More Money Podcast - 419 Transform Your Spending with a Values-First Approach - Co-Authors of Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

People sure have a lot to say about how you spend your money. The funny thing is, those people don't know you as well as you know yourself. So why would you listen to their advice or opinions, when the real person you should be listening to is yourself? This notion is what inspired Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni, co-hosts of The Frugal Friends Podcast, to write their book Buy What You Love Without Going Broke: Transform Your Spending and Get More of What Money Can't Buy. They wanted to help people transform their spending by cutting out the noise so they could finally start listening to their own needs, wants, and values so they can feel empowered, not shamed, for how they spend their money. You may remember Jen and Jill from episode 351 where they shared their stories of getting out of debt and finding freedom through frugality. If you liked that episode, you're going to love this one and their new book! Follow me: Instagram @jessicaimoorhouse Threads @jessicaimoorhouse TikTok @jessicaimoorhouse Facebook @jessicaimoorhouse YouTube @jessicamoorhouse LinkedIn - Jessica Moorhouse For full episode show notes and transcript visit jessicamoorhouse.com/419 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

and welcome back to the more money podcast this is the second to last episode of season 19 of the show but this will be the last interview of the season the next episode or the finale episode will air on december 31st because hey that is when my book officially comes out to bookstores everywhere. And it's called Everything But Money. And you can pre-order now. Now for this episode, I'm so excited to invite back Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni, co-hosts of the top rated Frugal Friends podcast. Now, you may remember them from the episode we did together, episode 351, which aired February 1st, 2023, two years ago. Now, if you want to listen to that episode after this, which I highly recommend because it's more about their story, which is so fascinating, go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 351, or you can just

do a little search by going to jessicamorehouse.com slash podcast. Go on my website. It will be there. Highly recommend it. Check that out. I will also link to it in the show notes for this episode. And you can find the show notes for any episode by going to jessicamorehouse.com slash the number of the episode. Now, since the first episode aired, those gals have been very busy writing their first book together, which is called Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, Transform Your Spending, and Get More of What Money Can't Buy. And absolutely loved it.

It also comes out a week after my book, which is really kind of cool. It comes out January 7th. And honestly, it is kind of the first book I've come across that's all about spending, which is surprising. I've talked to a lot of authors on the show over the past 10 years. And I'm not saying it's not a book about how not to spend, which is what a lot of personal finance books focus on. It's a book on how to spend your money in alignment with your values and in a way that will not only help you achieve your goals, but also find fulfillment in your life.

Basically, it's a very anti-shame and all about stop feeling bad about spending kind of book, which I think is very necessary in this world where there's a lot of opinions, a lot of feelings, a lot of shame going around when it comes to your money. And we need a book that makes us feel good about money. Because as I've said multiple times on this show, at the end of the day, money is meant to be spent at some point. So why are we feeling bad about that? We should be feeling good about our decisions. Now, I will be giving away a copy of their book as always. I'm giving away copies of all the books that have been featured on this season of the show. So make sure to listen to the end of this episode to find out details on how to enter. But we have got a lot to chat about

in, you know, about their book and just what they want listeners to know. So without further ado, here's my interview with Jen and Jill. Welcome back, Jen and Jill. Has it been a year? No, it's probably been like two years since I've had you on the show. Almost two years. I swear because, I mean, it's so funny that I'm assuming that we probably were on this book writing journey around the same time, but I don't know if I totally knew the timelines, which is funny. But for me, the year of me writing the book is like not a year. So I'm always like, oh, that happened last year. And people are like, no, that was two years ago. It's a bit of a weird time warp, but I'm so excited to have you back on

this show to talk about your book together. It looks so beautiful. We have some things in common in that our books both have the same font. Oh, what a time to be alive. There's millions of fonts out there. There's millions of fonts, but both the publishers are like, no, that's the one. That's it. This one just publishes a week before this one, so they should have the same font. They should have the same font. No one will notice.

I'm so excited to have you back on this show, especially because you have this book coming out. Yeah. Like a week after mine called Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, Transform Your Spending and Get More of What Money Can't Buy. And as your Canadian friend, I'm very excited to find it in a Canadian bookstore. I will send you a photo if I find it on bookshelves. I like to do that when I have a guest and they're in the US and they're like, is it in Canada? I'm like, yeah, it is. And here's proof. And that always is kind of exciting. But, you know, I've got a lot of questions for you and for anyone, you know, we did do an episode two years ago. So check that out to kind of find more about

your guys' backstory. But I'm curious, first, what inspired the book? Because you know, as podcasters, you've interviewed so many people. There's a lot of personal finance books out there. You wanted to obviously do something a bit different, have your take on it, share your specific voice and your perspective. How did you come together? And you're like, this is like, especially to being co-writers, I cannot imagine. It was hard, just me and all of my personalities inside my head to try to figure out what my book was going to be like. How did you figure out this is the book that we want to write? It was such a process.

