More Money Podcast - 146 How to Afford a Life That Fits Your Purpose - Pete McPherson, Blogger & Podcaster at Do You Even Blog

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

Don’t think you can afford to live a life you’ve designed yourself? Think again! Pete McPherson from Do You Even Blog shares how he risked it all to live a life with more meaning. Long description: As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I ended up randomly meeting Pete McPherson from Do You Even Blog at a party at FinCon this past October. I liked him right away. He was so friendly, funny and full of energy. So when he non-pitched me to be a guest on my show, I couldn’t resist! And what’s even better, I was a guest on his show, the Do You Even Blog Podcast (listen to my episode here). In this episode, we talk about how Pete made the risky move of leaving his cushy corporate job to do something crazy and start his own online business. Now, you may be thinking, why did he do this? Especially when he has a family? Well, it really came down to him wanting to start living a life that had more purpose and that he designed himself. Up until he made that change in his life, he felt like he was making choices based on what he thought he was supposed to do, not what he wanted to do. And because of that, he felt unfulfilled. Money really doesn’t buy you happiness. It’s a tool, and it’s up to you to use it the way you want. You can either earn money doing something you don’t really like, and then spend that money on stuff you think will make you happy (even if for a limited time). Or, you can take the risk to do something else, earn less, but spend the money you do earn to live a life that’s more intentional. This idea of intentional living and designing your own life has become a bit of a theme on the podcast, and I think for good reason. The more millennials I talk to, the more I see a big shift happening. We’re realizing that the dream of a white picket fence, two cars and a stable job just isn’t cutting it anymore. We want more. And not more stuff, more out of life. As Pete mentioned, he has made some special videos for all my listeners at doyouevenblog.com/momoney, so make sure to check them out. We also mentioned Smarter Queue as our new favourite (and cheap!) social media scheduler, so if you’d like to try out a free 30-day trial on me, click here. For full episode show notes: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/146 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 146 of the Mominy Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Welcome to the show. I am super pumped to talk to my next guest. And I'm not sure if we even told him. So I'm going to say right now, in case he listens to this episode. Hopefully he does, because he's, you know, the guest. But my next guest is Pete McPherson from DoYouEvenBlog.com. And he also has a podcast himself. And he was actually featured in a presentation I did recently at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference on how to pitch to be on someone's podcast. And he was a good pitch. And that's why I featured him.

And I met him briefly at FinCon, and it was lovely. And he was just as lovely in this episode. And we talk about his story, which is, you know, I mean, this is a story I think I relate to, a lot of us can relate to, you know, doing all the right things that we think, you know, will lead to, you know, a financially stable life, a successful career and all that stuff, working in the corporate world, and then realizing, hey, I feel unfulfilled, I'm really unhappy. And then figuring out, okay, so what do I need to change in my life to get to change my life in a way that makes me feel happy and fulfilled and not like dreading getting up in the morning because you have to go to the office. And so we talk about how he's been able to leave his job and start his own business and what that means. And just we kind of talk a lot about what that means for your finances,

what that means in terms of budgeting, he has a family, and all that kind of stuff. So it's a very, very interesting and relatable episode. So I know you are going to love it. But before I get to that episode, I just want to share a few words about this episode's sponsor. Support for this episode comes from Nest Wealth. You've probably heard about robo-advisors and how index-based investing is the way to go if you want to save on fees and outperform traditional mutual funds. But with so many investment companies to choose from, how do you know which one to go with? Enter NestWealth, Canada's first ever robo-advisor and also the largest independent digital wealth management platform in the country. It constructs its portfolios using Nobel Prize winning research to maximize

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check out my video review in the show notes or visit jessicamorehouse.com slash nestwealthreview. Thanks, Pete, for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you, Jessica. Happy to be here. Yeah. It was so lovely to meet you at FinCon, especially as a fellow podcaster. And you have a lovely microphone and lovely radio voice. Thank you. If you want, I can just talk an octave lower throughout this entire thing. Please do.

Please do. Let's pretend this is NPR or something like that, or the Canadian version, CBC. We have to get better names if we're going to do that by the way oh okay what should my name be oh i don't know you put me on the spot but they all have fancy names and ours is jessica pete and so yeah yeah that's true yeah it has to be more uh i feel like so like our version of npr is cbc and i don't feel like they have fancy names. They just have like regular names like Linda or something. That's the name that came to my mind. So I'd be Linda and then I would just talk like this.

And you just – it's just like such a soothing sound. It just kind of puts you to sleep. It's lovely. I love it. The name I was thinking of when I said that was Ariri shapiro on npr which is one of my favorite names ever i think it's that's a great name yeah i wouldn't know how to spell that but you definitely not forget it oh this podcast has started off with a bang yeah it sounds great it's great okay back on track pete let's get to know you a little bit more besides your love for NPR.

Sure. So I guess I should, I would like to tell everybody when I had kind of pitched you to come on your podcast, one of the things that I... Yours was, number one, you actually didn't even pitch me. You're just like, hey, really great meeting you. Want to be on my show? So that was actually a really great pitch because it was like a non-pitch. And I'm like, oh yeah. Want to be on mine? So I've been told, I'm not, I'm really not trying to brag,

but I've been told that pitching people is actually one of my gifts. So if you want later, but one of the things I threw at you that your audience might enjoy is kind of how my wife and I are two kids are kind of living on zero income right now. Yeah. I'd love to know that. It's definitely zero salary, zero guaranteed income. Yeah. So let's, let's kind of go based off that. Cause I think I'd like to tell that story and I think it could be valuable. So a quick context. I could spend two hours probably telling you my story, but I'm not going to. I went through life pretty much all the way up until about two years ago in this like society brought on American dream type of life. You know, go to high school, get good grades, apply to colleges, go to a college, get good grades, graduate, grad school, corporate career, etc.

