more accurately without buying this item, and I could meet that need in another way? And so that curiosity piece really is the first step we don't like to jump to, well, we don't really call it budgeting. We call it making a spending plan, but there's so much work that can be done and self understanding and kindness found before we even get to the action steps. I know a lot of times we want to jump there, but recognizing that our actions and our behaviors originate in our thoughts and our emotions and so beginning, there is the best place to start, and we recommend curiosity. Practicing curiosity with ourselves. This will be beneficial for every aspect of life, certainly finances. And one of the things that I like to describe with curiosity is avoiding the why question, not that there's anything wrong with why, but it really can put us on the defense when we're looking introspectively. It's the difference between, why do I always spend so much money on seasonal decor that I end up throwing away at the end of the season, to what is it about seasonal decor that I like so much? What does it give to me? Right? Such a big difference.
KC Davis 19:02
Wow, that's huge. Because why do I want this pumpkin? You know, it's like, first of all, I'm probably going to find a reason that means something about me that I probably don't, like, you know what I mean, like, Oh, I'm being impulsive, because I think it's going to be my life better, as opposed to, like, the kind of curiosity you're talking about, it's more likely to uncover something about myself I do, like, which is, like, I love that magic of holidays and my little kids thinking that everything is magical, and that feeling of like, comfort and warmth, like that is actually a good thing about me. And I think that, like you said, that's a better place to start, because then I can just ask myself with a lot of self compassion, like, okay, so is this stuffed pumpkin? Is that really going to get me closer to that, you know? And I, you know, to that point of, like, the first step being awareness. I think that, you know, that's something that's talked about a lot. Oh, first become aware of. First become aware. But I think the part that we don't say enough is that, like, it is totally appropriate to spend, like, an extended time in that space, like, literally before you change anything. Like, if you spent a week not making yourself change anything about your spending, but just asking yourself being become aware, like that moment of, like, you know, becoming aware of why you want the pumpkin doesn't matter if you buy the pumpkin anyways. Like, just, you don't have to pressure yourself to do that, but like to get the full picture without, like, the shame of shutting down or making the mistakes and things like that. Like, it is okay to spend some time just becoming aware. It's just not one journal entry process. This is a, yeah,
Jill Sirianni 20:42
it really could take weeks, and there's so much discovery that can happen out of that. When it comes specifically to our finances, one of because I know we do love tangible steps, one of the things that we encourage people to do is a 90 day transaction inventory, so again, not shifting any behaviors, just observing ourselves objectively, like that fifth grade scientific process we all learned. We're not bringing shame, we're not trying to shift anything. We're just curious what's going on here. And so that's gathering all of our credit card statements, bank statements, every transaction that we've made over the last three months, and making almost journal entries next to all of it. This is not going to necessarily be done in one sitting, depending on how many transactions there are, but it can be really helpful.