And at first I kind of dragged Jill along. I'm a writer first. I didn't want to start a podcast because it didn't feel like my wheelhouse. I was a personal finance writer. So writing a book and having it traditionally published was always like a pipe dream. I never felt like I had a big enough platform or a good enough idea or marketable enough idea to do it. And I was inspired, well, I was motivated by a friend who had traditionally published a book and he said, your platform is bigger than mine. Your niche is bigger than mine. Your place within

the niche is more specific. And so he just encouraged me in all of these ways to kind of start pursuing it. And so just started putting out feelers and was turned down by some agents and ended up- That's part of the journey. I feel like it makes you a little bit stronger. I had some rejection too. If you don't have rejection, then you weren't doing enough. Yeah. And so we ended up with an amazing agent who was very in line, did not want to be a personal finance book agent, even though she had several personal finance books underneath her. And we didn't want to be strictly personal finance authors, even though that's where this book does sit. And so it was just this perfect

relationship melding. And we sold this book at auction. And it was after, I would say, nine months of trying to figure out what the book would be about. We had so many ideas. We had one core inspiration, but just did not know how to get it across. What was that core thing? You were like, no matter what the book ends up, this is what we really want people to get to know. Well, first we spent $5,000 to get a proposal writer to help us figure out what the book would be about. And then afterwards, we had like 50 different note cards and we were like, this is not the book. This isn't it. And so we polled our readers and listeners, the readers of our newsletter and our listeners, and we're like, what's the thing that we have taught? What is the thing that you've gotten

from us that you haven't gotten anywhere? What's been the thing that we've talked about that's changed your life the most? And hands down, one singular answer, values-based spending. And that was a big part of what was in our proposal, but we realized it wasn't big enough that we needed to do, the whole book needed to be about how to spend money, not how to do personal finance, not how to save money, not how to invest, how to spend money. Because most people's idea about how to spend is spend as little as possible. Yeah. Spending is bad. It's all these negative things. And yeah, like you said, so many books are about saving, investing, everything else. This is probably the first book I've come across that I'm like, this is just about spending, but, everything else. This is probably the first book I've come across that I'm

like, this is just about spending, but in a healthy, happy, good feel way. And most books out there that talk about spending, it's either a short section and it usually is a little bit shaming, like, but don't do it. You know, spending's bad. Or yeah, they gloss over it. Or yeah, it's just usually a negative part of the finance part. And I love that you're like, no, we wrote an entire book about spending because things are not being said and they should be. Yeah. One of the things that we said when we were first beginning this process is we want this to be a compliment to any other personal finance book you might have on your shelf, that this is going to fill in the gaps where so many other personal finance books are going to begin with and end with the tactical, the strategy, the numbers and math on the paper. We recognize that there's so many more steps

before as well as during and throughout for the long term for this to be sustainable, for the strategies and the plan to actually work. We need to have the skill set in order to implement that. And I think many of us have not been taught that skill set of spending money well, how to be efficient, how to make good money decisions for us, and how that's going to look different for other people. And so this flexibility and individualization of personal finances is something that we saw a gap in and wanted to make accessible to more people. So similar to how I was kind of drawn to doing this podcast with Jen, same thing and drawn to making this book. It felt like something that would last even longer than however long we choose to talk about this topic. But

we hope that this is something that people can carry with them and can help them no matter what stage of life they find themselves in. Absolutely. Because I feel like you, and that's the other big draw for the book. Lots of books are very focused on maybe a certain demographic, a certain age group. This one could be, because let me tell you, even me, who's been in personal finance for a long time, still have issues with spending and they're very deep rooted. And I think a lot of people have those and don't know. I'm like, is there anyone that's talking about this? Anyone could help. And so anyone at any age could pick up this book and learn quite a few things on how I can make that shift. Now, I know you talk about that the kind of the core of the book is