Yeah. And I always kind of hated it. I never considered myself an entrepreneur. I didn't have a whole lot of side hustles. Like I didn't do the baseball card trading that a lot of entrepreneurs would talk about. I just didn't know. Like I kind of hated going through life like that, but I didn't know what else to do. Yeah.

Because my parents and teachers and counselors, you get the point. So it's kind of fun. Oh yeah, like that hundred percent my story. And probably most of the stories of people listening right now, they're like, I did that too. Cause that's what I thought you were supposed to do. Exactly. Yeah. And I, Oh, that reminded me of something. Remind me later. Life's purpose, life's purpose, writing it down. Okay. Continue. So, so yes so after going through about five different majors in college i believe i started with music because i loved music and i wanted to be a musician yeah right up until the point that i hated it and didn't want to be a musician anymore yeah so i majored in business uh italian which i don't speak a word of italian oh did you do

like a lot of courses in that? Well, I didn't go to a lot of the classes. That way I'm like, because you should know a little. No, no, it was seriously like a life crisis in college. I'm sure other people have been through this and felt miserable. Yeah. So I got kicked out of the University of Georgia for a semester. I ended up working, ooh, let's just call it an adult establishment.

Oh, my. Yeah, it sounds mysterious because I really don't want to talk about it. That's fair. But I have great stories. Okay, let's just call it a story. That's another podcast. It is. So I went through some pretty horrible jobs just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Eventually, I went back to UGA. I majored in

sociology just because, I don't know, sociology seemed like an easy degree to get. And everyone was shouting at me, Pete, you have to get a degree. You have to get a degree. You have to graduate. You have to go to work. And I liked it. So sociology, boom, graduated. I go about three months like, okay, I have a degree. Everyone said I should do this. Everyone says now I should get a job, but what do I do? Long story short, I didn't want to do sociology. So I went and talked to a mentor of mine growing up. He was a dean of business at a college in my hometown. And he says, why don't you try accounting? You're a musician and accounting makes sense for you. Music, accounting, same thing.

My mind was kind of blown. I'm like, okay. Maybe not. Because numbers and there's notes in music. To this day, I don't know why. That's a bit of a stretch. I don't see that, but whatever. I think, well, looking back now, he was really just trying to put me into a position to get a job.

I see. I see. And make a living. Yeah. But that was his pitch. He was like, oh, music, accounting. It makes total sense. So I did that.

I went back to school for accounting. I got my master's, straight A's, because I actually just, okay, I want to get through this. I want to do the work. I want to get a job. I love money. Yeah. Who doesn't? Which is a theme throughout. Who doesn't? Who doesn't? And I'm thinking accounting I want to get a job. I love money. Yeah. Which is

a theme throughout who doesn't and I'm thinking accounting money, accounting money. It's great. Yeah. So I get my CPA license in a couple of months. It was great about, well, actually during the process of getting my CPA license, I got emails by recruiters like asking me to come interview. And I'm like, what is this? This is this is great right yeah so I go my first one I get an offer it's $52,000 a year in Atlanta Georgia for a large accounting firm and I like just go have some beers like I'm celebrating this is what everyone has told me to go through in life etc et cetera. The next five or six years, I'll kind of breeze through because it's pretty much me working in corporate America,

climbing the ladder, getting pay raises every year, getting more and more responsibilities and hating every second of it, Jessica. I know people can identify with this. That's why I want to do it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's your standard reasons too.

Like I kind of want to be my own boss. I've kind of discovered that I can create online businesses, even though I made like zero money with this, by the way. They all failed miserably. Blogging, just, you know, little stuff on the side. I made chalkboards. Like I started to do little worthless side hustle things, but the spark was there, right? So I did that for five or six years. And this leads up to about a year ago, like this month, actually. So I sat down with my wife. I had one son at this point

and we're kind of like, we're kind of not happy here. Oh, and by the way, I'm like commuting like three hours a day, which didn't hurt or didn't help brother. Yeah. Yeah. So we sat, we talked about it and we decided to move back to Rome, Georgia, which is where I'm broadcasting from right now. It's my hometown. I grew up here. The cost of living is a lot better in Atlanta. Yeah. And I was like, I want to quit. I want to quit my job. I had zero income coming in from blogging or side hustles or anything. But I'm like, I want to quit. How can we make this work? So throughout this podcast interview, we talk about living on zero income or side hustles or making blogging income. This is my,

my step one, like my actionable thing for anybody listening to this would be to plan ahead and don't jump in with both feet. Yeah. Don't jump in with both feet. Plan ahead. Yeah. Of course.

It seems obvious, but it's like, yeah, we'll still do it. Um, so my wife and I, we sat down, we're like, okay, we're going to do this.

We'll figure out how to make it work. Even if it takes six months to a year, we'll figure out how to do that. So I started being very active about reaching out to people in Rome, which is where we wanted to move, and just creating jobs, basically. Like no one was hiring. It's a very small town. There's not a whole lot of corporate accounting gigs uh and so i found a startup which is actually where i'm broadcasting live from so i'm in a huge warehouse right now that is a co-work space which most

people have heard of in big cities but in small towns everybody's like yeah unheard of i don't understand so i came to work for the startup who was going to they were going to pay me a salary Yeah, unheard of. best of both worlds right so i took it we transitioned over we sold our house for a nice little profit like we renovated it and whatnot this is like step two in my actionable tip series is to have some sort of more than just an emergency fund like we do this all the time like oh you need like three six months or living expenses we did more than that because, quite frankly, we were scared. We were scared and with good reason, as it turns out, because one paycheck after I started for the startup, they folded. Oh, they folded?