KC Davis 21:29
Are there any of those, like online tools that, like, do that automatically, that you found have been that are like, helpful or beneficial? Because I know that there are some out there that'll kind of like, try to give you a breakdown, give you everything
Jill Sirianni 21:39
we do like monarch money as an app for helping you to create a spending plan, but a lot of times, if you're not already using something like that, it can be just as easy to just download a CSV file of all of your transactions, especially if you've got a couple of different bank accounts, and so whether that's printed out or in a spreadsheet, creating another column where we are being curious about our emotions and learning who we are giving ourselves the opportunity to understand ourselves better. It's quite Invitational, and it can be quite kind to then look at okay, what happened here with this transaction, what had and how did I feel about it afterwards, what led me to spend on this thing? How did I feel about spending on it afterwards? And keep going down the list, we won't remember every single item, but it can help to bring our attention to when do I end up spending money that I wasn't intentionally I didn't want to spend intentionally? Are there certain times a day, is there a pattern that I'm seeing popping up here and from there, once we've done all of our curiosity and we're learning more about ourselves, and we're asking ourselves whether or not these things are aligned with the things that we would say are actually valuable, then it can inform some of the decisions that we might make from there, how we might curb some of the ways that we spend that we are now deeming this actually wasn't that beneficial to me. I thought that it was gonna get me time with my friends, but really, we were just at this loud restaurant. I could hardly hear anyone. I felt so overstimulated, and I went home stressed like but I just wanted time with my friends. So is there a different way that I could get time with my friends that might actually meet that relational need and potentially even help me financially as well? I feel
KC Davis 23:34
like that's such an important step, because I feel like some people who do that step are going to find, okay, there's a lot of areas where I maybe am spending money that I don't necessarily like, that I don't want to be anymore, or that I could spend in a different way. And then I think, though that, like, just as powerfully and important, there are people that will do this exercise and be like, Oh, I'm not the problem. The problem is, like, systemically, I'm having a hard time finding a job that will pay me a living wage, and the cost of housing has gone like, you might look down at it and go, Oh, shit. Like, this isn't my moral problem. Like sitting down and trying to decide, Okay, should I shop at the Aldi versus the heb because this one has three cents. Like, I feel like that is, it's like equal parts has the potential to cause despair, because you can feel like, you know, okay, I feel powerless. But there's also this part of it that is, like, very freeing when you realize that, like, society wants you to think it's your moral problem, when it is, in fact, a systemic problem, and like, the quicker we stop treating it like a moral problem, like a moral individual problem, and start realizing it's a systemic problem. Like, the faster we can figure out ways to live a meaningful life with those constraints, instead of kind of like spinning our wheels.
Jill Sirianni 24:56
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, I think, recognizing that there's so much bigger happening, although we do have to respond to what's within our power and our control to be able to shift in this narrative. And some of that is that awareness piece and choosing differently, but also recognizing we get so many people coming to us saying, Okay, I've got everything what now? And we're saying it's not always about cutting. It's not about deprivation. Sometimes it might be sacrifice, certainly, but we are aiming at easier nos and better yeses when it comes to some of these things, and certainly for some of us, it could mean bigger life changes that need to happen. It's not just the grocery store that we end up shopping at. But how can I make sure that I'm being valued in the place where I work is where I'm living still aligned with my season of life? Or is there an opportunity for me to rethink my living situation here, which is why we say a 90 day transaction inventory and include all of your bills and everything on it, because everything is up for negotiation when it comes to redefining what's going to be beneficial for us in our personal finance management, the top three areas of Our spending for most people is food, transportation and housing. And so transportation and housing decisions we're not impulsively, typically making. We're not making those decisions every single day, food decisions we are and so making sure that then we can kind of align our lives with that recognition in mind. Okay, what can I do to help some of the fluctuating food costs that are happening, but also realize it's not just about how much butter costs that week, but what is my housing situation like? What is my transportation situation like, and what is the money coming in? And are there bigger decisions that I can make here? Is there a decision, a one time decision that I can make that'll make everything else easier or unnecessary in the future, talking about just functionality. And