values-based spending. But one question that popped into my head was a lot of us run on autopilot when it comes to our spending, especially. And largely, that's because we have been taught how to properly spend, how to responsibly spend, how to spend in a healthy way that's good for us, which means we may not even know what are our values in terms of our spending. And that's something that I, you know, had to learn myself over years because I didn't, you know, being super frugal and thinking spending was wrong for all of my 20s, maybe even my early 30s. You know, I didn't even know where to start. And I love the idea of spend within your values, a great way to identify things

in your spending that maybe you want to change. But I had a hard time figuring out what do I want? Because I've never thought about that. Where should people start in terms of figuring out what are my values? And then how do I apply that to my spending? Yeah, I agree. We often don't give ourselves the opportunity and space to understand who we are more on any kind of level. And so I think part of this question is just allowing ourselves to learn more about who we are, how we operate, what we like, what we don't like. And part of it begins with this foundational understanding where we've begun, which is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm sure many of us are familiar with this. It's a triangle. What a fun shape.

And it's arranged in five different levels of needs. And so the first couple of layers have to do with our physiological needs, our food, water, shelter needs, and then our safety and stability needs above that. And so these are kind of some of our basic needs. Moving beyond that, we get to love and belonging needs followed by esteem needs. And then at the tippy top is self-actualization. And this isn't some place of nirvana and transcendence, but really an opportunity to be able to live within what feels like a purposeful, meaningful life. Maybe not all of the time, but having opportunities to exercise creativity and ingenuity, maybe even spontaneity. And so what we're recognizing with the ways that we live life and how we utilize all of our resources is all of these needs matter. Now, usually we won't move up levels until some of these lower basic needs have been met, but they don't have to be met

entirely in order for us to start seeking after love and belonging, esteem, creativity, fulfilling opportunities. Of course, if you don't know where your next meal is coming from, then that's going to be where your focus is. But if you do know where your next meal is coming from and you're feeling hungry, you could still hang out with friends for another few hours or continue on this project or stay deep in work focus mode and just blow past lunch. No big deal. You can point towards these other higher needs. So this concept is what helped us to understand where a lot of our spending does go and how we seek to meet some of these needs, whether consciously or subconsciously. And a lot of personal finance

stops at those bottom two levels, the food, water, safety, shelter, stability, like saying, these are our needs. And we're recognizing, no, we've got more needs than that. Yes, we do want a roof over our heads, but these other aspects matter too. And many times we're spending to meet these needs, sometimes in ways that we don't actually need to. This then led us to recognizing what we call the four Fs. So faith, family, friends, and fulfilling work tend to be the highest values for most of us. And those would be those kind of top three tiers of the triangle that these are the areas that we actually want to get more of. When we spend our discretionary income or when we have discretionary spending, often it's to get more of family, more time with friends, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization needs. So when we can frame

our spending and our management of our resources in this way and build from there, we can kind of understand, all right, maybe it's not necessarily about this thing that I'm getting. What if I am spending to solve a problem that doesn't require my money? And beginning with how do I get more of these four Fs? In what ways am I engaging with family, with friends, with faith or spirituality practices, or what I'm setting my hands to, that is giving me joy, that's lighting me up, that I'm really, yeah, it's life-giving to me. And how do I get more of that would be where we begin before we even kind of wrap money into it. And I think a lot of us, because those sound like, oh yeah, I should know that, but we need a reminder.

We really, really do to refocus and get back to the importance of why are we doing this? Because as the funnel is out of high school, into college, get a job, then get all of these things. There's not a lot of breathing room to think about, wait, what are those priorities? What makes me happy outside of money? And then how can I then bring money back into the playing field? So when you have done that core work of identifying your values, then what would be your next logical step? In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no, turn left.

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but I'm trying to spend in ways that aren't actually meeting it. So we recommend doing a 90-day transaction inventory and looking at your past 90 days. And a lot of people are going to be reading this book in January and are going to think, okay, I'm not going to do the last 90 days because that's with Christmas and all the holidays and it's going to be weird. And we say, no, do it for the last 90 days because you are trying to get at what are the spending habits that I am currently living in? Not the spending habits that I was doing in the fall or over the summer. Where am I working from right now? Because your transaction inventory is not to make you feel guilty about how

much money you're spending. You want to look at it from a place of neutrality, no judgment. We listen and we don't judge. And we are looking for patterns, cues, triggers to what the purpose behind these transactions are. So we're looking for what time of day, like if I'm going someplace like Starbucks every Tuesday morning, am I on my way to somewhere? Am I coming from somewhere? Am I seeing somebody? Am I with someone? Looking at these patterns and figuring out what the triggers are. So then from there, we can start with that to better align our spending. We're not trying to necessarily cut our spending all the way down. This isn't a spending race to the bottom. This is how can I realign my spending and fix my resource allocation to be more aligned with what I truly need, not what marketing is

