More Money Podcast - 034 Breaking the Twitch - Anthony Ongaro, Blogger & YouTuber at Break the Twitch

Episode Date: January 27, 2016

I talk with vlogger, blogger and entrepreneur Anthony Ongaro about how he climbed out of a mountain of debt and came out of the experience stronger by living life with more intention and integrating minimalism into his daily life. Long episode description: I was introduced to Anthony by my good pal Cait Flanders from Blonde on a Budget after I asked her if she knew of any guests who would be great for my show. She was right in pointing me to Anthony because he is seriously such a genuine, smart and inspirational guy. If you need some motivation to pay down your debt, declutter your house and live life to the fullest — Anthony is your guy. In this episode, we discuss some of Anthony’s key philosophies that he often writes about on his blog Break the Twitch and talks about on his YouTube channel. What Does it Mean to Break the Twitch? When I think of twitch, I think of someone who has a weird eye twitch they can’t control. And that’s sort of the same thing that Anthony is referring to, but instead of an uncontrollable eye twitch it’s that uncontrollable twitch that makes you buy, buy, BUY! Anthony shares his story of his Amazon shopping addiction and how he eventually turned things around and broke the consumerist cycle to live a more meaningful life. Now his mission is to help others like him break the twitch too. It’s not uncommon to fall into a never ending shopping spree, but it’s not impossible to get out and make it right. The Dark Side of Convenience It’s rare that we ever complain about anything being too convenient, but that’s exactly what gets lots of us into financial trouble. When things like Uber, Amazon and iTunes are at our finger tips, it can be hard not to spend money like it’s not even real. But it is real and we need to be more conscious of how we’re spending it. This may mean deleting some apps on your phone or unplugging at night to prevent any late night boredom shopping. The key thing is to be aware and not always do the most convenient thing if it’ll cost you in the long run. Embracing Minimalism This was a big topic on the episode because we talked about it in two different ways. First, minimalism in terms of getting rid of material possessions to live a less cluttered life. Second, minimalism in respect to relationships and only maintaining relationships that add value to your life. As I mentioned near the end of the episode, after talking with Anthony I had a huge urge to go through my whole apartment and get rid of everything. And I did actually purge a few things from my closet and some of my junk drawers. It felt so freeing, so I hope you choose to try it out too, or better yet, do a minimalism challenge! Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/34 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to episode 34 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thank you for joining me for another episode. I appreciate you are awesome. I don't know where you're listening to me, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm very excited. I know I say I'm excited every single episode, but guess what? I'm a very excitable person. And every guest that I have on my show is awesome, including my next guest, Anthony Angaro from Break the Twitch. He has a vlog and a blog, and his whole thing is intentional living and minimalism, things that I absolutely love. I feel like they're kind of, maybe it's just that I'm getting into it. So I feel like it's a trend or it's becoming more popular, but whatever. I don't care. I'm loving it. I love what he's doing. Check out his vlog, especially. I love his videos. They're amazing.

They're such, and he does them all himself. I asked him like, do you do all that yourself, all the graphics and everything? Yes, he does. He is an amazing person. So we are going to talk together about how to introduce minimalism and intentional living into your life. And his story, how he got into it, actually had to do with getting into some pretty severe credit card debt. Thanks, Anthony, for joining me on the program today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm just glad to be here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm excited to talk about breaking the Twitch. So, but before we kind of delve into all that stuff, how did you kind of just change your

whole lifestyle? Like what sparked that? I'd love to know because it seems like you've totally did a whole lifestyle overhaul and are living completely differently than you were before. Absolutely. Many things changed when I had a particular realization, but the story starts significantly before that. In fact, I would go back even as far as four years before I kind of had that aha moment. So essentially what had happened is Amazon Prime became a thing.

And that was something that I was basically browsing on a regular basis. And I would just kind of buy $10, $20, $30 things, even $50 things depending. And it would just be those little things where you don't really want them until you see them. And you get it or you just need something here and there. And so you start getting those brown boxes arriving to your house quite frequently. And it's fun. It's like Christmas for yourself every day. And after about, I don't know, three, four years of just doing that casually, never honestly going into debt doing it, but just kind of always squeezing by at the end of the month. I kind of got to a point where I needed to find something that I had bought because it had broken, so our juicer was having issues.