They folded. We had already moved. We had already packed our bags and came into town. I was starting work. I was loving it. I was excited to be here. I was technically vice president of the board, which sounds way fancier than it actually was, but they were giving me money. I was like, this is sweet. A week later, or actually two weeks later,

a fired slash let me go, no money coming in, so they couldn't pay me. And so my wife and I are sitting here like okay what now yeah we have two options one would be to not unpack any of the boxes because they're pretty much still packed and move back to atlanta or atlanta on new york chicago like big cities where i could find an actual accounting job which which by the way, it would probably pay like, I don't know, $75,000, $85,000 a year with my experience and all that stuff. It would be pretty easy to find that. Or option two, try to go full-time entrepreneurship. So for me, that was an easy decision. I'm like, full-time entrepreneurship.

Yeah, that sounds better. We'll figure out how to make it work. That sounds more fun. Yeah, that sounds better. We'll figure out how to make it work. That sounds more fun. Yeah, it's more fun. And so this is kind of where we get to actually living life with two kids and a family and friends and et cetera, et cetera, with like zero income. So my wife, I need to say, is a highly trained musician. She's a world-class pianist, accompanist, and vocalist. Like she's sang all over the world.

Oh, wow. And there are like zero opportunities to do that in our small town, Rome, Georgia. So she's kind of like, she doesn't have a whole lot of options. We'll just say that. Yeah. So we talked about it and we sat there and kind of like cried over it for a little while because we were like kind of freaking out. What do we do?

And we decided we're going to slash expenses. We're going to just go frugal as can be. We're going to completely alter our lifestyle. So this is like step number three. If I can recap. Step number one for anybody listening would be to plan ahead. Yep. For sure.

Don't just quit your job. Hell no. That's the worst thing you could do is be like, I'll figure it out later. Nope. Yes. Don't do that. Absolutely. Step number one, plan ahead.

Step number two, have money in the bank. Like emergency fund is like a real thing that people should not ignore. Yeah. And we sold our house. So we had like an extra like 15, 20 grand coming in that was just all profits or capital gains or whatever. So we had that. And step three would be if you actually jump into full-time entrepreneurship and side hustles, and hopefully you have some income coming in, is to, you got to alter your lifestyle. And most people hear

that and they probably heard that on your own podcast before for sure. But the extent to which we did it, uh, was pretty, pretty different. Our lifestyle in Atlanta was cushy and I had like a brand new Volkswagen Jetta diesel, which was super fast and And I loved it. We had a mortgage. We had, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So what we did,

and this is a little bit of like magic opportunity happening here, like luck, I guess you could call it. We had an opportunity to move into my grandmother's house. She doesn't live there. My grandmother has lived in a nursing home for years. Her house is just empty. It's just live there. My grandmother has lived in a nursing home for years. Her house is just empty. It's just sitting there.

So we worked out a deal with her that would basically splash our living expenses, like mortgage and utilities, like 95%. We don't pay any mortgage. We don't pay any rent right now. We help her out in other ways. And I do her taxes and stuff. So that was the biggest thing. We don't actually want to live in this

house. Like it's kind of like an old lady house, to be honest. But we would rather have the lifestyle of full time entrepreneurship, right? Just waking up whenever I want. I'm sitting here right now after I went to a coffee shop at like 945am because I don't really have anywhere to be except for, you know, on the jessica podcast so we we wanted that lifestyle so we made sacrifices and the last thing i'll kind of point at that i think people don't do enough of is i think i'm going to call this a subscription audit so the way that we pay for things we being like millennials, especially, but anybody really who's on the internet or watches TV, we pay for things on super small subscriptions that like add

up. For example, I'm a blogger and a creative digital person or whatnot. So I had Adobe Creative Suite. I was paying for snappa.com. It's my graphic design thing. I'm paying for ConvertKit. I'm paying for Leadpages. I'm paying domain hosting. And on top of that, we were paying for Hulu, Netflix, utilities as well. So I noticed we were being super frugal with not going out to eat and we were making food at home and not splurging on stupid things that we didn't need and I got rid of my Volkswagen so I could drive like a used car I had no car note but we're still like losing money and going into credit card debt and I'm like ah like what's going on and it's those like little subscription things that we forgot about they just happen every month for like three years and we had no idea.

So I, this was actually recently, by the way, like I went through and did a subscription audit, which I swear, if people would go and do this, like tomorrow, they could find an extra 50 to 100 bucks in the budget every month. Like I swear, like people, I just don't use my Adobe Creative Suite that much anymore. So I was like, why am I doing this? doing this well yeah it's funny that you mentioned that because

i remember um well i was using like a really old version of photoshop and then one day just like sorry what's the password i'm like oh i don't know this version's like 10 years old it's already to buy it and then there's like one option to buy the whole suite or there's a cheaper option to just buy like Photoshop. And I'm like, well, I would like the idea of having the other things, but I know I'll probably only use like Dreamweaver like once a year. Yeah. You know, and at the time I had Final, an older version of Final Cut. So I'm like, I think I just need Adobe Photoshop. So I got that.