telling me that I quote unquote need to justify the purchase, but what I truly need, the things money cannot buy. Oh, I love that. Do you recommend, the 90 days, I completely agree with, do you ever recommend going further than that, like six months or a year, or is that just like you may not find new information? And after that 60, or sorry, 90 day challenge, do you recommend continuing to look at your spending every single month and make that a habit or not so much? So you don't need to do more than 90 days. Like Jen's saying, it's not going to totally give you the picture of where you're at currently and the shifts that need to be made currently. That can just feel really overwhelming. If anything, we say you can shorten it. You could do a 30 to 60 day transaction inventory. That said, there are times that it's worth looking back

maybe from a year ago, like when we're coming upon the next season. So when we were at the holidays, we recommended look back at last year's spending around this time. It could help you to understand how you spent then, maybe how you might be spending now, and maybe inform which things you don't want to do, which things you really do want to do. Same thing can happen in the summertime. What did we do last year?

How much did summer activities cost us? What can I be prepared for? But in the sense of approaching a 90-day transaction inventory for the sake of understanding our spending, I don't think that this has to be that regular of an occurrence. It's this process that we can take part in to help us understand more about ourselves, the shifts that we want to start making and to go from there. And from there, you're more so just auditing, tweaking. You're still, of course, when you're in the beginning, you are keeping track. We would recommend monthly looking at, okay, how am I doing on these things that I said

that I do really want to spend on the things that I said I don't want to spend on? What shifts can I be making? What barriers am I running into? These are going to be the markers that help to inform us on what are our behaviors telling us. But it's not as if you have to do the 90-day constantly. It is just a really good thing to engage in at least once and then build upon it. And it's so funny you say that because my husband and I went to do our 90-day transaction inventory for the year just recently, and he was like, I think we should do 12 months. And I was like, well, I'm sorry. I just wrote a

book about why it's 90 days. I'm the expert here, but thanks. So the thing is, is like, you can't change the past. And when you look further than 90 days, it doesn't help you change habits moving forward. It really just gives you more opportunity to feel guilty about what was spent. So our compromise was we looked at cash flow throughout the past year. And any month that maybe we had abnormal cash flow, we went into that month and we looked into why. But when we're talking about how to spend money, we're not trying to learn how to not spend money. We're trying to learn how to spend money. We really can just look at that last 90 days because we're looking for current habits to take with us moving forward. So you mentioned you and

your husband, and that was actually my next question. Is there any difference if you're single versus in a partnership? Because it's obviously more complex in a partnership because sometimes you're spending individually and then together, and then you've got two people, two opinions, two ways of thinking this is what we should do. This isn't what we should be doing. Yeah. I think this really helps create a beautiful synergy, values-based spending does, in a relationship. Because first, it comes from a place of you get to first figure out what your true values are, why you're spending on the things you're spending. So you can actually have an explanation for your partner when they're like, why are you buying all this stuff? And you can have a better answer than just like, I like it.

So then they can understand you better. And then you have this shared kind of framework with the four Fs and Maslow's hierarchy of needs to figure out your shared values and better understand where the other one is coming from with their purchases. And when each of you understands what you're truly trying to get at and what the other person's trying to get at, then you can have more grace for their purchases when maybe they quote unquote make a mistake or spend on something they don't want to. And you can better motivate each other to pursue things that you truly deserve. We say all the time this I deserve mentality is really toxic because of course you deserve

the latte. Of course you deserve the little treat, but you deserve more than that. And marketing is trying to convince you that it's too big. It's too out of your reach. Don't focus on that. Here, here's something that's cheaper. Yeah, settle on the latte, not early retirement. You deserve this.