So we had to go back and find what was going on with it. And Amazon at that time only went back six months in their order history. So I had to export all of my orders. And so as kind of a thing, I said, well, huh, seems like it's a lot of stuff. So I ended up exporting four years of my Amazon order history. Yeah, it was intense. And so after some charting and some graphing, I figured out that I spent like eight international plane tickets worth of money in four years on things that I largely didn't remember at all. Oh my God.

Yeah. And here's the kicker is traveling is my favorite thing to do in the entire world. Like it's the greatest thing and I love it. So passionate for it. And I could barely ever do it because of the situation. Because you're buying too much stuff. Exactly. Wow.

So once you kind of, I guess, looked through all that stuff, is that what kind of triggered, I need to change something, something needs to happen? That was the initial part, looking at that collective total and realizing what that would have represented. So again, I talk about with Break the Twitch, I talk about aligning short-term actions with long-term vision. And my long-term vision was that I wanted to travel and do these things. And my short-term actions were not lining up with that intention.

And so I'm guessing that when you were kind of in the whole Amazon Prime situation, you didn't have a structured budget that you used every month. I'd love to say that I did, but I did not. It was basically, I'd start seeing my credit card getting to a certain point and maybe slow down at that point in the month and then start it all over again next month. It was relatively irresponsible in that way. And do you find, I'm always curious,

do you find that it didn't really spark any alarm bells or anything like that because you either just weren't really interested in personal finance or just the people that you hung around, they were doing similar things? I find lots of people, they don't really realize they have a spending problem because all the people they hang around to do the exact same things as them. It's, it's funny because I definitely have a wide range of community in terms of financial responsibility.

I'll say that even my wife, Amy is significantly, um, more financially responsible than I was, especially during that time. She was not doing the same kind of habits that I was. So it's pretty much falling on me for this one. Okay. Fair enough. Glad that you're honest. Yeah. And so, you know, once you, where did you start, I guess, when you were like, okay, I need to change something. How did you, where did you start? What first actions did you do to kind of get yourself out of that hole? Well, I didn't realize that there was a specific name for this.

And it wasn't until I heard it from Kate from Blonde on a Budget that it's called a shopping ban. So I did a very specific Amazon shopping ban where I, for at least, I think it was three months initially, just said, I just have to stop. You can get everything you need elsewhere. Have that friction in the process of going to buy something by having to go get it by biking there or driving there. Make that intentional decision to go get something when you need it instead of just having it accessible online. And that kind of brings me to one point that I really love about your blog. I was looking through it and there was a blog post about kind of the dark side of convenience, which I'm like, huh, I never really thought about it that way. Whereas so many people are praising like, oh, isn't it so awesome that

there's Uber now so you don't have to wait for a cab or yeah, you can just buy whatever you need online and not worry about it. But it's actually, it can be kind of a really scary thing if you don't really pay attention, which I think most people aren't. I think you're absolutely correct. There's all these great sides to convenience. You talk about Uber. There was so much friction in a way. I use that word friction a lot, but it's how I think we make better decisions for ourselves.

There was so much friction in the process of hailing a cab. You had to call. You spoke with an operator. They would then call a cab, find who was near, and then arrange that. It would take a long time, and you wouldn't know exactly when they'd get there. There was a lot of friction in that process, so you might just walk instead. You might just make the decision to bike or take public transit.

Whereas Uber has eliminated that friction, and they've created the most seamless way to hit a button and have a car come get you. And you know when they're going to get there because you can follow along with the GPS. It removes a lot of those pain points. And that's a good thing for a lot of people. But that same concept applies to so many different things in our lives when it comes to making the decisions

that are most effective and best for us in the long term. Usually with app developers and businesses competing for our attention and wanting to provide the quickest solution to part us with our money in the fastest way possible, it doesn't work out great for us in the end. I know. I absolutely agree. So let's kind of get to how did you come up with the name Break the Twitch and what does

that mean to you? Well, it was around the time that the Amazon occurrence happened. What I realized was that I was using that Buy It Now button, or Buy It Now, that's eBay, but it was the one-click purchase button on Amazon. I realized that it was more of a muscle twitch. It was almost an involuntary action than it was something I was doing intentionally it was just like I was filling this this want that I had just largely created

for myself by just clicking one button and it was more of a twitch than an intentional decision to do it I like that, I like that a lot. From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So the story starts. Better Man, now playing in select theaters. So another thing that you talk a lot about on your blog, which I really like, is the concept of living with intention. So what exactly does that mean? I really like it because I feel like lots of people don't really go that deep sometimes.