But when I do need sometimes, like i needed to use um after effects i just bought it uh for the few months that i needed it and most people won't really go to like the annoying hassle of doing that and then making sure to cancel so you don't get charged for an extra month and stuff like that right yeah can we actually sidestep for a second let me pitch you a business idea okay i just had this while you were saying this. What if this existed? Some sort of service where you only pay for what you use, but it's kind of like the Adobe Creative Suite. Yeah, that would be nice.

You just log on there and you're like, you know what? I need After Effects for this project. It's going to take me two weeks. Why don't you just pay it like 20 bucks and be able to use it for like 20 hours or something yeah that'd be cool like that would be cool that makes sense but somebody start company yeah someone start that because i understand why all these companies are moving like all of them are moving to a subscription model because it works it's passive people forget

that they have them on their credit card right right? That's exactly right. And so, unless, like, for me, yeah, like, similar to you, when we were going through a similar thing when I was quitting my job, and I'm like, we need to track our spending like hawks. We need to do an audit of our subscriptions and everything. And so, yeah, we did cut a lot. And just, like, little things, like, we both used to subscribe to Apple Music individually for our streaming service so we could listen to music and stuff like that. But my husband also subscribed to Spotify and something else. I'm like, you don't need all three. Let's just choose one. And Apple Music had a family plan.

So it was like $14.99 for two people instead of we're both each paying $10. That $5 a month, most people were like, who cares? Because it was kind of a hassle to switch over. But no, it all adds up, especially because years fly by. I think people also forget about that. It's like a year just flew by and that adds up to a big chunk of money. And that's just one subscription. Let me ask you a question then.

So when you were going through this, we'll just call it an audit process, I guess. Yeah. I used to be an auditor, so I'll just call it an audit process. Where did you look to kind of dig into where that money was going? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, what we do like on a regular basis now to track our spending, to track literally every single dollar, is basically we just generally don't use cash. So we put everything on debit and credit.

So we just look, we just download the Excel spreadsheets from our credit cards and our banks. And I put it, we put it into another spreadsheet and then we categorize everything to see exactly where everything's going. Pick through it a little bit. Yeah. And it sounds annoying.

And I used to not track our spending. I just, I'm like, no, I have an idea of like what we're doing, but really I'm like, no, I didn't. And it really has had, I have an idea of what we're doing. But really, I'm like, no, I didn't.

And it really has had some really good conversations because of that, because we'll think that we're overspending in one category, but actually, no, it's this other one. So yeah. And it's funny also being a, oh God, I almost said personal finance expert. Oh, you can, I don't care. Which I'm not by any means. Someone who's into personal finance and I track my can. I don't care. Which I'm not by any means. Well, I mean, someone who's into personal finance. And I track my money. I use tools and software. I just always have. But it's funny, even that, another example would be Audible.

I love Audible. I love audiobooks. But when I moved from Atlanta, I didn't commute as much. I got a new phone. And so when I got a new phone, I started fresh with all the apps. I didn't install Audible. I forgot I was paying for it. Oh, no.

I hate that. I guess it was about nine months. Nine times $15 or $20 a month, whatever it is. Yeah. I completely forgot about it. I was like, oh, crap. Yeah, I've had a couple of subscriptions like that. But here's what I usually do.

Well, okay, there's actually two things I want to talk about. So, yeah, number one, the subscriptions. I hate when there is one and I forget about it. So one thing that I actually do as well is I, in our kind of budget spreadsheet, I make a list that we can easily refer to to what we are currently subscribed to. So we can also like look back at it. I also put dates on like when the renewal date is. So I can put a reminder in my phone to be like, do you want to this or whatever uh but again like we've kind of paired those dan but again good reminder to just maybe

do that again maybe i went i'll look i think that's gonna be my little task for today um okay but another thing for um kind of the other side of things there's like business expenses so like you mentioned you have like convert kit and all these things i'm like yeah i've got lead pages i could convert these things are uh expensive especially as a Canadian, because it converts to USD to Canadian dollars. And it's like, ah, that's a little bit more expensive for me. But for me, and I'm getting better at this, I used to be like, oh, but it's for my business. So I need it. It'll help me make more money and grow my business.

And yeah, lots of these apps I use are good. But some of them I've been realizing, I'm like, why am I paying so much for that when I know there's probably a cheaper option over there? So one example is All Europe and using Meet Edgar for my social media scheduling. I like it a lot. It's fine. But it's like- I want to talk about this in just a second, a little bit more. Yeah. I'm sorry for interrupting. Keep going. No, it's okay. So I spend like, it's like over $700 for a year subscription.

And it's actually cheaper to get a year subscription. That's why I always do. You always save like 10%, 15%, whatever. But I was realizing, I'm like, it is like one of the most expensive things that I actually, you know, purchase for my business each year. I just can't, it's, I don't think it's really worth it. There's got to be a cheaper option. And yeah, I did some research and there's an app. Oh, I forget scheduler. I don't know. I really worth it. There's got to be a cheaper option. And yeah, I did some research and there's an app.

Oh, I forgot. Scheduler. I don't know. I forgot what it's called. But it does exist. I'll tell you about it later if you're looking for a cheaper version. But it does basically the same thing as Meet Edgar. Obviously, you can put less accounts.

For Meet Edgar, you could put like 25 accounts. This one I think might be like five. But I'm like, why do I only have like five, and it's literally like a third of the cost. So also doing an audit of like what your subscriptions are, whether you should cut them or whether there's a cheaper option out there. Cause there usually is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Two things.