Wait a minute. Right. And so to encourage your partner to say, like, we deserve more than this. Yeah. A helpful approach for both ourselves and if we're doing this with a partner is to ask the right questions, ask better questions. And that includes excluding the word why. Just for now, as we're getting curious about our spending and really wanting to give ourselves space to understand how we tick, how we operate, to look at that 90-day transaction inventory with this curious lens where we are not asking why questions. Instead, we're saying things like, what about this purchase was I

trying to get after? How did it meet my needs? When did this happen? Even if we want to get to some of the cues of what's prompting us to spend in this way. It's the difference between if we are asking our partner, why did you spend so much at the music store? To what was it about what you purchased at the music store that got you excited? What was it there that you wanted to get? And did it meet that need? And the type of dialogue that this creates, whether internally or between the two of you, can be so different. The first question kind of puts automatic fight mode. We want to justify. We feel defensive. The other one causes curiosity of, hmm, I haven't really thought of it like that. What was going on for me? And did it

get me what I wanted it to get me? And if so, amazing. How can I lean into that? And if not, what shifts could I have made? What would have gotten me closer to the need that I was trying to meet there? Yeah. What action could I do? Because I think so much of our spending comes down to esteem needs that we're not meeting. And so we will waste money on things like hobbies that we will never do or don't really want to do, like beauty products, clothes, all this stuff. And when we come to think about it and we say, okay, I'm trying to meet this self-esteem, self-confidence, respect need in this way, what is a more effective way that I can meet this and truly meet the need? Even if it costs money, but spoiler alert, a lot of the times it doesn't. Most of the times it doesn't. But even

if it does, we just really want to meet the need, the value. That's what's most important. Yeah. I'm curious because we talked a little bit about triggers and maybe impulse spending or when you're making spending choices that later you're like, oh, what was that about? That's a huge problem with a lot of people is they just feel like maybe they don't have that sense of control over their spending like they want to and they desperately want to. Is there a way to long-term break that cycle? Because what I've seen, I'm sure you've seen it as well, is a lot of people that have been in that mode of, oh, you know, got triggered, spent money, regret it. Now I'm trying to undo that and make it better. And then it just happens over and over

again, is they don't know how to get out of the cycle long-term. They'll do really well, kind of like, you know, a diet, like, oh, I've been really good. And then something happens and they're off the wagon. How can people with this long-term mindset for once and for all change their spending moving forward and make sure that they don't repeat those patterns? Because again, those patterns can sometimes run so deep, it feels almost like comforting to keep doing what you're used to. Yeah. And we devote two thirds of the book to just that question because it's so easy to want to make better changes. But anytime you change directions, you are creating friction. And that friction is good. That friction is healthy. But we want to lean into it and not stop just and not view friction as barriers to like

meaning I shouldn't be pursuing this. It's too hard. I'm not capable. We want to lean into the friction. So there's a kind of a short term and a long term. Part two of the book is the short term is that we're kind of learning about why we are doing the things that we're doing. So much of our consumerism is truly, we have been born into it and we are conditioned into

it throughout our lives. And we kind of know that on the surface, right? But we don't know how deep it runs. Like all the way back to the 1920s when modern marketing really got its start, like the industrial revolution was at the end of the 1800s where mass production started. So by the 1920s, factories were struggling to sell product because they had so much of it, they could create so much of it cheaply. And so they needed to create some kind of marketing that didn't just tell people about

a product, but created demand for the product. And so for the past 100 years, we have simply been guinea pigs in this experiment of how to refine the marketing tactic of manufacturing desire, not just products, but simultaneously manufacturing desire. And so A, how do we identify it? B, how do we create healthy coping mechanisms? So when my brain's not going to be in tip top shape all day, every day, right? Like I'm going to have stress. I'm going to have emotions. Spontaneity is one of our higher human needs. I'm going to want to be spontaneous. Like all these things are going to come up. So then B, how do I create healthy coping mechanisms that work with my brain on those

days at those times instead of working against them to not give in to this marketing? And then how do I kind of set up barriers to save as much money as possible in the big ways so that the smaller day-to-day decisions are less important, really? Because values-based spending is important in the way we live our fuller lives, but not spending $6 on a latte once a week is not as important in the grand scope of our finances. So how can we identify these big, heavy hitters to saving that kind of take some of the burden off of our day-to-day spending decisions. Yeah, absolutely. And I'd assume also another big thing that could have a really big impact

on people really getting out of that cycle and staying out of that cycle is really understanding what are actually the consequences. I think when you're younger, especially in your 20s, it's very, and there's, you know, studies that show this, it's very difficult for you to imagine yourself older than you are or to imagine your future. It just seems so far into the distance. But then, you know, things just, once you hit 30, I swear, it just goes very, very quickly. And you don't realize that every single thing you do has, you know, things just once you hit 30, I swear, it just goes very, very quickly. And you don't realize that every single thing you do has it just everything compounds. And then you blink and you're almost 40.