Well, thank you. That's something I think that kind of living with intention is breaking the twitch. It is aligning the short-term actions that we do and making sure that it is along an intentional path. And that doesn't mean that you can't have spontaneity in your life. I think living with intention can involve a lot of spontaneity that is available to you when you do live with intention. It's kind of a weird catch-22 there. But living with intention to me, it means making

the decision that's learning to pause before we just take the first available option, before we just succumb to an impulse that we have that might not be in our best interest for the long term. So just kind of putting more thought behind everything you do, including spending and just money management. And it seems to me like a lot like the word that kind of popped in my mind was value. So just put more value on what you're doing and what you're buying and where you're putting your money, right? Absolutely. And more thought into it. So many negative things could be avoided by simply pausing for 60 seconds.

Which I think is a very hard thing to do in our kind of society where everything is instant. I remember reading also another blog post on your website that was talking about how you get, I can't remember the word you used, but distracted. You're going to be trying to do one thing and focus on it, but you might get a phone call or a text message or a knock on the door, and there's always going to be trying to do one thing and focus on it, but you might get a phone call or a text message or a knock on the door and there's always going to be something. Yes. And there's only a certain number of those distractions that you can control in your life. Some of those are like your cell phone notifications.

We very much have control over how we allow our cell phones, our smartphones to interrupt us in our life. We can turn off the notifications. We can make it so that silent mode doesn't vibrate. And you can really control some of those because there are just so many distractions in life that you can't control. We might as well at least manage the ones that we can. In that reference, I think you were referring

to the creative flow concept. Exactly. I wanted to bring that up. that was something that I'm like, oh, I've never heard of creative flow before, but it's, it's really cool. Definitely. This is something that I find super interesting and, and very important. Creative flow to me is that, that feeling of being in the zone, just kind of getting lost in your work. And it can be really hard to achieve. It's kind of that feeling where hours can pass by effortlessly

and you're doing particularly difficult work, but you get so absorbed into it that it just becomes kind of just flow is the best way to describe it. And what I found is that I cannot personally enter creative flow if I'm pulled away. If you can imagine a ramp or like, you know, you see a financial chart that looks like a hockey stick going up into the right. That is a diagram of creative flow. And everything we do is hard at first. When you have a blank page and you need to write a report or you need to write a paper, it's difficult sitting there. But after five

minutes, you just kind of start writing. You just start getting words down. You keep going. And as long as you don't get pulled away, you will enter this productive kind of flow of work and you'll get absorbed by it. And the problem is that when we have constant interruptions, we never are able to fully enter that flow state. It makes everything more difficult. If we're being constantly pulled away, it starts us over at the beginning and we have to keep climbing up that hill to get to this really productive, deep, creative place. That also makes me think of another kind of concept

you talk a lot about is disruptions, but also clutter, which is kind of along the same lines. Whereas a big part of your platform is minimalism, which is becoming increasingly more popular, especially in the personal finance community. Because, I mean, personally for me, I think I've always been an unintentional minimalist, just because I don't like a lot of stuff. I just don't like the clutter. I like things clean and organized. I literally cannot go to bed if things aren't in their place.

And it's easier for me to do that if I just don't have a lot of stuff. Absolutely. It reduces the time it takes to get that done, doesn't it? Exactly. And I was talking to Kate actually on one of my first podcasts about this because she was still in the midst of her first shopping ban. And I told her, you know, I kind of did a bit of a shopping ban when me and Josh moved from Vancouver to Toronto. And not just because we were unemployed for a few months at the beginning, though that did have something to do with it,