Okay. One, this is like really fresh on my mind because I have been using, I'm just going to throw out their names. I've been using Buffer Pro. Yeah, I used to use Buffer. 120 bucks a year. Yeah, I used to use Buffer. Super happy with it until like a couple of weeks ago.

And now I'm like more and more frustrated. I want the evergreen recycling. I know. That's why I got Meet Edgar. Yeah. Yep. So me being me, I told you about me pitching other people yeah one of my things in life is especially now that i'm like uh not broke but you know i don't have a salary anymore i'm

like what could i give to these companies to get their software for free i've done this like five i've never even thought of that oh my gosh no one's doing this which is why i'm just like basking in free blogging software right now. Yeah, absolutely. But while I was thinking of that, I did some Googling and I found SmarterQ. Yeah, that's the one. That is the one I couldn't think of the name of. I just signed up two days ago and I love it. Yeah.

No, I just signed up for the free trial. And FYI, this is not a pitch for SmarterQ. We just like, that's funny that we both saw that. But yeah, no, I saw that there was a free trial. I've been trying it out and it basically does the exact same thing, but like literally so much cheaper. So yeah, that's what I'm going to be using. I'm just waiting for my kind of year before the date or whatever for me to get her to renew. I'm going to switch over.

Yep. People should go sign up for that if they're looking for something and they can probably use Jessica's affiliate link to get like an extended free trial. Oh, okay. I'm sure. I'll get an affiliate link right extended free trial. Oh, okay. I'm sure. I'll get an affiliate link right now. Okay. Oh, yeah.

I loved it though. That was number one. Yeah. Number two is, this is for all the entrepreneurs and bloggers or online content creators. Yeah. More and more of these platforms that we pay for, like Leadpages, like ConvertKit, like Buff like buffer or whatever they are starting to like overlap into features a little bit yeah realizing this yeah so a couple of weeks ago i did another little subscription audit and i found out that lead pages which i love i know i've been using

them for a few years i like them too yeah i love lead pages don't get me wrong yeah but i just oh what is my renewal date? Like, I don't remember when I last paid for this. I paid annually. Yeah. So I looked it up and it's like next week, like Thanksgiving day.

Mine's like in a couple of weeks too. That's funny. Yeah. It was like, I had 300 bucks for my plan. Yeah. And I was sitting next to my wife who we're looking at each other. We're like thinking about our budgets and thinking about our, our current lifestyle, which is very frugal, very hustle, very driven. And we're looking at each other we're like thinking about our budgets and thinking about our current lifestyle which is very frugal very hustle very driven and we're like that's three hundred dollars

yeah for people who make like a hundred thousand dollars a year it's like nothing but for someone who's like yeah self-employed you're like every dollar literally counts yes so i looked at it and i was like wait a minute i have a fairly new project with Do You Even Blog. It's still pretty new. It wouldn't be that hard for me to go back and switch out all my lead boxes from lead pages. There's actually not that many of them right now. already pay for convert kit as well so if i really needed that specific kind of landing page or if i needed an opt-in box for my blog couldn't i just use convert kit which i'm already paying for anyways i decided yes so i'm sorry lead pages maybe next year but i canceled that and i don't know i feel like more people should probably do that same sort of auditing process yeah mainly just because those features yeah to overlap a lot. You've got to be like,

well, do I really need this? Absolutely. Yeah, so this has inspired me to do another audit. I feel like, because yeah, I knew ConvertKit does do a lot of the same thing as lead pages, but I think I do use lead pages enough

to make it worth it. Yeah, I have to think it worth it. Yeah. I have to think about that one. Yeah. That's a tough one. I also just like, you know, it's also,

and the hard thing too is like once you get comfortable with a certain software, it's hard to give it up. Cause you're like, Oh, I know how to use it though. Yeah. Yeah.

But on the other hand, I can also point at this and this goes for not just entrepreneurs or anything. It's funny how we all think that about even simple, like cable. Yeah. People all the time will be like, oh, you know what though? It's, it's fall and it's college football and I really need that. Or do you know what though?

Like this season is just starting and whatnot. But at the end of the day, like two months later, you would not miss it at all. If you get rid of it, this is, that's just my opinion. Yeah, no, it's true. It's like, if you get used to it, you get used to it. Like I haven't had cable in years. We just have Netflix and we survive. And guess what people, I feel like people forget that there is the library that exists. The library has free books and free magazines and free CDs and free movies and TV shows. Like, hello, just go to the library. Yes.

Like, for me, one of my things is I always want to cut back on, like, the purchase of buying books. Because, A, also, I just don't want to accumulate all this stuff and space, right? But also, I'm like, yeah. So, actually, when we – my husband moved to Toronto four years ago. And, like, we literally packed all of our belongings in his car. So we really didn't have that much stuff or much room. I'm like, okay, moving forward. I'm just going to use my Kobo, which is like a Kindle, to read my books.

And I'm just going to get those books from the library because you can get e-books from the library. And that's what I've been doing ever since. And it's totally fine. Actually, it's nicer because I never have to leave the house to get a book. That's awesome. Yeah, I ever since. And it's totally fine. Actually, it's nicer because I never have to leave the house to get a book. That's awesome. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, and it's free. Let me throw out one more cool thing.

So Chris at Popcorn Finance, which if you're into money and you're into shorter podcasts, like is it like five minutes? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was at FinCon too. Yeah, yeah. I think I met him. Awesome, awesome guy. I love his podcast. They're so short and digestible.