KC Davis 27:07
sometimes those are revolutionary. Like this is, I mean, I know people who are, you know, talking about multifamily households, intergenerational households, buying land and having a couple of houses with different like, sometimes these. And I think that's kind of what I was trying to get at. Is like, get at, is like, if we could, some of us, it's like, if we give ourselves permission to stop spinning our wheels over, like, Man, I feel so guilty that I use DoorDash and instead go. Maybe the system's not working, and what I actually have control over is like, looking at some revolutionary moves that I need to make that will have an impact on some of these, like, bigger financial things. I like that. So let me ask you a couple of, like, little things that I think have helped me, and like some advice I've heard, and tell me your thoughts on them, and then see, and then I want to hear if you have any other ones, right? There's this one on Tiktok that was so helpful to me, that was talking about that, like, esthetic trap, right? Because I get sucked into the Joanna Gaines setup. And her thing was, like, if you find something that you really, really want, one of her tricks was like, to take it to a different aisle, like, take it to the bathroom aisle with the towels and the, you know, whatever, and stick it and look at it. And she's like, sometimes the magic falls away when you're not looking at the whole, you know, like fake living room they've put there, you know what I mean? And I was like, that's such a good tiny tip for those moments where you feel like, Oh, what do I do? And then, like, I recently deleted DoorDash off of my phone, which isn't to say that I don't use it anymore, but now, when I decide to do it, I have to reinstall the app. First make the order, and then I delete the app. And that moment of pause, of like, extra labor has forced me to, like, take a moment, take a beat, because I will still order DoorDash. Like, I think the other day, I was like, we had a really rushed day, and I was like, oh shoot, I gotta feed the kids. I have these things I also need to do. And I was like, I'm just gonna order some DoorDash. Or like, wow. You know, my mom came over to listen to me read my book, my new book, out loud. And halfway through, I was like, You know what? I want to order us some lunch. This is so wonderful, but it's helped me not DoorDash a lot of times where it would have just been kind of that impulse that, like, it's 10pm And I'm cranky and I'm hungry, and instead of getting up and instead of getting up and making myself cheese and crackers, I'm just gonna DoorDash Taco Bell. So it's like that extra step I felt like was really helpful. So I'm curious if you have any other like of those small like behavior hacks, almost that have seemed to help people.
Jill Sirianni 29:35
Absolutely. I love that first example you gave. We must be in a similar algorithm, although the Tiktok that I saw was the trashcan method, where you take the item that you see in the beautiful like Magnolia section of target to the trashcan aisle, and that might be closer to how it might look in your own home. Not that our houses are filled with trash cans, but sometimes the quality of these things don't hold ordinary items wouldn't. It's not next to all of the other items within the display, and it can really help to provide a pause and an interruption. And that's really what you're describing, is how to create pauses and opportunities to be more mindful and intentional about the actions that we're taking as a habit. How can we implement this a little bit more? What are some of the ways we can interrupt ourselves and ultimately, eventually, this will have to become more and more intrinsic, but there are certainly some external things that we can be doing. One of the things that I particularly helps me is keeping a list of the things that I want to buy. So whether I'm scrolling Instagram or I happen to be on Amazon, or I'm over at a friend's house, and something, I see something or something breaks in my own home, and I'm like, Okay, gotta replace that. Rather than one click buying it immediately, I keep a running list of the things that I would like to purchase in my notes app on my phone that does a couple of things. It helps me feel as though I'm responding to the need. I'm valuing the fact that I had this urge and desire to want to acquire this thing that's valuable. There's a reason for that. I'm not ignoring it. I'm not stifling it. I'm giving it an outlet and a place to go. And it's not going away. It's gonna live there. It's not gonna live in my cart, and I'm not gonna get reminders of it constantly, bye, bye, bye, that thing, but it's there, and I know that it's there. Then when I'm out, I can be looking for those items and am I still interested? There are plenty of times that a week later, the thing gets removed, because I either found another solution to solve for that problem, or it's not hitting me the same way as it was before. I just don't think that I needed or wanted anymore. One of the other things that's important to me is buying second hand. So reducing, you know, the amount of waste that is being created is part for me of being a good steward of resources. So it also kind of allows me to give myself time and be patient in finding some of the things that I say that I want. Can I fix the thing that's broken? Can I find another solution within my home? Can I find it used pre owned, and then I might come to the point where I'm buying new if needed and necessary, and so that little bit of creation of pause is helpful also, as you're describing, removing ourselves from some of the email lists or the text messages that are reminding us to buy one of the tangible kind of software pieces that we recommend is unroll me. Think it's unroll.me and so,