but also because we didn't know how long we were going to be in the city in my mind i'm like maybe we'll stay a year or two but i think we're going to move home after that so i don't want to accrue a lot of stuff because that means we'll have to either sell it get rid of it or lug it with us and i just don't i didn't want to and so i kind of put a little bit of a ban on myself to like i'm not going to buy any books because they're really heavy and they're hard to transport i'm not going to buy any um furniture that we don't actually need so So for the first, I think, year of living in Toronto, I didn't buy anything that I didn't actually need. And I've tried to kind of maintain that because we also live in a very tiny apartment. And it's been great. And the less clutter

in my house, the less cluttered my mind is. And I do feel like I'm a bit more, uh, productive because of it. I would agree completely. I think you're spot on there. And, and I do have a theory that, that moving, uh, makes everybody temporary minimalists. When you come down to making some of those decisions of, does it go in the truck or can we just get rid of it? Like? Do we need to move this again? That kind of thing. And the idea of having the intentionality behind living in a certain space for a specific duration and knowing that you're going to have to move something again

if you acquire it during that time, that's really smart. And also just, I feel like choosing the side, like for instance, we live in a one-bedroom apartment and we could afford to get a two-bedroom, but I'm almost hesitant to do that, not just because I don't want to spend the extra money when our place is fine, but with one extra bedroom, that means we have to fill it with stuff. And I don't want to. I don't want to spend money filling another room of stuff just because it would be nice to have another wall. And I think a lot of people get caught up in that, especially where housing is a bit more affordable. So you can't afford a bigger house. They buy a bigger house to have more space, but really they're just filling it up. Yes. And to that point, something that I'm talking about, I'm actually working on my first book right now. Oh, awesome. Thank you. One of the big topics that I'm hitting on there is lifestyle design around using those resources instead of having that second bedroom where, like you said, you'd need to just fill

it up with more stuff anyway, or you'd need to acquire things in order to fill it. Using those allocated resources to either, you know, for personal finance, paying down debt potentially that would make your life better in the long term. Or in the more immediate term, using those funds to potentially enhance your life in a way of think about maybe what would it be like to have someone come and clean for an hour or two every month. Even if you have a smaller space, it can seriously, that deep cleaning can make such a huge difference and not having to do it yourself and there's some energy that can come from that and what would it be like to maybe get a massage once a month

instead of having a second bedroom I don't know, those are some things that I see as intentional living and making those decisions of like well, maybe we don't need this extra space and what are the ways that we could enhance our lives instead? And I think you touched on a really significant thing where for me, my kind of value system with money has always been I prefer to spend my money on experiences.

You mentioned travel earlier. I'm a big travel person. I save my money so we can go on these really great trips to have these memories and experiences. And yeah, I would much prefer living in a smaller We decided not to and we're continuing to rent. But lots of the people we were talking to that did own houses who had these huge mortgages, they had to give up all of those experiences that we valued so much because they had to pay this mortgage on this house that they had to fill stuff with. Yes. I always tell people, my wife and I bought a home about two years ago now,

and I always tell people after that first year of homeownership, it feels like buying a home is more of a lifestyle decision than an actual financial decision. I absolutely agree with that. It's the most expensive purchase you'll probably ever make in your lifetime, but I don't think lots of people really realize the implications it will have on your life, your day-to-day. And so that kind of takes it back to the idea to hit on the intentional living thing again, considering that. And I think really thinking about those choices, about what it means

in terms of your lifestyle to own a home versus renting an apartment and not just doing it because that's just what we're supposed to do, that kind of thing. Another thing I wanted to discuss, you mentioned, you know, in terms of minimalism, lots of people do think just about, you know, oh, that means getting rid of your stuff and just having kind of a bare room somewhere. But you also mentioned that in a blog post that it could also refer to relationships and how you deal with those things, which I thought, yeah, that's an interesting idea. And that's something that I've slowly been learning kind of throughout the years is, you know, I value my relationships more and want to make sure that the people that are in my life are positive and

they are, you know, adding value to my life and I'm doing the same for them. Um, did you want to kind of discuss what, what your kind of thoughts on, on that aspect of minimalism is like? Sure. There are a couple of different ways to approach this and I don't want to set the expectation for anyone that what it means to have positive people in your life means that everything is is sunny and rosy and no one's struggling with anything and it's just everything's great that's not the reality of it but um you know there are people and things and there are just relationships that make you feel lighter and there are relationships that make you feel heavier and some of those relationships are with family some are relationships that make you feel heavier. And some of those