But anyways, he published an episode recently that was basically how to get Audible for free. Oh. Through a, I can't remember what it's called. People can just go Google Chris Popcorn Finance Audible. Maybe it'll pop right up. Okay, I'll try to find the link and put it in the show notes as well. Yeah, it's like a national thing. It's just for Americans, do you think?

Oh my gosh, I think so. Damn it. It's okay. I don't know, I could be wrong. I'm going to look into this. Okay. I don't know, maybe it's in Canada. But it's through some company

that works with local libraries all across the country, maybe the continent, I don't know. And basically just provides a set amount of audiobooks through Audible for free. That's interesting. Well, I do know in Canada, or at least in Ontario, I don't know. And basically just provides a set amount of like audio books through audible for free. Well,

I do know like in Canada or at least like in Ontario, I know you can get, you can get audio books from the library for free. So, but again, yeah, it's just like, I think people just sometimes forget and they're just like,

Oh, it's just so much easier if I buy it. But yeah, like as we're kind of going back, it's like there, you know, it's, it's actually quite easy to live below your means.

And once you get used to that, you realize how, I don't know, like because, yeah, just similar to you, because this is my first year of self-employment. We've been living very frugally. We've been very conscious about every dollar we spend and we've had to make sacrifices. And we've also had to say no. I'm like, I would love to make some renovations to our townhouse. Yeah. But we have a to-do list of things that we want to get done. And basically, we're like, well, okay, we just put in pot lights.

And that was a really good thing because it was way too dark. The lighting was terrible. It makes your place look more expensive. But that was an expensive installation. It was over $1,000. So we're like, okay, I think we're going to take break from renovations and just like wait six months and save up and it's it's basically like a good practice and saying no but i always like to tell people that if they feel like especially they feel like like they can't control their finances or spending too much they don't

know why blah blah blah blah like literally just do like a you know spending cleanse is what i like to call it some people call it a shopping ban for a month. Just don't buy anything besides your necessities like groceries and your fixed expenses. Like just try it. And it's just like going on a normal cleanse or like changing your diet. You'll feel so much better after and you'll have more stuff after. So. I love that. If if nothing else but because doing things in moderation for so many people including myself like i stink at doing anything in moderation yeah so if i was like oh man i want to spend like 10 less next month i'd never ever do it sometimes you need to have a challenge like and then also like sometimes it's easier to like if people like

your friends are like oh let's go out and you're like oh i can easier to like if people are like, you know, friends are like, oh, let's go out. And you're like, oh, I can't because I just don't want to spend the money. Like it's sometimes harder. But if you say, oh, I'm doing a challenge where I'm not spending. If anything, they'll probably be like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So no, I'm totally with you. Put that out there.

I did the same thing. Okay. This is only tangentially related, but I did the same thing with dieting. So I have a sweet tooth like i would eat pancakes for breakfast every single morning and then pizza and then beer and then there's the rest of the day i would if given the choice so well yeah given the choice i also would but i'd be literally a million pounds so i don't know what that would look like but yeah i would have way more chins that i already have you would be completely stuck in your townhouse.

I would be stuck in this chair right now. But I can't do anything in moderation. Like I just can't. So what worked for me was going on the keto diet, ketogenic diet, which is a little bit more hardcore for those who haven't heard of it. Those who have probably realize it's a little hardcore. It's like zero carbs, pretty much. So is it sort of similar to the paleo diet? It's very similar.

Yeah. And for me, this was like, not only was it a challenge, right? So if somebody was like, hey, let's go grab some pizza, I wouldn't have to say exactly what you just said. Like, oh, no, I'm not really doing pizza. I would say like, nope, can't have it. I'm on the keto diet, zero carbs yeah and i did that for two months and it was probably like one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life yeah i it was amazing yeah it was amazing it was not moderation

at all it was like super strict yeah super hard and it worked yeah i don't know it's a weird mindset switch thing it is well like similarly like me and my uh business partner friend jacklin phill Phillips have the rich and fit bootcamp. And part of it is we have a meal plan. And I being like one of the co-creators of this course did all the workouts in the course and the meal plan. And I told her the first week I switched to the meal plan and it really was like hardly any carbs, maybe just like some quinoa or some like sweet potato, you know, like very, it's all about whole foods and stuff like that. Um, I like crap the first week and she's like it's because you're addicted to sugar and you don't even know it and i'm like actually totally yeah that's exact and then after a week i felt immediately better and lighter yes and of course i've fallen off that

wagon so i need to get back on it because it's, you know, it's time. Because it did work. It totally freaking worked. I'm like, ah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, that's a whole other. Yeah.

Yeah. But to be fair, we can break it back around. Yeah. I do think that applies to personal finance. Absolutely. Lifestyle changes. Yeah. That was really a broad word.

Let me break that down. Lifestyle changes. Yeah. Meaning like switching up your lifestyle if you are going from like full-time job to this or if you're going from this location to travel or whatnot. Or if you're like just unhappy in your situation, you can change it. I feel like a lot of people just need to be reminded of that. It's like just because you've been living the same way for decades or the last five

years does not mean you know and again like like that's why there's so many parallels between like personal finance and like health and fitness is there's very similar it's like lots of people are like oh but i've always been kind of heavy or blah blah it's like well just because it's always been like that doesn't mean your future has to continue like that like it just you can absolutely change it it's not easy you have to be very self-motivated and hard on yourself and it's not going to be easy, but it's possible. Oh, you know what? I'll add in one more thing that I probably should have said earlier.