KC Davis 32:36
yes, I've used it. You can, like you basically swipe left and right to unenroll from various things. Which brings me to another point about sales. I love your idea about a list, because one of the things, one of the rules that I have for myself is now, if I need something first, and I put it on a list, and I can wait for that thing to go on sale, but if something is on sale. Like, basically, in general, I've stopped utilizing sales because I found that I spent more money when I was using sale. When I was like, Oh, it's a big sale. It's half off. I need to whatever, whatever. If there is a large item that, man, it would really make an impact if I had a 50% off coupon. Or if this went on sale 20% like you said, like, I'll make a list. Like, you know, my kids are growing really fast, and there's a particular clothing company called primary that I love to buy from, and they're a little bit more expensive than target, but I found that they last them longer, and they're made a little bit better. And so, like, they're kind of a better investment. But if I know that, like, every August, because I'm a weirdo, every August, I inventory, like, coats, jackets, sweaters, long sleeve things, then I want to, like, buy for that season, or whatever, then, like, I know that I'm going to do that and I can wait and watch for their end of summer sale, right? As opposed to getting that pushed to me with a bazillion emails about, like, Wait, 20% off. Okay, let me go find something I wouldn't have otherwise bought. I do sometimes do the 24 hour cart thing, but only on Amazon because they won't send me emails. But that actually does help me, because I'll put it in my cart, but I won't let myself buy it. Then I'll be like, it's there. It'll be there tomorrow. And by the time I go back to that cart, you're right half the time, I'm like, okay, these were two things that I actually have some version of this. I just momentarily convinced myself that these things would be better, and therefore my life would be easier, and therefore I would have less stress, when, in reality, I'm just gonna end up with three of something that's similar and still feel stressed about it.
Jill Sirianni 34:39
I think it can be so helpful when we are able to educate ourselves with an understanding of marketing tactics and how much marketing tactics are playing into our psychology, our cognitive biases, our cognitive distortions that are a part of us can serve us well, but in many ways. Marketers are leveraging this, and it doesn't mean that we won't ever take advantage of a sale, or we won't ever impulse buy, but I think understanding it, we can feel more equipped and we can make better spending decisions for ourselves. Sales are not for us. Sales are for a company to make money, and as you're describing, usually there's going to be some sort of upsell. Most of the time. Sales are not really real sales. They've overinflated the cost to cut them just a smidge, but then they're going to sell you more on the back end to try and get you to spend even more. Bundle this, pair this with that customers also buy this. And so a lot of times, with the deals, the urgency, the fear of missing out these items are played into when it comes to selling us items. That doesn't mean that, you know, we can't get a 50% off here and there, but I think asking ourselves, what is behind me making this spending decision? Is it just am I feeling stressed about this right now, or is this something I did intend to buy? This will be helpful. It will make other decisions and actions easier or unnecessary in the future. I feel good about spending this then fine. But if we've been able to pause and say they've just created urgency in me right now, and it'd be okay if I come back to this decision tomorrow, we'd be better off spending the extra $2 the next day than spending the extra, who knows how much by responding to the sense of urgency and impulsively making a decision that we may or may not feel good about the next day. I
KC Davis 36:36