relationships are with family, some are with friends, some you can choose more than others. And sometimes, you know, we're in roles where we're supporting people for durations of time, but it just, I think it takes some time to figure out what are the relationships that are going to, again, make you feel lighter versus heavy. I think that's the best way I can put it. That's a great way to explain it. Yeah, there will be people around that are, I truly believe this, it's so cliche to say we become the five people around us,

most commonly around us, but oh my goodness, if I haven't found that to be true, me personally as well, I'm a bit of a chameleon where I feel very heavily influenced by the people around me. And I start taking on speech patterns that they have and things. It's really interesting. So I found myself particularly susceptible to that. So it's been even more important to make sure that the people that I'm around are ones that are wanting to pursue things or are really interested in that. And to kind of wrap this up, it doesn't

mean necessarily that everyone you're around is like-minded. It doesn't mean that, you know, I love varying opinions. I love discussions about things that challenge what I think. So choose carefully and kind of use that theory of keeping around you what you love and what makes you feel light in that application. And I think that's a great thing because I have found as I've kind of grown older and I'm entering my 30s, the people that I've chosen to surround myself with are people that aren't necessarily like happy-go-lucky all the time, but are positive in a way where we inspire and motivate each other and we lift each

other up. And there's just a genuine kind of caring there, which is something that I think when I was younger, I didn't really pay too much attention to, but it's definitely been a great, positive change in my life. That's so good to hear. I mean, the best people to have are the people that accept you as you are, challenge you to be better. And, you know, you want to be, you know, in direction that they're heading as well. I mean, and that's really helpful. One last thing before we go. So I was reading your blog, or there's a vlog actually, sorry, on your i think are awesome by the way i asked you earlier before i i hit record it if you did them yourself and you do and i'm pretty impressed it looks really good thank you so much you're welcome

and um but something that you participate in um is our minimalism challenges like what would go into if someone wants to kind of to change their lifestyle like you did and maybe do a challenge, what kind of things would you suggest that they do to start taking action today? That's a great question. If you want to start going down the path of seeing what it can be like to live with less stuff, it can be completely overwhelming.

So doing some type of challenge can be a great way to get started. Here's what I would recommend. There are a couple ways to do it. One way to do it would be to just get rid of one thing every day for a month. It's a pretty straightforward thing, but just find one thing. It doesn't matter if it's a business card, if it's just a broken toy that one of your children has or just something. Just find one thing every day. And that will start establishing a habit of decision making.

And at first the decision making can be difficult. Maybe not with a business card, but with other things that it's that decision that you need to make that actually helps you go through the process. The more you make that decision just one time every single day by the 15th day, you get really good at making those decisions and you start to realize that the things you own and the things that are around you do not determine who you are. You get better at, it's weird saying this, but gaining the confidence to say, I don't need this anymore. It's a position of privilege and it's a great thing to be able to say, but my self does not depend on this thing. If you want to step it up a notch, you can play Min's Game, which is the challenge that I believe you're referring to. I was.

On the first day of the month, you find one thing you want to get rid of. On the second day, you find two. Third day, three. Fourth day, four. And it continues going for the rest of the month where you get rid of, I think, close to 500 things total in a month. That was what my wife Amy and I did when we first found this. And so we did it together, which means we got rid of a thousand things in a month. And it was hugely impactful.

Wow. That's amazing. That's really exciting. Now, I honestly have this urge to just declutter my living room right now. I'm like, I'm going to go in all the drawers and get rid of all the crap I don't need. Well, you know, it's a great time to start. You know what they say about planting trees, right? No, what do they say? When's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. And when's the second best time is right now.

Love that. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Anthony. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Jessica. I'm so glad to have been here and glad to chat with you. And isn't Anthony awesome? Just like I said, yeah, he is. Make sure to check out his website, BreakTheTwitch.com. Check out his videos. Like I said, he has an awesome YouTube channel. And of course, check out the show notes for this episode, Jessicaessicamoorehouse.com slash 34.

And if you like what you hear, make sure you send me an iTunes review. I would love it. I will give you a shout out. I will give you a virtual hug. Click is due. And make sure to join me next Wednesday because I've got another awesome guest. As always, peace. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network.

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