You're like, oh, well, you're either really happy with the decisions you made. I'm glad I kept on doing those smart saving decisions and spending within my values. Or you're like, I'm in a way worse position than I was in my 20s. I didn't think I was going that bad. What are some of the real consequences of not changing those patterns, not really taking your spending seriously when you either come upon this podcast or your podcast or just have the realization that I think I need to make a change, but should I do it now or should I just leave that until next year? Well, we definitely don't want to lead with fear in this. I think that there is so much concern and overwhelm and sometimes chaos and stress around finances and the economy and

where and how we're going to keep chugging along with everything that we're facing. And so I think certainly it's never too late to start. It really is heartbreaking to me when I meet people, even in their 60s, who are like, well, that's great for you all, but too late for me. And you're like, you're still going to hopefully be alive for like two to three decades. Yeah, there's still more decades ahead. Not dead yet. And while we may wish that we had made different choices in our past, I also think that there's a perspective we can take here of recognizing where it's brought us, how our past experiences have allowed us to become, the process of becoming who we are and what's good about that,

what's worth celebrating in the decisions that we made. And yeah, where are the ill-informed decisions? I can take ownership and responsibility of that, but I also have autonomy and the ability to choose differently now going forward. And so while I think it is important to recognize what happens if I don't do anything now, I think that's an important question to ask ourselves, not for the sake of fear or shame, but hopefully to help drive ingenuity, creativity, and a desire to choose differently and to set some of these goals that actually excite us. I think that would be the best motivation is what could you envision? What does light you up? What do you want to see in the next five years? And what one thing could you do

now that would make that possibility even easier in the future? Yeah, no, that's, that's a, I think that's part of the reason why there's so many people that love listening to your podcast. You just have such a great way of making things that someone else could, you know, be a negative and you just have such a lovely positive way of spinning it and be like, or we can frame it this way where it's an, you know, it's a good thing to think about these things. Now we kind of touched on this already, but I wanted to kind of get your, your perspective on this. I think a lot of reasons we make purchases is because we are spending in a lot, like it has something to do with our personal self-worth, who we think we are, what we think our identity is, even if we're kind of unsure, because a lot of

us also have lost focus. I was like, who am I? How do we actually make that disconnection between self-worth and your finances? Because I mean, like you said, almost every marketing campaign out there is really focused on, do you want to be this type of person? Then you need to buy this product or service. How do you actually make that disconnection? Because it's kind of a big question, but I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, no, it's a huge question. And I think we have, I mean, we have such a problem with disconnecting our identities from our spending because it has more of a bearing than we think. Because it impacts every kind of category, no matter if you think you're a fashionista or you're into beauty or you're into books or whatever genre of person you want to loop your identity into, an athlete, like a herbalist, all those things

that you want require money. And so it is truly the root of our quote unquote identity, right? The more money you have, almost the more identity you can have, which is why we always want more because we're tying our identities to the things that we are buying. So more money is always the solution because then I become more of who I am. So when we separate ourselves from these labels, from groups, from things, and we really look at, just get back down to the foundation, these four Fs, our relationships with family, our relationships with friends, whatever our spiritual practice is, whatever our fulfilling work is, then that is a really good starting place to start to break away your identity from

the things you are spending on or opposite being like a super saver and having your identity be in how much you can save and how little you can attach yourself to the things of this world, whether you're a minimalist or like a financial independence enthusiast. We just need to start breaking away our identity. These are all good things inherently, but not when your identity is tied to them. It's something that's a big thing that I'm sure you go more in depth in your book. Again, that's also something that just as someone who's been in personal finance for a long time, it's like it's not an easy thing to do successfully or long term, that disconnection. I want to talk about another thing.

We've talked about this, I think, last time you were on the show and when I was on your show recently is the feeling of shame, which is also very much connected to spending. That's often how people feel. That's often how others make you feel. How can you not let shame kind of run the show with your spending anymore? Like how are you able to kind of turn it on its face and make spending a positive thing, something that fulfills you and uplifts you in a positive way instead of it being this thing that's just, well, everyone my whole life has told me is as bad. It's hard to kind of get rid of that feeling of shame. We've been there. We have certainly, I'll speak for myself, I attached shame to debt. Having debt was this bad decision and the poor, unwise money move. And you are underneath this thing until you're out of it. And then you can finally be free.