was ordering something that I needed the other day, and I got to the cart checkout, and it was like, You're $3 away from free shipping. You could pay $10 for shipping, but if you added $3 to this car to be free, and that's fine. But my new rule is that I have to find, if I cannot find something for $3 then I'm just going to pay for the shipping, right? Like, yeah, if there's a little $3 thing that I want or I need, fine, throw it in there. But like, I'm not gonna go then purchase a $20 item, because now I'm still spending $12 more than I would have if I just, like, that's helped me thinking less about like you said, We're for that the hunt the deal. But look how many items I got. Because in reality, it's usually not like items that are make or break survival. For me, it's just that feeling of, I've got a good deal. I'm getting so many things, but if I'm spending more money than I otherwise would, that is affecting, you know, these spending behaviors, especially when it comes to like, so there's a few things, and I love the advice that I've heard about, like, making choices about your behavior, the behavior you have today, not the behavior you hope you'll wake up with tomorrow. And what I mean by that is that I heard someone say once, like, if you have tried over and over and over to tell yourself, like, No more eating out, no more DoorDash, we're just gonna buy groceries, and you continue to do it like, let's just be honest with ourselves that whatever, that feeling, that guilt, that whatever, like, it's not working, and what's happening is that you're going out and buying a week's worth of groceries for your house and still doordashing. And you're telling yourself, because of moralizing, what I need to do is cut out the DoorDash. What I need to do is cut out the DoorDash. But let's be honest, you aren't and this guy was like, at this point, just stop buying groceries, like, lean into the behavior that you're already doing, because you would be spending less money if you would just do what it's clear you want or need in that season of life than, like, trying to be someone else. And this is my Instacart, okay, like my husband has pointed out a couple of times, like, hey, like, Instacart marks the prices up on each item, and then you pay, like, even if we have, like, the membership, so we don't technically pay for delivery, but like, they mark up every item there, and then there's a service fee, then there's a tip, right? And he was like, look at this list of what you ordered, it would be 20% cheaper if you just bought these items at the grocery store. And I had to tell him, I'm aware of that, Michael, but what you need to understand is that the grocery bill would actually be 50% higher if I walked into that store and saw all of the things that I you know, like, Oh, I'll get this. Oh, that looks good. But like when I sit down at the computer, I literally put my list into Instacart. There are no end caps, there's no little coffee shop, there are no impulse buys, because I have to search each item and then select what I want. And so like we are, in fact, spending less money on groceries when we use Instacart every week, then we would be if I was going into the grocery store and living in that reality of like, that's who I am. And this is not a thing that I have the capacity to sit down and like, really fix at the moment. Nor maybe do I need to, like, it's okay. I don't have to be perfect, like, I can work with who I am, not like this. Perfected version of who I think I need to be,
Jill Sirianni 40:07
yeah, our idea, our fantasized self, versus the realistic version of ourselves, and learning to honor that person, the person that we are today, I think this ties so beautifully into one of our principles that that we talk about, which is honoring your season with your money, recognizing where am I at right now in life, whether that has to do with levels of stress, with work, children. How old are the kids? Single, married, living situation, whatever it is, recognizing that our finances needs to be congruent with that we can and it's one of the reasons that these one size fits all financial experts. It's not working for people because we haven't made it individualized enough to recognize the needs of individuals and how that's going to shift the way that they make money decisions. It paying off debt as quickly as possible is not the best decision for everybody. Owning a house is not the best decision for everybody. There are these things that are held up as the standard, but in reality, it needs to look different given your season of life. And I think this is a very helpful, very tangible daily way of recognizing the season that you're in. To say, I do want to eat some food at home, but I need to pay for convenience. And that's worth it for me right now, because also I'm seeing that it is decreasing the level of impulse purchases that I'm making as well. So somebody might look at this and say that's a waste of money, but for me, in this season, raising kids, this is going to be the most helpful decision that I can make. It's efficient. It helps make other jobs easier or unnecessary for me in the future, and this is something I'm willing to pay for as a result of that. And I think when we can really take find that permission, take the guilt and shame out of it, be very fully aware of where our money's going, why it's going there, then have at it. We can even create space in the spending plan for impulse purchases. If we know that we like to go out and we like to be able to get ourselves a little treat. Fine, make room for it. This does not have to be deprivation. It just needs to be eyes wide open so we can be certain we're making beneficial decisions for ourselves that are serving us, not just serving corporations.