Whether it's dieting or personal finance or quitting your job or whatnot. Yeah. My wife and I, as an example, have made a ton of sacrifices. Yeah. And we make way less money right now than we did a year and a half ago when I was in corporate America. She was still in Atlanta working. Way less money.

Like, I'm not going to give the numbers away, but it's incredible. I've never been happier. Yeah. Never been happier. 100%. Living in my grandmother's house. I have my own work now. I work on my blog, which is my business now.

I love every second of it. I spend time with my kids who still have food on the table because we've managed to do that. But I was so scared of doing this. I was terrified. Like I said, my wife and I like cried it out literally for like a couple of days when we're stressed and thinking about what to do. We made the decision. Now we're, I guess most people would call it struggling. But I call it building. Yeah. Like I'm building up my business and my income and we're fine.

Yeah. And not only that, but I've never been happier. And it's also like what, yeah, I mean, exactly. Like it's so funny that you say that because, yeah, like literally I probably made close to double last year because I had my full-time job and my side hustle. Now I just have my one hustle. But I am so much happier. And yes, I do live very strictly. I haven't bought clothes in a year. There's lots of things that I haven't been able to do, but there's still lots of things that I am able to do. And for me, I had to reeuate like what made me happy and what are my values my values are like i like having like the luxury of being able to sleep in or yeah just like making my own schedule um and and i want to be able to help people and and do my passion and i think after so many years

of kind of like doing a lot of different you know jobs that i thought maybe this will be the right path maybe this will be the right path, maybe this will be the right path. I'm like, actually, I think personal finance and helping people with financial literacy is kind of my calling, not to be all. But I feel like that is what I feel like. Because I feel so amazing when I hear someone who's listened to the podcast or read something on my blog or whatever to be like,

oh, wow, I was really struggling and listening to you has really changed my perspective. I'm like, wow, that's powerful. Because people have done that to me. So it's a privilege to be able to do that to other people. So we're going to wrap this up soon. But I wrote down life's purpose for you. What does that mean?

What are we talking about there? Oh, OK. I know. No, this is good. Yeah. See, that's why I said it. I didn't want to like interrupt the flow. I'm so glad you did.

I'm like, I wrote it down. We're going to talk about it. Yeah, okay. I know. No, this is good. Yeah. See, that's why I said it. I didn't want to like. I'm so glad you did. I'm like, I wrote it down. We're going to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I want to share with you my life's purpose because I just found it like six months ago. And I'm 32, by the way, so it took me a while. So my life's purpose now, probably somewhat similar to yours, maybe a little different. I want to help people like myself.

Yeah. Like everybody knows the story now. I struggled. I was kind of pushed and funneled through life in a very specific and very common direction. And only in the past like year, three years to six months have been able to make my life look like what I want it to look like. Yeah. And forget money and forget comfort and security. Like I like what I'm doing right now,

which is trying to blog full time. That's just me. I know a ton of people want that, but I love it. And my purpose in life right now is to help everyone else like me, wherever they are along in that process. And what I want to leave people with, especially is that I actually don't know what that looks like. It's not a goal, a specific destination. It's a path. I know my purpose in life is to help other people like me find a more personal and more joyful and more valuable path for themselves. I don't know if that's going to be on my current project or my next full-time job or whatever my life looks like five, 10 years from now, but that is my life's purpose. And I'm a hundred percent aware of it.

It's a path, not a destination. I don't know. I feel like that might help people. So yeah, I think that's also something as I've gotten older realized it's not like, I think I always got caught up when people would say, what's your five year plan? What's your 10 year plan? Cause you always get that question when you're like interviewing for a job or whatever like that. So you always have to come up with something. I'm like,

you know what? I understand the importance of having a plan so to speak, but to be able to say that you can kind of predict where you want to be in five years, I've stopped doing that. I literally just live year to year. I have a lot of goals. I think as long as you've got a good financial plan, you don't really need to know

how the rest of your life will play out because you may say no to opportunities because it doesn't fit within that box. I love it. I think that's great. I know. Well, I'm so glad that we connected. This was lovely. I'm so excited to be on your show. Yes. We can continue this conversation. Oh, it's going to be fun. I know. But yeah, Pete, where can people find you, learn more about you if they're so inclined? So doyouevenblog.com is my current project.

Is there a question mark in there? Probably not, right? No. Yeah. They don't have a lot of that in domains. Can you actually do that in URLs? I don't think you can. How can I never? Oh, you can on the end. You know how you do like affiliate links and it'll be like question mark ref?

Oh, yeah, but not like can you? Yeah. Okay. No. Okay. Just to clarify that. Sorry. DoYouEvenBlog.com.

And actually, I've created a little video for your audience. And it doesn't have a name name but i did write this down here okay what i really wanted to get at because i thought this would be a good intersection of your audience is either for those who are interested in starting a blog or bloggers who are already out there yeah that want to kind of make enhancements or grow their blog for the least amount of money possible yes we talked about the subscription audits and that sort of stuff. So I put together a few videos that people can get. It's at doyouevenblog.com slash mo money. So M-O money. Fabulous.