And while I didn't want the debt either, I took on so much more than I needed to. I attached so much more meaning to it than I needed to. And so much of this is a process, right? Our thoughts and feelings are what lead to our behaviors. And so beginning with some of our thinking around money, our understanding of self and our behavior. So that 90 day transaction inventory, that action we can put to this will be really helpful in bringing up what sort of patterns do we see happening? How do I feel about the ways in which I spent money, the decisions that I made around purchases? And again, avoiding that why question. We'll start to retrain the narrative that we are building around these actions and start to allow ourselves to think differently about it,

where we might typically jump to, I shouldn't have done that. Why did I spend so much money? Why can't I change this? It forces us to look at it differently and answer it differently. When we say, what was it I was trying to get at here? What led to me spending on this? And maybe we start to discover, I was feeling really stressed that day. And this felt this, this provided the dopamine to my body that I do need. And that's not a wrong thing. And I desire spontaneity. I actually need spontaneity. This is why I spent. I'm not wrong in that. It's part of how I'm wired. I'm a human being. How can I set life up and make decisions with my money that provides space for spontaneity where I can respond to myself well when I'm feeling stressed.

And we can start shifting some of those behaviors that maybe we don't like, but we can start to shed the shame around it when we are beginning to think and ask different questions, create different behaviors, and then be able to have spending be far more intentional where we're aware of the marketing tactics around us. We're able to identify them, then choose, do I want to buy this? Because actually it does look like it's going to make this task much more efficient. Or I can recognize that this is just stirring up something in me. I had a rough day. Actually, instead, I'm going to call a friend or I'm going to make myself something really yummy for dinner, or I'm going to go spend some time in nature. You name it. We can decide what those things are going to be, but we can then build this confidence

in the decisions that we're making and how we're utilizing our resources that will in and of itself begin to move us out of this place of shame because we feel more confident and in control of the decisions that we're making. Absolutely. Now, I also am aware that a lot of people listening have children and they want to change their spending habits, not only so they can provide more cash flow for the family finances and be able to put more into their kids' college fund or just be able to support the family in a better way, but they also probably want to be able to make sure their kids don't inherit the same habits, the same patterns that they maybe grew up with. What would you say to parents who, you know, read your book and they're going to make this transformation themselves?

How can they help make sure that they also slowly kind of provide this information or maybe it's just showing in their actions so they can kind of set their kids up for, so they don't have to kind of do all this work. I feel like we're always looking at the younger generation. It's like, I don't want you to go through the struggles that I went to. How can I do better? And how can I do it now? Yeah.

So I think our problem as adults is that we're spending money and now we're trying to look back at the root of the purpose behind our spending money. For our kids, we can give them that foundation up front without ever talking about money at first. So we're talking, we're having conversations about family and friends and what are your favorite things that you're doing at school. For them, that's their fulfilling work. What what are the things that are lighting you up? What are the things that make you like feel good and grounded and cared for? That could be the faith part.

So we're kind of getting to these roots. And then we're teaching them about motivation. Like so we're teaching them how to ask nonjudgmental questions. So they can get curious about themselves and their motivations. And when they do something, we're saying, okay, you were motivated by this, here's why. Look at this almost hierarchy of needs. You don't need to use the hierarchy if you don't want to, but you will understand kind of more of the foundation. So that way when they get their own money and they start then understanding more

about the numbers and the money part, then they already have this foundation for which when they start spending and making spending mistakes, which they absolutely will, they'll be better equipped to understand why they made the mistake and where to go to get better. Because we can't helicopter them. We need to let them make their mistakes, but equip them with the foundation on how to identify mistakes and learn from them.

So I think I'm doing that with my young children right now. I have an almost two-year-old and a five-year-old. And we're not really doing anything an almost two-year-old and a five-year-old. And we're not really doing anything with the two-year-old, but the five-year-old, we are starting to talk about stuff like this and in a way that's appropriate for him. And then I also want to encourage parents, spend on self-care for yourself. Not just money, but time. Sometimes it's time is more important because we teach our children that you are not the number, you know, you're not my whole life. You are a huge part of it, but not the whole thing. I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of

my relationships, my faith practice, my fulfilling work. And that teaches them that they too need to do that in the future. So take care of yourself while you are trying to teach your children to take care of themselves because they'll catch. They're sponges. And yeah, you'd think that, oh, maybe five is too early for me to even touch on anything financial. No, not at all. No, they already know. They are already observing you, making purchases, the grocery store, or going shopping, or going on your phone and online shopping. And you may not be aware of it. They know it all. As soon as they ask for the first thing at the store when you take them with you, they're ready to talk about boundaries and limits. Okay. I am so excited for your book, Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, coming out. When's it come out? And before I kind of leave you guys, what is one thing that maybe we didn't touch on