KC Davis 42:35
I like when you talk about, like, values based spending, and I feel like one of the things that you are really emphasizing is that, like, I don't think that necessarily that sentence like values based spending is like, revolutionary. But what is revolutionary is that you're emphasizing that it actually be your values, because we have such internalized set of like, what the value should be like, we should have no debt, we should not impulse spend. Shopping shouldn't be to, you know, change your feelings. And it's like, I mean, if you're having a bad day and you want to go, like, obviously, I'm not saying like this, like, reckless overconsumption, but like, make sure it's your values. Like, like, you said, like, you can value convenience and that doesn't have that's not like, morally worse than valuing like, you know, homegrown, you know, made from scratch. Food, you know, it's not one of those is not inherently better than the other from like, a character perspective,
Jill Sirianni 43:29
right? And it just might be. Then you make decisions on what are your easy nos as a result. Don't say the hard nos. Don't deprive yourself of the thing that is a lifeline for you, but find the things that are easy to say no to for me, I don't have a value for luxury handbags or high end clothing or super expensive skincare products, so that's easy nose for me. But I do love travel. I do love a really nice dinner out with friends, so that's where I'm going to be spending my money to get at some of the things that are just super enjoyable for me and for all of the other things I can get creative on how I can meet my internal needs. Sometimes, even without spending money, it doesn't even always require the super nice dinner. Sometimes it's having a potluck with friends.
KC Davis 44:23
I'll tell you, like my closing story on this. But you know, my husband is a corporate attorney, and so he works a lot, and one of the things that, like, we had to kind of get clear on was, like, that we value money that saves us time. Because the reality is, like something that like you. If I say, like my husband and I will Door Dash like a Gatorade and a can of dip. And you might think, like, that's so wasteful, that's so over the top, that's so silly, like, why can't you just go to the whatever, whatever, right? But the truth is, oftentimes, like the difference between you. Like, my husband getting home and time to put the kids to bed, and missing bedtime is like, the 30 minutes it would take, or even the 20 minutes it would take for him to, like, pull off the highway Park, go inside a gas station, get what he needs. And even if someone was like, oh, okay, well, he could go out after that. Well, like, Yeah, but then, like, I want to hang out with him. You know the amount of times that we are, like, ordering dinner, and he's like, let me just go get it. I don't want to pay and I'm like, I want to buy back that 45 minutes with you. I just want to get it delivered. And, like, when we started thinking of things that way, like, you know, we're not someone that has a lot to show for how much money we spend in the year, at the end of the year, but that's because we realize that we value experiences and not even, like big vacations. Like we don't even really do that, but like, we value being able to see our family a lot in the year and go see them, and we also value just like, making our life easier and buying back as much time as possible to spend with each other.
Jill Sirianni 45:58
I think it's one of the reasons that to kind of go backwards with it, that some of these financial experts have become so big in their one size fits all, is because it can be easier to just say, Do this, don't do that. Do this, don't do that. But what you're describing, and what I'm describing, is this, getting to know yourself more and finding these foundational principles of efficiency and contentment and honoring our seasons, that takes a little bit more of introspection and kindness towards ourselves to say. How do I understand what this looks like for me, and how does that then inform the decisions that I make with my money, it's a lot more fluid. It's not as cut and dry, but it can lead to so much more freedom and permission in the ways that we choose to spend our money that is going to be completely different from somebody else and still both doing it right or okay when in beneficial ways. So it's a beautiful thing when you can start to grasp but it's not necessarily something that can happen overnight, to be making these intentional decisions feel good about it, even if somebody else might say that's not the best way to be spending your money like well, maybe not for you, but for me. These are the decisions that I've made, eyes wide open with the money that's coming in, this is how I want to steward all of the resources that are given to me, including time. It's the really, the only finite resource that we have. So if I can use some of my money, as you said, to buy back some of that time, fantastic. Well,
KC Davis 47:40
Jill, thank you so much for this conversation. And can you sort of tell the audience what, where they can go to get more of you, more of your excellent advice. Tell us about the book. Tell us about the podcast. Tell us everything.
Jill Sirianni 47:50
Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Casey, it's been so fun and an honor to be with you and your listeners. We just wrote a book called buy what you love without going broke, and it can be purchased at buy what you love book.com it's on pre order right now, but it will be shipped out to everyone who purchases in January. And then we put out a podcast two days a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, frugal friends. Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
KC Davis 48:17
I love that. Thank you. Jill Have a great day. You.
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