Doyouevenblog.com slash mo money. You can go get the little bonus videos on some very cheap or frugal, however you want to think about it. I love it. Ways to build a blog and grow a blog. Hey, I started my blog on, I tell people this, I started on Tumblr. I got my sister to design it because it was free. That's how cheap I was. I didn't want to, because I wanted my own domain, but I didn't want to do self-hosting

because I couldn't afford like $10 a month, basically. Oh, yeah. So I got it hosted on Tumblr because hosting was free there. But also just like there's a lot of other, it was like a terrible platform to do basically. So I got it hosted on Tumblr because hosting was free there. But also just like, there's a lot of other, it was like a terrible platform to do what I was doing on it. So yeah, I totally get it. It's like, you can start a blog

for super no money if you want. Yeah, and have an email list and have opt-ins and yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like you can do all that stuff and you don't need to spend all the money that we're spending on like ConvertKit and LeadPages. But yeah, cool. Well, that is so awesome awesome thank you so much for taking the time to chat

with me it was a pleasure yeah thank you jessica you're an amazing podcaster so keep doing it keep going oh okay i'll keep doing it though thanks again jessica and that was episode 146 with the wonderful pete mcpherson you can find him at doyouevenblog.com. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, he also has a podcast called the Do You Even Blog Podcast. And I was actually recently recorded for his show. And you can find my episode on there was released January 29th. And I love the title of it too. And I mean, it's because, you know, it pats my ego a little bit. It's called the Canadian Powerhouse Inside the Blog, Podcast, and Products of Jessica Morehouse. It's a good episode, if I do say so myself.

But again, I'll put more information about stuff that we talked about, more information about Pete, and a link to that interview on his podcast in the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 146 is where you can find all that stuff. More stuff to tell you, but before I get to all of that, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. Support for this episode comes from Nest Wealth. Want to start investing for your future? Luckily nowadays, it doesn't mean you have to make an appointment with some suit in an office. Actually, you don't even have to leave your house. Nest Wealth, Canada's first ever robo-advisor and the largest independent wealth management platform in the country, provides a new way to invest your money.

Offering index-based portfolios with lower fees and better historical performance than actively managed mutual funds, Nest Wealth is focused on building personalized portfolios to best fit the needs, risk tolerance, and financial goals of each and every client they serve. And Nest Wealth is currently offering All My Money podcast listeners three months free. To get started, visit learn.nestwealth.com slash Jessica Morehouse. Once again, that's learn.nestswealth.com slash Jessica Morehouse. And if you want to learn a little bit more about how it all works, check out my video review in the show notes or visit jessicamorehouse.com slash nestwealth review. Alrighty, right. So just a few things. Thanks for everyone sending me iTunes reviews,

reviews on the YouTube and all that kind of stuff. Speaking of YouTube, make sure to subscribe. I am putting out new videos every single week and I'm doing a lot more stuff with YouTube. I'm getting a lot of, well, I got a lot of great feedback from some surveys that I did, I guess in December. I'm just gonna wanna know what do you guys want for me. And a lot of the reviews, or a lot of the feedback rather, that I got was, you know,

we want more information about like how, you know, what are different, like products or apps that we should maybe look into or whatever. So I'm doing a lot more of that. I'm doing a lot more, you know, reviews and tutorials on things that you may want to try out. And you may just need some, you know, reviews and tutorials on, uh, things that you may want to try out. And, uh, you may just need some, you know, visual information that is honestly, whenever I'm about to like look into something, I kind of look on YouTube because I want to know what it looks like or how does it work. So, uh, make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash YouTube to, uh, check me out, check out my new videos, tutorials. And, tutorials. And if you have something specific that you want more information about, you want me to do a blog post or a video on or anything, any kind of

feedback is always welcome. Just shoot me an email directly, jessica at jessicamorehouse.com. And before I let you go, I've got a few more podcast review shout outs that I want to get to, to say thank you to everyone who has been so kind to take the time to leave me a review. All right, this one is from Northern BC from Canada. And they say Jessica is a dedicated podcaster that is very enjoyable to listen to. I highly recommend. I certainly am dedicated. I mean, 146 episodes in less than three years. That's crazy. That is crazy talk. I don't, sometimes I'm like, what am I doing? But anyways, one is a new one from Giggle Get from USA. Jess is a boss and a charming host. I love it. I'm a

boss. Oh, I like that. I like to. I am actually a boss. I'm the boss of myself and my business, but I also like to be like a boss, you know, like a B-A-W-S. Is that how they spell it? Is that how they could spell it? I don't know. Anyways, I'm a boss. Thank you so much, Giggle Get or Giggle Jet. One is from Bo from Canada. Oh, I think I actually know who that is. Jessica has the most interesting guests and conversations. That's really the best part. They are conversations and discussions like you would have with your friends if your friends were experts in a whole bunch of different subjects, which they might be. It's just easy to listen to. And I've learned so much from Jessica and her guests. Well, thank you so much, Bo.

I really appreciate that review. Okay, we'll do two more. Jenna Ross, entrepreneur from Canada. I love the variety of topics and guests on this podcast. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much, Jenna, for listening and that review. And last but not least, we've got Alt Seng from Canada. I'm just starting to explore personal finance and this podcast has been really informational. Awesome.

Well, thank you everyone for sending me your reviews. I really, really appreciate it. If you want to get a shout out on a future episode, it's super simple. All you have to do is go to iTunes or Stitcher, YouTube. I'll try my best to, you know, gather those as well. And I'll give you a shout out on, you know, a future episode to say thank you and read your review out. It's a lot of fun to read them and get to know your feedback. And it's just a good time. Everyone has a good time, everybody.

So I have a special podcast episode for tomorrow. So make sure to check back here tomorrow for that. Subscribe on iTunes or YouTube, Stitcher, wherever you're listening so you don't miss it. And I will see you back here tomorrow. All right. Have a good rest of your day. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.