or a message that you really want to leave with listeners so they kind of know what to expect, grabbing a copy of your book? It comes out January 7th. And I think readers can expect that they are going to find kindness, humor, and the tangible tips and next steps that are needed to be able to implement on getting better at spending and cultivating spending as a skill, both for now and the long term. Yeah. We really wrote this book for the person who has made budget after budget and has found themselves saying, why can't I stick to the budget that I made? I made it. I know what's coming in. I should be able to control what's going on. What

is wrong with me? Because that was me. I said those same words to myself and I wrote a book for me of 10 years ago. Oh, I love that. So if that's you, we wrote this for you. And we hope that it won't just help you with figuring out what to change and how to change, but how to make that change sustainable in the long run too. That's the last, that's the third part of the book. And I think it won't just help with financial habit change, that it is a holistic like framework for supporting change, positive change in your life. And I think it's going to help people beyond finances. And I'm very excited to hear people that it has helped beyond just

spending decisions. I'm excited to see how it transforms. Yeah. No, I can't wait. I'm so excited for you both. Where can people grab a copy? I know there's a special website people can check out. And then where can people find you guys if they want to check you out after this? BuyWhatYouLoveBook.com is where you can choose to buy the book from your favorite retailer. We have several links there. And Frugal Friends Podcast, wherever you're listening to this podcast. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me again, friends, and

best of luck on your book launch. I am rooting for you. And so, so thrilled for this book to be out in the world. Thanks for having us, Jessica. It's been fun. Yes, thanks. And that was my episode with frugal friends, co-hosts Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni. Their new book, Buy What You Love Without Going Broke, Transform Your Spending and Get More of What Money Can't Buy comes out January 7th. You can learn more by copy at buywhatyoulovebook.com. I will link to all of it, you know, all the places that you can buy and check them out, follow them on social media, follow their podcasts or subscribing in the show notes for this episode. And for any show notes of any episode of the podcast, just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash podcast. Or if you know the number of that

episode, jessicamorehouse.com slash the number of that episode. And like I mentioned, I am giving away a copy of their book. So if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest, and you will not find that anywhere. It's on my website, but there's no button or anything like that. It is literally a link that only you as a podcast listener know about. And maybe if you go on my Instagram, if you look on my link in bio, you'll find it. But jessicamorehouse.com slash contest, you will not only find that I'm giving away their book, but I'm giving away copies of all the books that have been featured on this season of the show. And so now, since we are wrapped up for all interviews for this season, you will find every single book there that I'm giving away. I will be probably drawing winners in the next month or so,

probably at the end of January. So you've got some time. You've got some time. So jessicamorehouse.com slash contest is where you can enter to win, enter to win all of them. You'll only win one if you are a lucky winner. But you know, might as well put your hat in the ring. You never know if it's your lucky day. So jessicamorehouse.com slash contest. And like I mentioned, this is a final interview for this season. And, you know, next season is going to be a little bit different. There are going to be some interviews, but because it's our 20th season and we're going to be leading up to 10 years of the More Money podcast. Also, I'm going to be very busy with book promo and a book tour. You know, we're going to do some special things, but exciting things to come.

And yeah, one final thing. I've got a book coming out very soon, December 31st, Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom. If you want to grab a copy or pre-order your copy, rather, jessicamorehouse.com slash book or wherever you want to buy your book, Amazon, Indigo. If you're in Canada, your independent local bookstore, love those. Let's support those guys. They all have websites that you can pre-order online fyi or you can give them a call old school love that and if you're in the u.s again you got your amazon barnes and noble i

found it at target online which is pretty cool and bookshop.org which i love i wish there was a canadian version for that where you can support your local bookstore as well if you're in the u.s and also you know it's i think amazon pretty much worldwide so um there you go no matter where you can support your local bookstore as well if you're in the US. And also, you know, it's I think Amazon pretty much worldwide. So there you go. No matter where you live in the world, you can grab a copy, pre-order your copy. And yeah, that's very exciting. Anyways, that's it for me.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've been enjoying this holiday season and I will see you back here New Year's Eve for a special kind of wrap up finale episode of season 19 of the More Money Podcast. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor Justice Carrar and podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at MRAVCanada.com. this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network